Coffee Shop Thoughts 2

       Colorful covered coffee shop patio. I sit here in a casual August rain.  A woman walks in dripping.  Oozing negativity.  But my mood is quite the opposite.  I rather enjoy a good sprinkle.  The trees like it too.  And the grass and the flowers and the weeds and all the lush green towers.  Nature's fluids replenish and the ground smells sweet.  Some people pay good money for these rainy sounds piddle-paddling on the roof.  I enjoy them for free.  It is the type of scene I will miss most when I eventually move on.  There are little sparrows fluttering around.  This place is God damned magical.
Porch swings.
Coffee mugs.
Lazy Sunday.
Morning drugs.
       The gentleman in front of me tries to pry something out of his back-most molar with his bare fingers, two knuckles deep.  A dog fight breaks out behind me.  As I try to find peace, two beasts on a leash try to see who can bark the loudest.  The owners of these wild fuckin animals pull them apart, and then one asks their dog what's wrong.  My magic kingdom disrupted, I go indoors.
       Inside is a wonderful rainbow of liberal stereotypes.  Entertaining and annoying at the same time.  Lenny Bruce once said, "The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them."  A bearded one walks in to peruse the recycling bin.  Sometimes he gets "lucky" and finds the New York Times, he proclaims to another patron.  Apparently he is jonesing for a good crossword puzzle (his words).  I chose the unfortunate location of waste-area adjacent. 
       Fundamentally, I'm as liberal as they come.  Politically, I don't vote.  Politics is a fools game.  I'm an artist.  I mind my own business.  My brain operates with child-like confusion and merriment.  Unable to take anything seriously.  I'm a wallflower.  A constant observer.  I regurgitate my surroundings after careful pondering in a creative and thought provoking manner (mostly on Facebook).  

       This coffee shop has selected music that can only be described as industrial-tribal.  It's like Trent Reznor collaborated with one of those isolated jungle tribes.  The goth kids across the room visibly love it.
Tie-dye Gothic.
Designer leggings.
Rainbow hair and giant plug earrings.
Tattooed faces.
Cowboy fringes and hooker laces.
Teenage fashion is exhausting.  
I bleached my hair a wonderful cartoon yellow when I was in high school.  I was in my Eminem phase.  Sixteen year old boys really identify with that man.  As I think about those responsibility-less glory days, the rain lets up and the sun comes out.  I should probably leave.  That girl with the face tattoo is really pulling it off.

Coffee Shop Thoughts

Two old timers play chess.
A well-dressed man reads a newspaper.
A casual schlub reads a book.
Students are doing homework.
The two best looking ones study thick medical texts.
I sit in my carefully selected bedroom-floor T-shirt eating breakfast at noon.
Nobody talks to each other.
We all sit absorbing our various drugs.
Sugar heads eat their pastries.
Caffeine junkies guzzle 20 oz. organic, fair-trade human fuel.
Music fiends bob their fashionable headphones to the beat.
Lord knows what the students are using to stay focused.
I'm a well-rounded junky absorbing anything and everything.
I finished my turkey sandwich, so now I gnaw on my fingernails.
The Radiohead soundtrack this coffee shop selected makes me anxious.
A second chess match pops up. (These guys use a timer.  Real fuckin' pros.)
Baristas bark out orders.
It's Labor Day, but these caffeine pushers don't get the day off. America needs it's drugs.
I have to work later myself. I push alcohol in the evenings. (A few questionable life decisions has left me a 30 year old bartender.  I blame Obama; Anyone but myself.)
I imagine an alternate universe where I'm confident enough to talk to the beautiful human specimen to my right.
I imagine a second where she slaps me in the face. 
I decide to go for a walk and contemplate my current universe.
The immense size of it all usually makes me feel better.
A pair of tan legs and acid-washed short shorts strolls by my table as I pack up.
I imagine a universe where she joins me on my walk home.

Culture Jam MKE

"Occupy All Streets"

The Hide House in Bay View is home for a lot of up and coming artists in Milwaukee.  An old converted factory building now has artist studios and galleries, and this Friday will be the opening of "Culture Jam MKE."  Two floors and 40 different artists bringing attention to societal problems such as political corruption, marijuana legalization, domestic violence and homelessness.  My piece is about the latter.

Homelessness.  The title, Occupy All Streets,  "piggy backs" on the famed Occupy Wall Street movement.  The reason being that I too offer very little in the terms of a solution to the problem at hand.  My statement is as follows:
       "Hey, look.  There is a problem.  Someone should do something."
The whole point is to get people talking.  Like any other serious topic in my life, my first approach is humor.  The phrase at the top of the piece is meant to grab attention:  TOUCH MY BUTT AND BUY ME PIZZA.  If you put big bold words across the top of a painting, people will read it.  It is like a headline.  If you make those people laugh, they will stay and look longer.  If they stay for a second look, have some intriguing imagery to make them ask questions.  When they start asking questions, I have succeeded as an artist.  

I think, at the same time, this phrase is hinting at the psychological disorders that many homeless deal with.  Accompanied by, what appears to be, a slight grin on the gentleman's face in the painting.  Does this depict the man's thoughts?  Did some twisted fuck graffiti this above a homeless man asleep on the street?  Am I making fun of homeless folks?
Fuck no.  What I really meant to point out is that we are all human animals in the end.  I think some people forget that when living in big cities and confronted with homelessness on a daily basis.  In the end, everyone wants the same things.  

The point is, you would think, as a country we would focus on OUR hungry and OUR needy before we spend all of our money on war and destruction of others.  Maybe politicians should talk about stuff that matters instead of "the gays" and what plants we are allowed and not allowed to grow.  A PLANT?!  Really?

There are obviously a lot of factors involved here.  At the end of the day, some people are sleeping on concrete futons and cardboard cots, while at the same time millions of dollars gets spent on meaningless bullshit and abandoned houses go unoccupied.  And instead of rehabilitation and counseling we just peddle drugs and throw people in private prisons.

Think about ti.

Long Johns Bum Flap

"Wisconsin Winter"  Brian R. Hibbard  2012

Fog on the mirror
Cold in the air
Exhale breath clouds
Frozen despair

Highway ice rinks
Time stands still
Frigid grid lock
Going down hill

Old man winter
Polar Vortex
North pole voodoo
Bitter weather hex

Overworked furnace
Start a bonfire
Campbell soup blankets
Burning desire

Eskimo kisses
Negative thirty
Long johns bum flap
Let's get dirty

Environmental Fist

Branches dangle
Electric flow
Lightning strikes
Cold wind blows

Winter storms
City streets
Nature's army
Chilling fleets

Out of my element
Into the snow
Just for the hell of it
Henry Thoreau

Sly satire
Abolitionist
Philosophying nature
Environmental fist

We Are Human

Selfish creatures
With obsessive features
Taught to kill
Forced to swill
swallow the pill
climb the hill
we all fall down

Stealing honey
To sell for money
Raping the bees
And killing the trees
The foliage is leavin'
Giving into the season
We all fall down

Overwhelmed with choices
Struggling for voices
We yearn to be heard
Crave to be cured
The kiss of death
A breath of fresh air
when we all fall down

Reincarnate
With a heartache
Burdened by fear
Overcome by peers
Pressure to succeed
It feeds our greed
We are human

"Reincarnate"  Brian R. Hibbard 2010

Land of the Free, Home of the Contradiction

"Land of the Free, Home of the Contradiction" 
Brian R. Hibbard 2013

Cancer stick breath mints
Fire-breathing meth heads
Tucked in under America's bridges
Living the dream on concrete futons

Capitalist refuse
Forfeiting hunger games
Asking for helping hands
And receiving cold shoulders

Corporate lobbyists beg
A young nation grows older
But no one's the wiser

Entire cities erupt in corrupt bankrupt change cups
Spilling over in stock market casinos
Bit coin treasuries occupy mall streets

Remote controlled wars with minority majorities
Propaganda drones seize thrones
Talking heads justify lies

Archaic diction governs the robots of today
Fearing change as we beg for more
Pope Francis' helping glances draw sneers
From the right-wing gears

In the media machine
America's Dean
Wagging his finger
At the spellbound peons

Plugged into the hypnotizing glow of TV screens
Prescription zombies affixed to couches
Inside hard-earned living room IKEA jail cells