phantom309.com - home of the day old donut - phantom309

"I smoked up all his Viceroys as we rolled along he pushed her ahead with 10 forward gears man that dashboard was lit like the old Madam La Rue pinball..." - Big Joe and Phantom 309, t.waits...Nighthawks At The Diner (1975)

i once grew up overlooking heaven's skyscraper with outstretched oatmeal canyons brittle by the breathable smog inhaled by intravenous hop skotch school yards in a wonderland of grey skys and saturday morning cartoons...

good tunes

when the rains fell there probably could be no better place than big bear adrift with fresh fallen powder...

blue symptoms strum through the sky wandering for bus fare and saturated grounds we cling to the barbed wire discounts off traction avenue wondering where the steve abee deal drifted too decades ago when the stench was fresh and we never suspended time to embrace that day old feeling...

underground jazz seeps through the congested cracks of city streets akin to the basement blare of virtuosos condemning the dawn of the village vanguard...

the citrus air laced with
concrete steam
layered upon layers
of iron reels
like chewing
supository beef jerky treats
off downtown's
interchanging sadness of
freeway connectors and ramps leading
to a destitute pioneer chicken
desperately deep frying sustenance
for the homeless orchards
who feed off static tv signals
grasping for their last mental cent
as kobe fades for a fall away...

we followed that ice cream bus
sputtering along
hallowed highways
on that
grim road
barbed between
los banos and vacaville
where powerlines pair up like parcheesi
and dictate dice across all lanes
rupturing unseen detours of re-imagined gravel
tangled in a thickett of gaunt cotton candy skies
with a blown gasket leaking single scoop moments
and for days on end we grazed upon the sweet grease stains. . . .

we've lost a lot of donut shops to the wrath of walgreens and prescription drug america injected by a capsule culture void of the sanctuary that glistens from the 4AM deep fryer...

donut shops
these days
are infirmary
out patient clinics
hustling the homeless
for spare change
and single servings of
extra strength blues
with rainbow sprinkles in a
corrugated cardboard box
next to the neglected pinball machine
where i find myself a decade later
fumbling for a fix at farrell's
clinging to the grout stain confections
catching up on current events and
who's playing the kuumbwa tonight...
--------------------------------------------
somewhere in
((santa cruz decades
longbeach at gladstones donuts rummaging through the day olds catching up on current events

the most sacred moment is the day old donut

sour dough squalor at the original pancake house with jenny's rabbit fur coat smothered across the 2006 calendar ushering the new year across from the memories of sitting at the corner of the echo with animators and solo guitars strumming every destitute dreamer as the run down pioneer market dismantles into a shiny new walgreens we seep below sea level and dry up from nostalgic saturation

at t.v. cafe
off alameda and olympic
fellini square dances with E.T.
while wrapping wet burritos
lathered in sour cream menudo stew
with telemundo's topless dancers
on the dollar change machine
jukebox jiving besides 2am truckers
with the AC blasitng 50 degrees
along the bathroom doors...

we wrapped ourselves in
billie's blues
whispering sweet nostalgia
about all the years that passed
learning to interpret her
meaningful misfortunes

you should've scaled the red rugged steps
take in the familiar aroma of roach urine
& lean against the wall to hear the faint
jest of jazz
with roy haines
on the high hat
leaking intonations
that reverberate
where are we now?

goddamn llanos of 2006
new and imroved
brought to you by the
fractals of late night armenian infomercials
turning water to wateria
like a miracle molester of urbanology
D1 drifting off the treads of
fontana's finest melancholy whore

how many pig tail pony's will you baptize before the gold line excavation uncovers her peg legged pom poms and heaving cleavage smothered across the 4th street bridge as boyle heights suffocates in her voluptous black hole with your mug plastered like porno graffiti

that night we drove through a field of white lotus
with champagne clouds drenched in strawberry kisses
avoiding spills and stares from flamingo dancers
and we grasped for the ground in a hammock of hollywood threads
peeling away floor board petals for soft soil

by twilight's last goodbye i paced endlessly in my mind
pelting myself with shards of tofu gravel
knowing i had burroughed right through my opportunity
falling head first outside the neon lights off wilshire boulevard.

perro pukes blood sausage blues
and sways sadly to a hell hounds trail
with his fat side to the burning asphalt

AM poems - breakfast of champions & the day old donut

why is it that our slabs soak so slowly like decades of angry scab collections taken from fragile styrofoam moments

chuck niles raspy banter the end of the dial that singed AM frequencies with a morose undertones brewing la river moonshine syrup

on a soaked griddle i am glad to be seated next to the wheat grains of Orange as the road to rejection narrows to a steep viscous plunge of lumpy biscuuits where

guilt free euphoria
streams along hollywood boulevard
saturday nights
carved from the remains of
boy scout racers
whiddled to the blunt church steeple; hang gliding impaler of guardian angels desperately searching for the spotlights to save their souls

some of the best diners should be places of worship where all god's children preach big rig verse.
in the early pre-dawn hours i was in valencia visiting imagineers to seek sanctuary at the Way Station - a bygone era old west trucker dive where everything is smothered in country gravy and relics of forgotten 50s memorabilia adorn the walls as the rusty patrons grease their gills with black coffee grinds. maybe it's just my religion. some do the photomat. i do diners.

bacon murmurs a psychotic smile and rooster dawns a fork n' knife for fresh gravy over tortilla and toast

way down yonder this sound...
yesterday this sound subturfuged the san fernando and plummeted into frank's diner off vineland visitation rights to the familiar
greeted by the vintage waitress connjuring arcane memories from the batter of deep fried friendships

i savored the dusty open sign and sun stained blinds within this hollow sound of sinking into the polycarbonate gloss booth inhaling the only diner establishment where it's lawful to smoke and eat omelets by dawn...

the desert draws skyward toward the 15 passed summit road
and drains into the dirt diners of motel america
swaying wind wilting palm trees
sparing shade for the parched
who are seeking Amatitlan

	mr llanos, i got hit with locusts and shampooed africanized juju bees the size of orca's 4th flab.

yes...
time is passing in life spans...
we're spannnnning time
and I think about you in between spans

words spew like evaporated hell storms permeating mental drought and loss of chewable motor skills as my lips drip a string of sentences into a hearty broth of stale malto-meal

nothing like a grand plan to renew this expired year.
i sat stagnant on the 5 earlier contemplating the era of zodys

i remember walking into jj newberry's when i was 8 and smelling the wax paper pizza meshed with maybeline mascara and the 24 cent candy machine

and at the lavanderias and washaterias i'm overcome by the sanctuary seekers caught between tumble dry and telemundo knowing they will have to amble the human hampster wheel at dawn...

she gambled across the plains of america
and wagered against a west coast
narrative of basement boys
chalking hieroglyphics
as her philadelphia perk and petite
wrapped around raw wasabi sweat
evaporate into an expired ghost world lodge
baked in a batter of caked hibernation.

a quarter mile stretch of road that stitches you in a 40 minute scar... i woke about 2 hours later so that i could do my round trip to LAand back and after 4 1/2 hours i'm beat like a derailed amtrak and all this for a clinging drunkin monkey lamp with a cocktail hat.

so now that you've loitered you know my predicament (one which i wholly accepted months ago mind you) everything here should be wrapped in air tight mylar and left to suffocate...

i used to leave the butter out for attention and i decorated the christmas tree with spam...

off the cuff of chapman past miners mountain path
and the ol' 76 station
old Orange ruptures with permanent trailor parks gridlocked along a crossroads of glazed strip malls hammered down by marathon mixed-use developers of san fernando valley pride
as these cheese pizza dwellers harden in time worshipping juan pollo's rooster god and mattern's brattwurst blood sausage.

remember a time when the brite spot off sunset and alvarado hung forgotten photos of local newscasters and bereaved baseball players adorned across old oak panels peeling from grease soaked smoke sort of around the time the onyx off melbourne and vermont reigned as the post cold war be bop era of central city jazz and the spillers of beat verbage encapsulated within under the counter shots of watered down espresso smeared across the concrete floors of formica tabletops and used literature…

these moments pass all too easily as quickly as the icy shores of montauk or the passing rasp of chuck niles - even yesterday in the quiet AM hours of LA headlight passerbys would stop and leave burning candles for the untimely passage of elliott smith as we dug our heels deeply onto the strip mall gravel under the flourescent moon of chess and churros playing jenga with big mac containers nourished by 35 cent coffee refills that would soon guide us onto the rooftops overlooking the smokestacks and twilight freight yard operators embraced by the exhaust of longhaul truckers from fresno to freemont clutching down the 5.

along silverado canyon you can find your salvation as long as you
cut across at the fork in the road and scale the steeple peak beneath the age of machinery but fall past the fork and impale your

keywords to myself:

ever have a meatsicle?

at about 2am i decided to get my life together again.

first step: pack my lunch in a brown paper bag!

so there i was straying through the aisles at Ralphs gathering a bounty of goods and produce for a weeks worth of mid day treats...

when morning struck i started packing my lunch wholly ill-prepared by the freon of my fridge...as i rummaged through i clutched an icey block of farmer john's variety meats. my poor wheat bread was pummelled by cracked sticks of meatsicles blanketed with a slice of cheddar. & my carrots had congealed just as the zuchinni sticks at the burger factory held by their intrinsic moisture. even now they are frozen and quite the treat. i've had chocolate dipped frozen bananas at carney's, but never frozen ice dipped carrots sticks...

oh and i forgot the brown paper bags so i wrapped eveything individually in plastic supermarket bags and it has that straight out of the dumpster look. like someone tossed their half eaten sandwhich which once had been wrapped in deli wax paper then left to rot in the back alley...

oh well...so how was your lunch?
Oct 1, 2002

phantom309, dounts, diners, jazz, tom waits, krullers, phantom, 309, red sovine, leonard cohen, tangs donuts, alameda, tv cafe, patio lawn, poetry, echo park, poetics, urban, bob kaufman, beats, beatnik, bavarian cream fill, illiad bookshop, duttons, sittons, zglow, kendara, lucky penny, clement, pinball, multiball, whose cafe, the hotel cafe, onyx, lee morgan, hank mobly, megathon, rilo kiley, smog, cajon pass, roys cafe, barstow, santa fe rail road, union station, farmers almanac, big joe, 24 hours, golden sardines, cranial guitar, ancient rain, saticoy, asphalt, cityscape, broadway, cliftons, cafeteria, sassons, wong koks, quan brothers, imagist, william carlos williams, turner, panaderia, wateria, carpeteria,

i'm thinking of that diner with the neon sign of spokey stars strewn across the lemon bricks where she sits a vacancy away pondering the pot roast settling for grilled cheese that baits me with an ultra light and sartre's naseua patched with ink blots and mental mind strands as we fork the bland pasta of pastiche to a dawn smothered by ashen clouds wrapped in bubble wrap blues.

(source: Echo Park Historical Society News Vol. 6, #2)

bel air
the other night i returned to the bel air motor hotel off 1st street in the city of tustin. the office lady had bright pink rollers in her hair and she greeted me with the secret grandma hand shake and potent pot pie hospitality like the chunks of carrots and potatoe in the fennel hash off lower haight at kate's kitchen.

so i proceeded with light banter regreting the long lull between my last visit and as always she had this perpetual smile nodding yes. it was nice. i didn't have to fill out any paper work or show my id and she spotted me a nice room with a full range stove and a view of the side alley.

in my room i hike up the ac and ignite the television hoping it'll distract me into an amnesiac state. the ancient brush fire on the set burdens me as I fear it'll reach the cajon and set fire to the Summit Diner.

i move some of the furniture around because they have rollers attached beneath. i forget what time it is and so I take a walk along the park across the street to forget some more.

Most every day I am simply going about the midnight shift off the railway life of some forgotten 50 year old with a blue button up shirt and my name scrawled along my left pocket filled with magnetized games and a patch of poetry rotting from sweat saturation...it's these moments every night I take a deep breath and inhale the familiar smell of ancient plywood and dust bunny infestations and believe that I am in love.

heard the murmuring dawn listening to ranchera music on the AM dial and somehow in a listless moment was struck down in ulterior destitution plunged by the hyper nostalgia of your 8.3 second friendship and it brought me to thinking how hopeful that this message would reach you in a farther equator moats away from the boys republic...

Bruce Foods Corp.
mind blisters with the sting of red rooster
cayena clutching forever
contemplating roof away roadster
and the grasp of your hand

rock candy walls at cinch's
70s silent cinema shimmering behind the bar
served with a trifecta to st. valentines
and she ponders the glazed old fashioned...

friday night was a blur between back alley bars
serving under age kool aid
and the chef of patina
dishing minimalist
french faire
for the price of 99 double quarter pounders with cheese
beneath frank ghery's architectural american splendor.

i stared at a painting named brushing teeth for hours on end like a derelict on a pepsi high fumbling for another life savers to feel my feet again so that i might be able to peruse the other artists in admiration...

the tenderloin
with a pile of mayo soaked slaw
and burnt bricks of buttered bread
smothered in green peas and potatoes
drenched and exhumed with a fistful of coffee

the grease from the gristle and sweat soaked
waiters keep the neon buzzing for the late night
LA insomniac craving self-cremation
and they share in the post-depression era steaks
marinade by the rat pack and national champs...

along the corridor before the bathroom hall
the bread cutter pauses to wipe a bead of sweat
from his forehead fumbling for his transistor am radio
for somewhere in southbend 4th and 9 echos
as the grass grows thick in defeat.

so as far as how's my weekend been so far.......

i've stared at the t.v. a lot this weekend forgetting to turn it off throughout the night...

at this very moment the last frontier with anne bancroft from 1955 plays on the western channel...

i'm still downstairs and too lazy to haul my grandma's blanket and down pillows to my bedroom...

i've stared at the t.v. in marathon sessions falling in and out of sleep but it doesn't quite capture the vivid shades of forest green trees swaying to dawn's morning rain outside the bourgeois pig but i'll keep staring searching pixel by pixel throughout the night until i wake up in dreary bliss...