Sean Patrick Conroy

I spent today thinking how they beat you to death
In the middle of the day
In the middle of the city
In the middle of the platform
In the middle of your life

local mom on a friday night

She stopped laughing for a moment and appeared to be looking into the beerglass, but she was focused on a point a million miles away. Both hands wrapped around the glass as if to warm it. “I’m really counting on Smoking to be allowed in Heaven.” Nobody at the table said anything, but a few people nodded deeply. They all missed something too.

CRANKY! (eight words)

Tusken Raider
Originally uploaded by steakbellie.

i pissed
you off
and you
hate that.

Like Nam

Detrius
Originally uploaded by steakbellie.

Someone heated up some frozen White Castle Burgers in the breakroom at breakfast, and the smell is causing some serious Flashbacks. It's amzing the power that smell can have.....

X-Wing

X-Wing
Originally uploaded by steakbellie.

Blogs are funny, but people that write them are more funny. This started as a recounting of a Seven-Year-Old Steakbellie, sitting in his twin bed in the dark, pretending it was an X-Wing Fighter Spaceship from the Star Wars movie. Now that I've gone and deleted all the text it's about something else, but I will keep the photo and title because I like them.

Blogs have funny trends if you stick with them long enough. I know I go through phases of writing. Sometimes I can write nothing but Haiku's. Sometimes I spend months writing those 8-word poems. Sometimes I write about Competive Eating. Sometimes I think about it, but dont write anything.

Mostly I think it's important to have an image with a post, I'm pretty sure people dont read posts without pictures unless it's got a dirty title. I typically use my own photos for the posts but sometimes create my own illustrations to go with the article. Lately I havent been using as many images.

I've actually been writing alot lately, but only in my head. Stories & Topics kind of appear and take shape. I work out the exact wording I'll use and the descriptions. I just never write the stuff down. I could write it down, but then it's kind of forced, and anytime I try to force anything with this blog it becomes less fun...so I wait it out and write as writing comes. Next Phase, Next Phase.

Whats weird is that I'm getting more hits now than I ever have. My page counter goes up 250-300+ a day. Even on days I dont write a thing somebody is finding this thing....

Stormtrooper

Stormtrooper
Originally uploaded by steakbellie.

Quote of the Day:
"He looks sad. I bet he had friends on that Death Star."
-Katrocket

for sure (eight words)

if it
was up
your ass,
you'd know

evidence to god knows what

I have noticed a surge in graffiti in the city of Philadelphia over the last six months.

My commute is through the suburbs on a trolley and then on an elevated train through the worst part of Philadelphia. I spend most of the time making an oil-spot on the glass with my forehead. If you can disassociate the scene from the human toll, the visual candy is quite filling. Deeply rusted, pock-marked metal girders that hold up train tracks. They use rivets instead of welds and have some old red lead paint still clinging in some areas.

Crumbled red brick row homes with buckled roofs (when there still is a roof). Ornate Copper soffits that have been painted over multiple times. Broken, fire-blackened window frames. Wind piled trash mixed with leaves. New Satellite dishes.

Decaying materials are fascinating, I’m not crazy about Graffiti however, especially when it’s poorly done and repetitive. The taggers are competing against each other like two dogs who keep trying to out piss the other at the base of a telephone pole. They use a single color (blue, black or red) and apply their mark on as many flat surfaces they can find. If the side of an abandoned Granite office building has 10 panels on it, the tagger will put his mark on it 10 times.

Over the last six months the marks have reached down my trolley tracks to my town. Fences and Garages. Trolley Maps and Way Stations. Businesses and Parked Train Equipment. Marks everywhere.

As soon as it’s marked once, competing marks show up within days. My wife had mentioned a few months ago that it’s from gang activity. She’s all down with the Bloods and Crips, yo. I think she might be right in some ways.

I wonder if crime follows this or if this follows crime. I wonder if it’s just some suburban kid who wants to be Sucker Free. I wonder what sort of Sociological studies have been done of this. I wonder when my train will get me home……

31

Three Word Love Song

I went to a wedding and a funeral this weekend and saw first how I’ve done a shitty job at keeping in touch with loved ones.

The wedding was for an old friend. I am old enough to have old friends now. People that knew you two versions ago. People you don’t have to lie to or impress because they have seen you long before the bullshit and for some reason they still like you. That was really sweet for me, and I just kept being baffled at what keeps people apart.

The funeral was for an Uncle. Cousins I haven’t seen forever, suddenly have long hair or no hair or kids with long hair. Some young 15 year old with tremendous lank, looked past me, but I knew who he was because of the plaid tie he was wearing and the geek-neck of his father. How could this boy have grown to my height? I think I saw him last as a toddler.

The church was several hundred years old and has it’s yard filled with Ancient stones of the dead before us. If you don’t have a bag-piper in the family you should consider getting one. My brother stood in the yard after the service and played 4 or 5 songs under the tree the ashes are to be scattered. Aunts and Uncles stood in the cold at a respectful distance and listened.

In the hall next door there were sandwiches and tears. Stories and laughs. The kids chased each other and we balanced empty plates and paper coffee cups.

There were photos of the cousins when we were kids, there were pictures from the war, pictures of some young Navy Cook. We hear about his death and how fast it was. Yes, Yes, that’s how he wanted to go. It was for the better. His last words to my Aunt tell me the whole story, start to finish.

Hold Me, Jean

From the Ether

if I could just locate
some clean underwear
and closely matching black socks
ones without holes preferably
i could be
alittle bit
happier

Bret Favre Retires, Gary Gygax Dies

Today sucks for the Geeks and the Jocks.

welcome

Do you ever wonder about that little bit of dirt at the bottom of a stalk of Celery? I do. I’m not worried about the food being dirty, I more curious how much top-soil is lost in a field each year to Celery Leeching.

So I’m in the little office lunch room running my Celery under the sink, rubbing the dirt off and trying to devise a way to re-capture all of the earth residue back at the packaging plant or field-side.

There are other people milling about this lunch-room but I have my headphones on so that they wont talk to me. The headphones are not even connected to anything. Sometimes I’ll even talk really loudly to really sell it so that everyone thinks I’m listening to music. It’s an illness.

Somebody’s fucking with the microwave.

Somebody’s getting water.

The new woman walks into the lunchroom and apologetically makes her way to the coffee machine. “I cant seem to get enough coffee today” she breaks to nobody as the coffee flows.

“You’re not trying hard enough” I deadpan from my celery without looking up.

She laughs awkwardly and there’s a weird moment because I don’t laugh or aknowledge her. She leaves.

The guy at the Microwave cracks up.

I’m such a dick sometimes.

she's going to have to change her email address (haiku)

no beachtags
Originally uploaded by steakbellie.

put on your nice shoes
somebody is getting hitched
we'll dance those heels down

not just another monday (American Sonnet)

somebody says 'the baby passed'
and you don't have to know them
to have your stomach seize up
it's unfair

it's so unfair

to have a week of hope
and a lifetime of despair

it's hard for me to hear that
to know that could have been us
the details were the same
the end result, so very different

i wonder how they will move on

why me?
well, why not you?