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What Clickbait Stories Are We Reading Today?

April 21, 2021 by Eric Rasmussen

–*Derek Chauvin is guilty

–*Check out Derek Chauvin in handcuffs.

–*Check out Derek Chauvin’s Wikipedia page calling him a convicted criminal.

–*Check this out to see what happened to Derek Chauvin’s bail! It was fucking revoked!

–*Here’s what you don’t do to somebody’s neck if you’re a cop.

–*This is what you don’t do with a bully if you run a police force: You don’t fucking hire him.

–*Click here to see what a neck is for if you’re a police officer.

–*Check out to see people erupt in joy as a tiny, itsy-bitsy sliver of justice is served for African-Americans.

–*Here are people still walking free after killing unarmed African-Americans. Prepare to click a lot.

Posted in Guns, Politics | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

They Tore Up the Road To Town

April 21, 2021 by Eric Rasmussen

From the forthcoming album “Digital Moon,” a new song by Salon de la Guerre.

They ripped up the road that takes you downtown
Some joker cut the phone line out
I don’t know my spit cup from my drink cup
And we just dump the trash all down the mountain

Kids that were raised good turn bad from boredom
Got to shoot at the squatters cross the way
My watermelon grew the size of thimbles
And I’m feeling like a failure every day.

Pavement’s coming
Any day now
Water well is
Drying out
Pavement’s coming
Any day now
We’ll just have to figure it out

You were out there pissing on pool tables
Someone’s going to ruin all the felt
You were vandalizing motorcycles
And whoever smells is the ones that dealt

There’s nothing I can do but steal ammonia
And sell it to someone with chemistry
You can’t remain alone out in the boonies
Your sanity gets lost out in the trees

Pavement’s coming
Any day now
Water well is
Drying out
Pavement’s coming
We’ll see soon
Water well will dig us out

Written, performed and produced by Eric Randolph Rasmussen. Copyright 2021.

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Thenness

April 16, 2021 by Eric Rasmussen

Sometimes you hear
A song that punches

A hole in
Your reality

And there’s joy
In it

But also a loneliness

Because suddenly
You feel
You are outside

Of the reality
You didn’t know
You were on
The inside of

And this journey
To outsideness

Was solitary

Posted in Poetry | Leave a Comment »

Love’s Best at the Start

April 15, 2021 by Eric Rasmussen

They put their last dollar
In the brand new gas tank
He said it in his vows:
How he’d always be frank

That they had no idea
What kind of life was in store
How he might give her nothing
But he might give her more

So she took to the diner
And he took to the drink
They loved much too often
And they laughed at the sink

It was full of used dishes
And their house it would stink
But he gave her his all
All the life he could think

And he read her that poem
She loved as a child
“How like you this body”
And her heart it went wild

For the love that’s forsaken
You can taste it in heart
And so he was loyal
Love’s best at the start

But she needed her freedom
A new poem to hear
Someone wreathing her eyes
Who besotted her ears

And she left him that liquor
And she left him to die
And he laughed at the dishes
And sometimes he cried

His love’s inventory
And she’s got the store
And he promised her less
That’s how he gave her more

And he promised her heaven
A room and a drain
And the hole drank his blood
Like the sea drank the rain

But he gave her her freedom
And a new happy heart
Cause just like in Eden
Love’s best at the start

Posted in Poetry | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

Lost In the Country

April 13, 2021 by Eric Rasmussen

There’s money in your letters
There’s money in your stones
And when the angel came to collect
There was money in your bones

And he knew by the purple in your blood
And knew by the color of your woes
That you rode across the country
Driven by anger alone

Lost in the country
On the higher plains
Nothing left but ideals
And your bodily remains

It’s in the black of your lungs
And in the anger of your stew
That the desecrating angel and the revenue service
Were both out to get you

And your anger was a cross
That your children had to bear
The woman on the plains
With matted blood in her hair

Lost in the country
With a battered wife
Anger animates your bones
And gives you life

And the desecrating angel
And the government revenue knew
You were an angel of anger
And away you flew

(Lyrics for “Lost in the Country” from the 2019 album Bleed by Salon de la Guerre. Written, performed and produced by Eric Randolph Rasmussen.)

Posted in Salon De La Guerre | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Are You Ready?

April 6, 2021 by Eric Rasmussen

Salon de la Guerre’s new punk album, Digital Moon, will be available in the next few weeks. Thirteen loud, fast songs about life in our confused times. Some of it I played on guitar, some of it is fabricated with my clever software.

I am still polishing the album, but this is what marketers call “creating pre-awareness.” So consider yourselves pre-aware.

As usual, all the songs were written, performed and produced by yours truly.

The album will be available on Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, Bandcamp and other platforms where music is (still) sold.

Here’s a sample:

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Lie To Me Like a Junkie

March 31, 2021 by Eric Rasmussen

Lie to me like a junkie
Make it soft and intimate
Say it in my ear that we can make it work
It’s all going to be better

Put my ear in something soft
Bathe it in falsehoods
Make it feel like this time
We’re really going to fall asleep
In the water and drown

Tell it to me like I know you’re desperate
That you have no choice but to sweetly
Ever so sweetly smile and cheat me
The moon knows your kiss is cold
And that lie that the moon shone on
Was old
But it felt good to lie on the grass
And pass this lie south
From mouth to red and stupid mouth

Lie to me like a junkie
And it’ll feel so fine

Posted in Poetry | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

‘Problematic’ Is Not A Word

March 30, 2021 by Eric Rasmussen

You used the word ‘problematic’
To describe something you didn’t like
On TV. You didn’t like
The idea
Couldn’t put
Your finger
On it

So you used a word
That sounds scientific
To English majors
But isn’t
Because every idea
And certainty
Is a piece of chum
Waiting to be eaten
By the shark

That is a deeper idea

And you can’t stop it
And you can’t help it
And “problematic”
Is your blanket
Your cage
Made of straw

But your big idea will be eaten
That’s what your big ideas
Were born for

‘Problematic’
Just like the straw
A word you can break
So easily
So fragile

It snaps

Posted in Poetry, Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

RIP Larry McMurtry

March 26, 2021 by Eric Rasmussen

When I was young, I hated cowboy stories and all things Western. So it took me a while to get around to reading a fat fiction book on the subject, Lonesome Dove. When I got over my snobbery, I found a gloriously written, brutal work of myth-busting and harsh neorealism about the west and Texas. Here we find a lot of limited and brutish characters driven by pure existential need to pursue the dangerous folly of a cattle drive when they didn’t really have to and they all suffer horrific fates over it. There’s only a couple of women in town and everybody’s in love with the same one. It’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys. You start to get into the psychology of the characters and emphasize with them and then the author kills many of the best ones. I was emotionally drained by the end of it. No small feat for me, since I was more attached to the distant and cool scientific satires of Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon at the time I finally read Larry McMurtry’s wonderful book.

If that weren’t enough, McMurtry also gave us the book The Last Picture Show,” which developed with his help into one of the best American movies of the 1970s and he co-wrote Brokeback Mountain. Like his best works, these poked holes in the myths we build about sexuality, masculinity, patriarchy and the past.

Posted in Books & Literature | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

A Fan Favorite From My Jazz Album

March 25, 2021 by Eric Rasmussen

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

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