kickstand
Doug Nufer 1999
Kickstand is antic ink.
A tack in a sack, a snack in a cask, a task.
As an ant is an acid tank and a kid in dank ick can stink
Kickstand is an act and a stand. It can
Sin, sic a cad at staid kin
As ticks sink in skins.
Kickstand can scan ants in sand, skin cats, stain a saint
Nick, kid, kick, stack, and sack a sick and sad anti-antics din
As it aids kids. It isn’t AIDS
And can’t stand tan Dan and Candi’s tics in a skit
In skin. As I sat and stank, I said
Kick it, kids. Dan, dick Candi! And Candi said,
It ain’t in, it’s an act: a knick-knack, tic-tac, sin-din in a tin can
An act can’t stick its dick in.
In Kickstand, I said, it can.
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I have no recollection of how Doug Nufer got these words to me. Perhaps he handed it to me at the Elysian. Or he handed it to a bike messenger and they handed it to me downtown. Maybe he sent a fax to WA Legal... ...Anyway either way, it was printed in kickstand #9 in 1999. printed on actual paper. Photocopied, folded, stapled and hand delivered via bicycle. I'm sure I got a copy to Doug at the wine shop.
It was “reprinted” here ten years later. Now re-re-reprinted 26 years later. I’ve gained another whole new appreciation for it, as an interesting and humorous poem constrained by the letters found in the word kickstand. I also have a lot of respect for Mr. Doug Nufer who is a badass writer as well as a cyclist, former messenger, poet, MC and wine expert.
I created a postcard of the 2009 post and slapped a couple stamps on it to mail to Doug Nufer at the wine shop. Full circle so to speak. More like crazy loopty-loops.
Around 2012 there were rumblings of pulling the plug on this site. Shutting it down. I was a washed up messenger with a very young daughter. I was huffing acetone and carbon dust at Mad Fiber aimlessly regurgitating glory days in a phantom nostalgia syndrome daze.
Somewhere in there, someone I know gifted me three huge three-ring binders of heavy weight paper printed single sided with this here website. No joke. It was intended to make me feel better. Give me something to look back on. To refer to when this site was gonzo.
But it kind of creeped me out. Made me sad. Made me chuckle. A 15 inch stack of paper. Literal reams and reams of paper trying to commemorate this tiny sliver of the internet.
I put those three fat binders high on a shelf to collect dust. Until yesterday when I cracked one open. And saw it in a whole new light. That’s one reason I’ve been partying like it’s 2009 here and now.
It’s a treasure trove of postcard fodder. An all-you-can-eat buffet of memories with bottomless spicy bloody marys. Chronological archival quality all right there in black & white. It does not invoke the same feelings as scrolling back on the internet. The dusty paper 3-hole punched brings out some old legal messenger courthouse researcher in me. I have already created several one-of-a-kind postcards, including this Doug Nufer antic ink doozy.
Someday soon you too might see one in your mailbox, hand delivered via USPS.
Full circle. Loopty-loop loopy.
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