Strife

Her name was Laura Larson and she had a son with this guy she had been with for a handful of years. The son was five or six years old. At one point in the relationship, they had broken up. She went away, met another man from Brazil whom she ended up with another child by- a girl. It was the little girl that stayed in the bedroom that was in the front of the house, the first room on the right as you walked up to the front door. The room had a couple windows, one facing the road. They were extremely messed up- covered in what looked like mud or brown paint. I soon learned about this room where the “man” kept the bulldog puppy- and a small amount of information that was, to me, pertinent to the welfare of this child. It would be several days, to a week before I would digest it all. I’m not convinced I wasn’t supposed to be there to help the child- sent by angels to save her life- I’m sure. Was this a test of my ability to care for others, while still dealing with my own misery? 

The smell that came from that room was terrible and would keep me out of it until I had a better understanding of what that room was, and what it meant. When I learned that the child was sleeping in there, knowing it was the dog’s room, I really started working towards a solution. I witnessed his dog training techniques- holding the dog with one hand by the back feet, while smacking the Dog about the face. I visualized the scenario: the dog and child were put together in hopes that it would kill her. It would appear as if it was only a room the dog was left in routinely, and the child had gone in there. Not being the child’s room- that she wanted to play with the puppy. It’s amazing she didn’t die from the fecal contamination! There was a small piece of foam rubber that resembled a crib mattress. It was soiled in shit. Poop smeared and caked on all walls, doors, and window surfaces four feet up everywhere. In the meantime, the man-ling was getting his paycheck cashed and getting the word STRIFE tattooed across his upper back. He was intentionally torturing the little girl, tormenting the household mostly because he wasn’t man enough to accept his failures at being able to maintain and contribute to a household, to correct his mistakes and accept his future, his fate. He was angry at her for who knows how many selfish reasons but the most important issue was over her bringing another child, from another lover she became acquainted with after their break-up, into the scenario when he finally decided he wanted to try again or when she decided- either way… an attempt at salvaging what they once had as a couple for the sake of the children- or their son. We call them sore losers where I come from, and as for the mom, Laura, it’s a sad day when a woman is so emotionally crippled, and lacking in confidence and self-esteem because of nurturing deficiencies in her up-bringing and relationships, that she fails in her responsibilities by getting knocked up regardless of whether she has the means to care for an additional child. Man he was, in Earthly form, but this man-ling was just a piece of shit that hadn’t yet found his calling as a prison inmate.

Strange, just as the shit was smeared all over the room, he was smeared all over that child and her mother’s life. Her starvation for attention and affection was what would lead her to throw herself at my feet briefly and was my foothold to motivate her to change the situation. With my influence, and mentioning the child protective authorities coming and taking her kids, she would walk into that disaster to face it head on, as far as the “living condition” and the dog being housed in the same room. The situation with the man-ling would be a whole ’nother battle that she would have to deal with entirely on her own. As I think about it now, I had an opportunity to have him arrested for negligence and abuse at the least but I didn’t have the hate or anger or maybe the ability to call the police, of all people, or the comprehension of the dynamics or the big picture but I knew the child’s living situation had to be addressed. Whether she left or he left, I don’t know but I think they did end up splitting up completely. It’s too bad it didn’t happen before the man-lings iguana bit their son. It had no cage, sometimes kept in the little girls room but was left free to roam around the house, causing for the boy’s nose to need to be sewn back on. It was a nasty scar. The Iguana was large, which three plus feet, in my limited education, is large. It was never taken care of and got “misplaced”, and after the eviction. it was later to be found in the walls of the house, where it died. It must have been a nice surprise for their landlord the day he found it.

Economic Slavery

Born in Norfolk Virginia, on a naval base, my life has been a continuous existence of confusion. Occasionally finding an identity through various interests and exposures but being stripped of the self esteem it takes to venture confidently into any one thing for very long, and consequently finding drugs and alcohol, as well as the vermin that goes along with the low style of life, my existence was a challenge... to say the least. 
 I took to band in the fourth grade, music being a mother to me, it was always around the house or in my crib, in the form of a record player, old country radio,or a wind-up toy that I ignorantly found was my coupling device. I can still hear the windings and grindings of the gears that worked their mechanical beauty. 

       Having no bonds being fostered or maintained, I in turn rejected my mother by throwing the bottle from my crib at the age of one or a little more. I would strip all of the clothes from my body that she dressed me in. I would bite the kids that approached my crib in the yard, where I was placed away from immediate ear-shot. I would smash my head into the floor wrought with un-understood frustration, all they did was laugh and watch. To this day I cannot remember being in a hug with my mother, only once, when I forced it on her when our grandfather died of cancer. 

      Trombone suited my frame and was paired up with me by a person acting as counselor to the "would be" musicians of my class. I was eventually plucked from the Coopersville Junior High School band to play with the Coopersville Senior High School Jazz band. Featured at all the Home Basketball games, as well as the parades and some other things that I cannot remember because of the status of my medical reality. I will sight that I was well hated by the rest of the high school for my achievement.- or so it seemed.
The Interlochen School for Fine Arts presented me with an award, a seventy-five percent scholarship. Only one is given out a year, provided they can find someone deserving. My mother didn’t allow me to take advantage of that award due to our seeming poverty.

      Moving out at the age of 15, after my step-father ran off with my Uncle Gary’s wife (my mothers brother), I found refuge in my then best friends home with his parents. We spent a lot of time in the woods and fields, running the trails and creek beds, fishing, hunting, hiking, mostly just plain living. Those were always my toys, ever since the age of 7, and it was all I had in life. I didn’t feel deprived, I mostly felt relieved. No more did I have to sneak around trying to escape the militants of my home life. Having to judge my soon to be had beating by feeling the hood of the car or truck to see how warm it was, regulating the inevitable. The men my mother brought home were only a catalyst.     

     Eventually I found my way into the construction trades at 18. My mother put me in the hands of a plumber she knew from the American Legion, and at that point it is the best thing she ever mustered to do for me, or maybe the worst considering the lifestyle that would complicate my future. Bob Bolthouse was his name “Midwest Plumbing”, a then failing business only providing a steady source of drinking money and drugs for his two sons, one of which was like a big brother to me, Bill. It was through these people that I was found by Paul Valdamar Jensen, one of there friends and a Finish Carpenter who took me on after deciding I had a brain in my head. It was Paul’s guidance that helped me the most through the forming of my manhood. He and I are still close friends to this day. After a skiing accident, where I had gave him some mushrooms and he ended up with a bad rotator cuff injury, I inherited the business. Immediately I went from making thirty thousand a year, to making seventy thousand a year! I found my true identity as a finish carpenter, and my grandfather’s spirit was there helping me. Little did I know, having had some psychic experiences, I was going to lose it to a semi collision at the age of 26 or 27. I still don’t have the details correct.    

      Afterwards I didn’t know I was hit. My wife of seven years soon traded up for a guy on A.O.L. She took everything I had up to that point, leaving me homeless, penniless, and unable to care for myself, and without family and friends who were willing to help me pick up the pieces, or who had any idea how to help me to begin with. I lost out on a several million dollar settlement. Therefore, my sentiment is, I am a very wealthy man.

      Alcohol became my reality. Cocaine was around soon after she left, being that I was in the streets trying to find friendship and support but found the crack scene only. All that found me was crack cocaine and the people who were trying to figure out where the next “twenty” was coming from. They recognized my misery and took full advantage. Being lost in the streets, anyone who would have been able to help me, would never be able to unless they kept up with the county jail or I called someone.

      Meeting Dan DeRuiter in 1999 or 2000, reunited me with music and rekindled my lost love of music and art, and wanting to be a musician. We bonded instantly, made several recordings, and performed all over the city of Grand Rapids. Every open mic, every festival we could get into, every corner we could play on. We would just walk around playing frisbee golf, carrying a guitar and a few harmonicas. Stopping and resting, playing music. Everyone knew who we were. Always clad with bandannas, having “exceeded our daily allowance of fun” on a daily basis.

      I would find my way into the hearts of a few women along the way, who would recognize what I was doing to myself, and why. They would try to guide me to the hands of someone who would facilitate putting my life together. I would become despondent and slip into hopelessness often due to the dissuasion of doctors who just assumed I was seeking scripts. Little would they give consideration to the fact that if that was the case, I wouldn’t be in their office, I’d be in the streets.

      The last woman, before this lapse of reason, to try to help me, guided me through the court system and helped establish visitation rights to my children and got me into the hands of medical persons who could continue my care. I had been struggling to keep in accordance with the doctors up to that point. She did quite a bit for me, though she couldn’t do a thing for herself, being an addict. We were always late for my appointments, though she did get me there, because she was always busy rolling a joint    

at the last minute.  Danny facilitated her and I getting together by booking a repair job at her home. She latched right on to me, and I stayed. Dan was pissed about it, mostly jealous, admittedly. 

      Danny died on 6-6-06. I almost followed him, losing my wolf-shepard (Dusty) three days later, and a grandfather a few days after that. I went on a drinking spree that was just a blur. My friends were concerned I wouldn’t pull through it. I must admit that I didn’t want to pull through it. I was done in life. I had all I could stand. It was a visitation  with my children, which coincidently their mother called and said she didn’t think they should be dictated to when they would see me, being they were in their teens. I willingly agreed with her. One year of being able to see them after 12 years of them being taken away, after all that fighting in the courts, was now reduced to “when they felt like it”. All for nothing.  Somebody found out what happened and saw an opportunity to sneak in the back door. He promised me a job, which I needed to make 2500 bucks to appease the friend of the court and stay out of jail, AGAIN, over child support. The last thing I said was “I’m going to Florida to make some money, I’ll be home in a few weeks”. “O.K. Dad," said Cody, my son.

A year and a half later I got out of the Key West (Monroe County) Jail and called a friend. I begged him to get me back home where I belonged. He spent his last $220 to get me back. I got off the Greyhound 48 hours later and went right to his house where he put me up and put me to work in his shop. Two weeks or less after that I was working in a cabinet shop that he helped found, making 10 bucks an hour, with the statement that, “If you can find better out there be our guest and go take it”. I stomached it and was happy because ten was more than what I got in Key West, (working in a ship yard eventually, on junk boats that were resold as working vessels). 422 days in the county jail, four arrests, and a felony cocaine charge, with no cocaine. I should have known when they railroaded me on a drunk driving accusation on the first arrest. Arresting me because I had long hair, was not ever seen there, and wearing a bandanna. Fifteen times, they kept asking me where the drugs were. The charged me with a dui, kept continuing the case, and three months later the Judge said “time served”. Time served for what? I was arrested on another bogue charge within a few weeks, after being pigeon holed as a sex toy by the mental health person I sought refuge and assistance from. He placed me in a “mens home” where I was approached and reacted upon vehemently when I didn’t respond to the attempts. The last one where I was cleaning the bathroom, per our chores that week. He came in and decided to take a shower and carry on a conversation with me for the duration, stepping out from the shower and trying to initiate the response of my eye contact. When I kept at my job and gave no glance, he became violent in his reaction. Shortly after I was stopped on my way home from work and arrested on a felony cocaine charge. The place I was staying was a sober living unit. I was very pleased with my sobriety in the face of demons, only to be wrapped up by the corruption one more time. This time losing everything I had, materially, that meant a great deal to me. I went before the judge, and prosecution filed for continuance after continuance. Finally, I had my say- declaring I had no substance abuse problems there, and if I had a simple substance abuse issue, I would have never left Grand Rapids, where I had places to live (for free) and plenty of drugs and alcohol to be had! The judge said “Mr. Polk, I just can’t believe you are in such denial over your issues”. He gave me a “364” day sentence, short a day from a year so they could stick me with probation, that they would inevitably fail me at to wrap me up for more taxpayer money on another charge, strictly business. BUT actually ROBBERY. I was released the day before Valentines day, went immediately to the “Safe Zone” for homeless people to sleep, and set up my sleeping record on their files. The next morning an old man, whom  was a known “silent perp” preyed on homeless people for sexual favors. This man is the most wealthy person in Key West. I took a job offer at seven bucks and hour, and was grateful. I ended up on Ballast Key, I think that’s the right spelling. I was helping fix up a home. Little did I realize I was with demons and pirates on an island ten miles west of Key West and only one way back, on the boat of the home owner. On the fourth night there, I was attacked and beaten up because I claimed to not have any cigarettes. They left me to sleep on the beach in my hammock, where I had been sleeping being that I was afraid to sleep with them. They said to go about my business and leave them alone, that they were “going to make a power play”. The next morning I have learned that they drank all the booze, threw the man’s rifle in the surf and trashed the home they were fixing up. Slinging cooking oil all over the newly finished drywall, etc...etc...

      The ride back to K.W. was a long, uncomfortable, silent journey. I will never forget that experience of being on the island and what went down. I saw an amazing thing in the evening sky, being awakened at about 2 am, just in time to see it. I slept in the hammock on the south beach every night, staring up at the stars for fear I’d miss something. And I would have, if I was drinking and hanging with them.

      It was right after this episode that I called Bob. I finally realized I would never make the money needed to escape, and if I stayed and tried to, I would get re-arrested, which I did, for “trespassing”, I tried fighting it but they said I was crazy, unfit for trial, and so I was railroaded into another stay. Finally escaping.

      Now the chronological aspects of it are off a bit, I can’t  help it, but it’s the essence that’s important. Now after getting back to Michigan, finding the refuge, work being provided to me because of the knowledge of my skills, and taking another stab at re=establishing myself as a professional...I was again arrested, mostly because the State Police cruiser that day was the new Charger and I had to get a better look at it. Bob sped up and the cop started following us, pulling us over because of tinted windows. You’d think I had a better story to tell from here on out, it actually does get better.  The cop pulled my I.D. , I lit up a cigarette because I knew what was going to happen next, only not why. He said I was a felon with a warrant fresh from Friend Of The Court for child support, and he took me to jail. Bob got me out on work release and every dime I earned I saved. The first thing I bought myself was a pair of good sneakers, Swagger scent deodorant, and “The Blues Collection” boxer shorts from Fruit of the Loom. While at Bobs house working on his property, his wife showed me her new computer. In short, I had to have one too. She placed an order for it and when I got it, I went right to work trying to figure out how to publish the music, as Dan had requested of me prior to his death. 

      My heart never let me forget of the void in my soul. I got the big idea to join a dating site, frustrated with the women who are routinely attracted to me in the regular places I found them at. I spent eighty-some dollars and joined eHarmony. within 2 months Jenny and I found each other. By next Christmas I would find her and I together in a very intimate relationship. I had finally found her, and she, myself. I can’t begin to say how happy we are, despite the regular problems we are all facing in living in a society based on money, and having nearly none. I finally won my disability claim about the same time as her and I got together. She has a connection with everything I am living for, supporting me beyond my own comprehension.

      Two years later, her and I are still very much together, the music is published. I am continuing my efforts with “Theknewbluessociety”, where I publish all of my photography. Myspace is the site I use to catalog my writing, publishing it from there on the internet. Reverbnation.com/thebandanabrothers

  is the main place of Prospect Studio’s affiliations and developing relations, especially staying in tune with where the next possible opportunities may manifest themselves from. I continue to write, and lately illustrate, working mainly toward the completion of publishing a children’s story that I have an enormous bet on.

      This brings us to the present, hopefully this completes an image of a real nature in the minds of those interested in knowing Zachery S. Polk.

 written by Zachery Scott Polk July 27, 2010

That was the old present. The new present is October 23, 2016.

Jenny began investing her time, and education gained from ProspectStudios, into a bum named Sergio Giles. Sergio is one of the huge mass of bums that call themselves "Producers".  Jenny made me quit promoting my music efforts because she got "burnt out" being used by Sergio Gile- of Selig Worldwide, DaeoneRecords, and Music Lunge.

She took a job offer in Petoskey at McLaren Hospital. Everything went down hill from there, mostly due to the casino next door, as well a the disgruntle attitudes of her co-workers... single co-workers.

When she stopped supporting my efforts everything slowly went to hell. So much that our whole familial investment has been totally destroyed due to children who lacked discipline and responsibilities AND who were given control of everything. 

The internet was now a demand. Homework wouldn't be done, and riding the bus was such an inconvenience,,.. Oh god. Jenny just kept pulling her from school to school with every bitch that Siena had, there was a school change. Now she goes to Concorde School in Boyne City, where they openly discuss sexuality and support the Transgender topic- all of these topics which have no place in settings with minors. SO, consequently Siena wants a sex change now- only because her mother hasn't parented her to the point where she has spent any quality time with the child. She is totally on her own in life. The television and internet have raised her. The only saving grace that I can be thankful for, so long as it doesn't all get undone, is the fact that I spent an entire 8years with the child- moment for moment, second for second, I have more one on one time with this child than all of her relatives combined.

The thing that I did wrong that was the final blow was when I told Jenny that Siena had been coming up to me, giving me hugs and telling me that she loved me. It was this conversation that was the catalyst. On April 8th, 2016, I finally admitted my defeat and agreed to leave as Jenny had been trying to convince me to do. All I want to do now is drop dead mid-step. And sobriety, there's no point anymore.  This story was supposed to have a happy ending but I don't see it coming. My hope was to succeed in my publishing efforts, and find a woman who would value me but that isn't happening even though I keep getting emails saying that there are all of these women who live right near me that want to go out. And all of the people in foreign countries who have sent me several million dollars to go pick up at a shipping company somewhere. And... yeah. Well, you get the picture. It's all one color, and that color is BLACK.  -Life Kept in Economic Slavery and being held an emotion hostage Sucks. But that's exactly what they make alcohol for- good cheap alcohol. 

Human Need

....I ran into a guy with a bum arm who asked me if I'd help him do small engine repair, making up for the shot gun blast that removed a chunk of bone that connected his elbow and shoulder. What a shit-hole of a beyond dilapidated trailer, where he lived with a wife and two kids next door to his own moms immaculate home. The place stank like urine and would be condemned if anyone ever set foot in there from the health department. His wife was decent looking and made it obvious that she was desperate to be rescued. I was trying to get home to Grand Rapids. She had a friend who was visiting from Flint that would offer me a ride, at least that far. She was an enormous woman, a single mother without an income other than state assistance......
I would soon learn that her friends had sent her away for a few days in order for them to pool together to delouse her house. My benefactor was shocked and overwhelmed with joy when she realized what they had done for her. Now all they had to do was sterilize her and her vehicle. We made a trip to Bay City, where I planned on dropping myself off with my relatives but we ended up going to pick up her room-mate and her own daughter whom was about 13. We made the decision to go back to Flint to go on a fishing trip as a group. This is when I learned that the daughter was crushing on me, as she came out of the house in high heels, giddy with the euphoria of flowing hormones and drunk on my pheromones. She tripped and fell in her unfamiliar cloak of womanhood. It was at this point when I put it all together. As I think back on her tripping over her borrowed heels, I still feel embarrassed for her and wonder where she is in life today. I can only hope she has found good things and someone to properly care and share with her. I don't think we caught any fish that evening but we had a few bites and just enjoyed the moments- people being together and thankful to have survived the day and all it's agonizing demands. My fright between the girl trying to gain my affections, and the mother hoping I'd stay has left little more than a blur from the time I left Gladwin, Michigan until the time I had her drop me back off there. It was my escape attempt- "There's people there I can work for," I think I told her. My sorrow for their circumstances and for the realities of many like them in the world made me wish I could be in everyone's life in need but the only way I can have a hope to do that is maybe in music- a song they can all share, an uplifting message, my bottled-up love for the worlds heartbroken to use to quench a thirst for an unavoidable human need.