1. |
Disguised as Abandoned
01:08
|
|||
The new restaurant in the old building
still wears its shoe polish sign:
"Grand Opening March 22nd."
Only now it's April 11th
so on slow days and nights
it looks as though we still have to wait a year.
Her daddy works at Hubcap Heaven
where all of the halos are chrome.
She sits in front of an English muffin
pretending it's enough and,
for no other reason than she simply saw
a familiar shape in her waiter's watch,
remembers a framed poem on her
mother's living room wall that had
what looked to be swastikas in every corner.
It's damn hard to shoot a camouflaged bird
with cloud white wings and blue eyes.
A firm believer in credit card fraud,
she tears up her receipt when she's ready to leave.
Plowing through life at 78 keystrokes a minute
and only lying about her age on resumes,
she's been sex-less for months
but the ghosts are her two favorite childhood dogs
(Sadie and Dynamite)
stand guard while she sleeps
and that's better than sex.
I'm in the corner of a restaurant
down the street from all this happening,
like a swastika in the corner of a poem
in the corner of a memory.
|
||||
2. |
||||
The moon was big and red
the night they scattered your ashes
on a lake from an airboat near
where you used to live.
I got drunk on Irish whiskey and talked
to a stranger about prostate cancer.
The folk singer played you a song for me.
I'm re-reading the beginning and still can't believe it.
That we've gone from passing notes and failing classes
to bleeding ink eulogies and never being able to say
"You went bald before me."
Maybe the ashes floated north to my backyard
and helped me smoke half a pack of cigarettes.
Or maybe they choked a fish to death.
From our fragile years our bones have grown
into weapons to fend for ourselves.
The silent majority lobbying for later curfews,
being able to bring dogs to school
and exercising our right to be wrong.
If you were still alive, I'd have you help me
design a logo or flag for the Sacred Saint of Nothing,
to wear proud like a veteran of future wars
or pennies stuck to our faces from sleeping on floors.
The fence was longer than the gate,
which had a lock on it anyway.
These bruised knuckles are for you.
The hole in the door is too.
|
||||
3. |
Across a Wire
00:35
|
|||
Most of this is daydreaming
smooth sailing.
Rusty anchor, gone to the bottom
of a sea we’re strangers on.
Summer slipped
a few months back,
made a small hole larger
in the net
so this winter we’ll be less likely
to catch a cold or a break.
Carving through a painting of Florida
how the first Spanish explorers must’ve seen it,
with a chisel and a hammer
and a whole lot of
Hank Williams Sr.
Nobody I know has a telegraph
or I’d wire them a,
“Wish you were here.
Look over there.”
|
||||
4. |
Races and Aces
02:06
|
|||
There’s a herd of upside down horses
stampeding around Heaven’s silver landmines,
determined to tour every detour in Texas,
no matter how illegible.
Snowflakes shaped like Chinese throwing stars
declare war on green grass and not-slick roads.
I’m writing from horseback,
feet chained to stirrups
head filling up with blood,
that there’s nothing refined about oil refineries
and only the motivated factory workers
get to smell like grease.
It’s impossible to tell which clouds are clouds
and5 which clouds are smoke
or what He’s trying to tell us
by molding them into pyramids and asterisks.
Up ahead there’s a house on risers
with a chimney digging into the horizon,
but it’s easily negotiated
in a wrought iron race to warn others
of the impending blasts of sunshine
that are sure to shatter all this.
Under a bridge I learned “Leona’s a slut,”
“Mark was here,” and “Jesus saves.”
The bums already know this
and still spend much of the night
talking about what they were like
before they were homeless.
The muddy back road bayous
massage the angry backbone of lands sore
from supporting the undeserving
and pickup trucks abandoned
with grand pianos in the beds.
Streamers and battery-operated strands of Christmas lights
randomly splashed down from low-flying aircraft
couldn’t put a dent in the ugly,
spare-tire-speckled opera here,
where the circle takes a square,
and the photo-finish winner
takes a flashbulb-blinded bow.
Sweat bleeds through both pad and saddle.
It’s time to make decisions:
where to lay the body down,
who to try to get to sing at the funeral.
Nothing shines back from his black mirror eyes
and the brow curls up
in crescent moon hopelessness.
It’s true, most true love is chock-full of lies,
but I can promise
there are only two bullets in this gun
and one is just to see what it sounds like.
I leave him surrounded by runway lights and road flares
so he’s easier for the angels to find,
and fire a single shot into the air
just to see what it sounds like.
|
||||
5. |
All America's Teenagers
00:47
|
|||
14 hours of angry driving
and tailgating
in a hurry to outrun the rain
and a state I’ll fly to next time
with nothing on his mind
and a gift of fish on ice.
Shreds of tires blown free from the wheels of long-haulers
look like discarded alligator tails;
black, sad, and wet on roadsides near Biloxi.
The hazy eyes of brake lights keep progress moderate,
like today’s Homeland Security terrorist threat.
It’s fascinating to me
that all America’s teenagers
learned to dance the same dances
in time for the arrival of rock ‘n’ roll.
A thought,
alongside memories of ex-lovers and sunburns,
that keeps the whiskey-soaked soul
of this truck rolling through sprays of ghost rain
toward nothing.
|
||||
6. |
Fewer Words
00:47
|
|||
All too appropriate,
like a murder at Murder Creek,
her tiara is the color of her dress
when a tear hits it
and the made-for-TV movie
on in the other room
is in the middle of a scene
where “It’s My Party (and I’ll Cry if I Want to)”
plays around actors I recognize
from ‘80s sitcoms.
And no one knows what to say
so they talk about the cake.
It’s half-vanilla / half-chocolate
but I couldn’t give a shit.
I’m on the back porch
watching the tiny fireworks display
of an effective bug light.
I figure no words are better than
words about nothing.
If no one offers you a balloon to throw a knife at,
you can’t not miss and win a big, inflatable crayon
you’d rather not carry around the fair all night.
Something like that.
Sorry about that.
|
||||
7. |
Cactus Men
00:21
|
|||
her desert heart,
where cactus men stake claims
and belly up to bars
for dry martinis or Mexican beer,
is a place I’ve only seen on TV,
decorated with scorpions
and cow skulls,
old, unused railroads,
freezing nights and scorching days.
|
||||
8. |
Name Like a Planet
01:16
|
|||
She had a name like a planet
knee-deep in January snow,
on the side of a mountain overlooking
mountains that were not as tall.
The shoestring in her left boot
was two shoestrings tied together.
Every now and then she’d look around like she
could hear something I couldn’t.
Drinking what used to be hot tea
from her dad’s Army canteen,
her eyes would close
as if to burn memories of this day
onto the backs of her eyelids
to enjoy whenever she wanted.
I let her grab my wrists and throw me against
a bank of leaf-less branches
almost completely hidden by snow.
The sunset lasted half a conversation
about how pollution is responsible for
the colors in the sky.
Tomorrow this will be part of our pasts
and it will feel good to burn
under that magnifying glass
which inspects each detail of every movement
and crack of callused lips
on canteens in the mountains.
She was famous just for me,
hibernating in a broken heart
but not afraid to wake up.
The ride home will seem shorter
than the ride here,
with her hand waving in the auto-breeze
like a leaf-less tree
and my head on the headrest
burning this moment onto the backs of my eyelids
to revisit whenever I want
on lesser days.
|
||||
9. |
||||
Lounging in front of hotel AC,
the coldest of all cooling units.
If this pen dies, I’ll be totally alone,
save for the “Songwriters Spotlight” on TV
and a mosquito.
On the outskirts of Little Rock
and Memphis-bound,
solo in a room with two double-beds.
I’ve somehow managed to drop out
of the lives of nearly
everyone I know,
with the exception of the TV
and the mosquito.
It’s a smoking room.
Almost wish I had a pack
of cigarettes to burn through
in this lonesome, glorified rest stop.
I wonder what the Alamo ghosts
think of the gift shop.
|
||||
10. |
One More Round
00:59
|
|||
Heaven smells like cigarettes and whiskey tonight,
like a damp trench coat.
If he wasn’t on the list,
he gave Peter the finger
and turned right around;
the lazy side of his mouth
sneered up in a smile.
The luckiest, he followed her home.
An original outlaw with the soul of a saint.
Peter better know better and chase after and apologize
and shake his hand
and feel the strength of years in it.
The angels could then welcome him on horseback
and return the Highwayman to his promised land
where he could shoot down shooting stars
and hold her close again;
weight and white hair gone,
black boots checked at the door.
Heaven smells like leather tonight
as he pushes past the clouds and golden gates
through the rolling hills and open air
to the porch where he can sit now
next to her with a guitar
and play without blistering a finger
and sing with the thunder.
|
||||
11. |
||||
The lonely planks on a porch long forgotten,
on a road most white people avoid like the black plague,
bend up at the ends, slowly pulling their nails out.
And one day, if we're lucky
we'll see them running down the street together
in an awkward top-heavy hobble.
Tonight I'm going to paint the sky plaid
so that it looks like a shirt I use to have,
and I'm going to wear the hell out of it,
even after I tear the sleeve on a star.
I'm going to put a Van Halen patch over that tear
and think about this shirt the whole way home
to keep from having to count streetlights
or people hunched over in vacant lots,
pushing shopping carts,
with lice breeding on the clothes inside.
If I ever come across a dead rhinoceros
I will not cut the horn from its face
even if that’s all I need to finish a life-size model
of a rhinoceros I’ve been working on.
|
||||
12. |
Roadtrip Soundtrack
00:30
|
|||
I just tore a piece of the sky back
and found static:
a community of origins
and original sins;
angry, misinterpreted
waves of fly eggs
in spider webs.
You kept me up late with your roadtrip soundtrack
and I forgot to call my dad.
Return to me lifted,
prepared to stand upright
against the wind,
with tribal drum dances
echoing hope in strangers’ hands;
when I can strike the stars down with lit filament ease
and stand upright alongside you
against the wind.
|
||||
13. |
Behalf of My Generation
00:37
|
|||
Two girls have walked a block
and left silhouettes on the DON’T WALK sign.
Low-ride drivers zipped by
close enough to tear hair
from their arms.
Drop change in the meter, please, and hurry back.
All these dynamite sticks waving
and giving each other hugs
make me cringe.
I don’t want to blow up
by the broken plants
on the waist-high wall
with glasses on
and knees drawn to my chest.
If suddenly Elvis were to appear across the street
on the courthouse roof
playing a ukulele
trying not to cry,
I would nod to The King and shed a tear.
On behalf of my generation
I would like to apologize.
|
||||
14. |
Finally Smelling Fall
01:12
|
|||
It’s getting cooler and I’m hallucinating,
not the change in weather
but the shadows that suggest
there’s someone behind me.
The slightest movement has set her dog off.
Now I have no idea what she’s thinking:
a burglar masked in black face paint
come to bark open the dog
and creak open the gate?
Waking up a second-story exhibitionist
who’s standing in the window offended.
Again I see shadows
and tell myself,
“It’s just the trees.”
That kind of silence that envelopes everything,
even air itself,
is sweeping over me.
I can’t speak
‘cause I don’t want to scare myself.
I can’t move
‘cause I don’t want to do something wrong.
In this sort of quiet
even ghosts hold their breath.
I hear the metallic drip of my car going to sleep —
unless that’s actually the sound
of a bored ghost
tapping on still parts under the hood
biding his time until —
“It’s just the trees.”
That goddamned dog is probably still barking
unaware that outside
darkness has devoured everything.
And the burglar she thought she heard is walking,
holding his breath,
while I clutch a winter pain in my chest;
an indicator species
at the end of a summer rope
fixing myself a slipknot scarf.
|
||||
15. |
Got a Window Seat
00:38
|
|||
Maniacal chirping birds in my ear
I wish you were here
to hear.
Some sort of insect’s nest or insect’s eggs
on the window
reminds me of my fingerprints
showing through the glass
at the diner last night
when I drank and paid attention.
Spread too thin
to break on the backs of tall trees
that (from a distance)
look almost billowy
and pillow-y.
Multi-layers-of-clothing weather.
The wind nails my eyelids shut
and sews that guy’s cigarette to his lips.
(glad I quit)
Never a dull moment
in a world with so many sharp edges.
|
||||
16. |
My Friend
00:24
|
|||
suffers from bachelor madness
can’t jump-start long enough
makes sure the dog’s in before going out
blows around aimlessly with a kick behind him
considers explosions isolating every cigarette splashing ashes on the
highway
sits on the roof with gravel in his shoes
contrasts superhero spark
and phone booth fool.
|
||||
17. |
Certainty
00:36
|
|||
The mildew on the porch pockets
created the illusion
of corner carpets
and though the strange lime color
attracted sweeter insects,
it was poison
as many women are poisonous.
An idea appeared like a light bulb
above my friend’s head.
I soon noticed, however,
that a light bulb shape is not entirely unlike
that of a question mark,
so I doubted his bright idea
as I know he doubts himself.
The shingles that topped the apartments off
made me think of London at night;
not only the shingles, but the headlights in the distance
wrestling with the fog.
But I’ve never been to London
so I don’t know where I get off.
|
||||
18. |
Pay Phone
00:41
|
|||
I wanted her to ask for change
she never did.
Too busy hanging her head over the railing
observing maybe
or thinking about jumping.
The coin return abused its power
and outside, between seats in her car,
I’m sure she had it —
change, I mean
not power —
and it multiplied at drive-thru windows.
For all the stars, no one could imagine
who she wanted to call so bad.
Such a lucky person
at what could’ve been
the end of a lucky line.
And what if she needed a ride?
It couldn’t be me.
I was too busy
hanging my head and thinking
about writing
about jumping.
|
||||
19. |
Winter
00:29
|
|||
I’m alive
with the chill
of the season
Brisk is my body,
bold is my brain
I’m finally awake
I have my overcoat
Your top teeth crush your bottom lip
and I’m moved.
The frost eye patches on the squirrel corpse
and the emptiness in the trees
tell me
I’ve paced anxiously all year,
rolling beans into bestsellers,
but now it’s here
arrived beaten to burgundy
to kiss the ground
kill the engine
silence the melody.
|
||||
20. |
Delivery Dogs
00:24
|
|||
I held tight to chaos
until he buckled at the knees
and spat foam,
cut my middle finger on a bottle cap
and waited for something else to happen,
met your smile with a sneaky shift of my eyes
and a defeatist’s shrug.
I saw too early in life
dogs deliver brothers into madness.
I’ve never had an affiliation
with reconciliation.
|
||||
21. |
||||
It roared to life
the engine sank
and the jungle threw its vines
like snake hands
into my eyes,
pulled me behind a garbage can
and drove staples into my fingernails
so I could scream more violently
down chalkboards.
[quick pace between buildings
the cold chases the balls back]
It roared to life
and the lady said to herself
and to other ladies later,
“That man in that car writing must (‘ve) be (en) crazy.”
She’ll slip on something soon enough,
something to get her hair wet
and make her think straight.
|
||||
22. |
The Day I Gave Up Hope
00:20
|
|||
Love lost in the embrace
of two snakes
on a walkway
smoldering like coals under a boil
living life outside the lines.
She’s sucked in her gut
locked her elbows
and left fingerprints.
His foot was up
and you could’ve shown a movie
on their smiles.
It was silver screen.
|
||||
23. |
Moving
00:47
|
|||
I feel the urge to downsize
throw everything I don’t need away
everything I’ll never read away
or take it down to the Salvation Army
and let them feel it up and sell it
or gun it down and bury it.
A smaller home means fewer things.
A well-lit room blinds the boogeyman better
and keeps him under the bed where he belongs.
So long as he’s keeping the moths out of my clothes
and the dust off my Bible
he’s keeping himself busy
which keeps him happy
which keeps me happy.
Good neighbors throw smiles down their driveways.
I’ve never been so surrounded.
Might be nice in that new-to-me kind of way.
One thing though,
gotta keep all the locks on
make sure the security bulbs work
let a couple snakes make homes in your roses.
|
||||
24. |
Pets
00:20
|
|||
A stray dog’s barking up a rabid storm
in the hedges below my bedroom window,
free of leash
and longing for a handshake.
I never got to see the morning pig
stocky and fog-trotting
down the dirt road
but the stray dog keeps me company.
Living in fear is always more fun than living without living.
|
||||
25. |
Blow My Mind
02:20
|
|||
Once more am I scattered.
This newfound and omniscient cleanliness,
while nice, provides no pleasant feeling
and an inexplicable desire to organize.
The spirit and soul of a thousand roads
is adrift in the naked night air
and the only damage is half a clamshell
for the labor that set the raft streaking
across tissue-thin layers of evolution
simmering on a gut-full of idle ambition.
Heel-to-toe the worries parade around the floor
leaving me no room to pace.
A rainy day sure can make
clock hands hurry their revolutions
and rain can sure bring out the features of characters
in beat-up brown leather
who leave their umbrellas at home.
Discovering and rediscovering passion and heart attacks
with four holes in my foot for the rain to soak through
lying on train tracks with a penny on my forehead
hoping that I may be your lucky day.
The attic is empty and anything important
has been reduced to memory.
Stars no longer strike me as “awesome.”
People no longer strike me as “odd.”
I’m seal-slick and obvious, completely content,
an arm’s length away from communications,
face up in anger,
searching for some kind of hip new age miracle.
The webs are spun. The fire’s out.
(if only crutches could make me move faster)
Here we spend days too aware,
balled up in a fetal position.
Nights we spend losing owl-eyed staring contests to mirrors.
Tongue-tied and weary of hearing myself think
haggard and old, thick with verbiage.
Into the bridge with gum on my shoe
four holes in the chair I’m nearly asleep in —
nearly asleep by —
bullet in the shin.
The outline of the branches makes a jagged
heart-shape against the moonlight
and every last spring in my mattress is out.
Picture frames stand tall in the forefront — empty —
the tip of this pencil is broken
and sharper than it’s ever been.
The chimney on our glass house is missing a brick
I can’t stand it so I sit
perfectly still in the center of whatever
fully aware that 60 seconds will always be
exactly 60 seconds long
feeding on air with my elastic lungs.
I’m talking myself into a corner with a stutter.
Can’t write fast enough to remember the phone number.
And when I finally do merge in —
finally rid myself of these
origami appendage acquaintances —
I’ll be automatic
with a new ability to realize
so blow my mind when I close my eyes.
|
||||
26. |
Card
00:22
|
|||
“Every day I love you a little more,”
it said
and I felt good with no one around
to notice or ask me why.
It was in a bag
next to a box of chocolate
that I still haven’t eaten.
I’d spell “Forever” on her back
in kisses if I could,
but I’ll settle for drawing a heart
on her stomach
with my finger.
|
||||
27. |
A New Kind of Dangerous
01:14
|
|||
Thought I’d quit
the drinks, the streets,
the lying to myself
but I’m still lying to myself.
And I thought you’d only be tossed into my life once
but now Fate’s intervened and played a solid hand.
Caterpillars crawl out of the walls
and dangle down on spider webs.
Remnants of fragments of memory
are swept away and crushed into
a block of familiarity.
It’s easy to keep a drunk’s attention:
simply spur him in the side with your elbow
and offer another of whatever he’s close to done with
and continue talking.
He’ll hang on your every word like he’ll hang on every shoulder on
his way out.
I really shouldn’t go down that path and be like that,
but I know as soon as this shift is over
and my hands are hot
I’ll drive to that block and level myself.
You’ve got my attention,
now what are you going to do with it?
Every week I promise myself I’m turning over a new leaf
only to find that there are dozens of the same leaves
underneath and they’ve been chewed on by caterpillars
and it smells like fire.
Swim with the clown in the drunk tank.
Drown him when you need a bloated body to float on.
I should’ve had an affair
with my high school English teacher
just to have it.
|
||||
28. |
Fishing
00:35
|
|||
Went a week without a kiss
had to chew on my own lips
on a rickety dock
with reptiles
and brown water beneath
hooks in monsters’ teeth.
Fishing
for thousands of minutes
and pterodactyl wings
in straw hats
and hand-made archer gardens.
I’ll never see another naked back —
never know another naked back —
facing me
on a bed
with reptiles and brown water beneath
in twilight whispers
and day-break shivers.
I’ll never know
but I’m still fishing for.... ... .. .
I don’t even know what anymore.
|
||||
29. |
Domestic
00:24
|
|||
For some holes punched in posters
pinkies sprained
after collapsing,
she’s asleep on the floor
with a bed above her
creatures tugging at her hair.
I dog paddle over
try to be her buoy
try to set things straight
but the wrinkles and kinks
of time passed
are drawn too tight
to dot my Is and cross my Ts
and sign my name in cigarette smoke
on her dresser drawer.
|
||||
30. |
No Questions Asked
00:30
|
|||
3 hours ahead of me
nearly 15 behind me
and a red comet carpet of stars
to watch over me.
Driving through a Carpal Tunnel
down a blind man’s highway
gripping a Braille wheel.
I don’t ask questions
nobody offers answers
so spur the bank until blood money
pours out of the safe.
I was one of the chosen few
but was laid off.
I was one of the broken spokes
but I snapped off.
An elephant never forgets.
Eventually they’ll all come back for their tusks.
|
||||
31. |
Evaporate Soon
00:35
|
|||
Midnight wraps around my neck
and chokes me to sleep.
Always inspired by the damndest things ...
Bare-chested
vampire bites on my legs.
A spiral of regrets
and unprotected sex.
Paranoia ghosts down from the ceiling
and startles me.
Brittle bones left behind from the rotting
carcasses of slow-motion thought processes
are now bleached by the sun
and picked clean by vultures.
Evaporate soon
and take me with you
up from the crowd
into the city sky
dodging pollution
neon lights
bullets of rain.
|
||||
32. |
Focus Group Facility
00:51
|
|||
She didn’t just put the cigarette out,
she made love to the ashtray.
The jukebox wasn’t just broken,
it was forcing me to think.
With the exception of the girl on roller skates
everybody in the place was a skin and straps
identity crisis.
Somehow she had class.
A bar is a watering trough for drunks and pigs.
We give it new meaning by gracing it with our presence
and making it ours, but it’s still the same old trough.
I wonder how many people here
have sober friends elsewhere
thinking about them.
I wonder if the huge mirror behind me
has aliens or doctors behind it.
I wonder why I never bring a designated driver
like I promised myself I would
when I was in fourth grade learning about drugs
and alcohol.
Different night. Same place.
Same people. Different names.
The worst thing about being a writer
is getting an idea and losing it
before you can find paper.
|
||||
33. |
Molotov Cocktail
00:21
|
|||
On the night after my funeral
I want someone to hurl a Molotov cocktail
into a fireworks warehouse.
Remember me in smoke, sounds, and sparks
for the gods and monsters
that have been shot down by helicopters.
And I want someone to let Superman out of his pen
remind him of larger waters
and watch him crawl to swim.
|
||||
34. |
Animal
00:25
|
|||
Dogs know when you’re leaving.
They know when you send
an imposter in to feed them.
Whether in the air or hair or tail,
they know.
Right after you read this sentence,
I want you to picture a friend
and think about what he or she might be doing
right this instant.
[go]
The world spins so fast
it’s impossible to underline every day.
|
||||
35. |
The Future
01:08
|
|||
A sore on the arm and an evolved growth on the finger
to hold this pen steady.
It nearly functions automatically:
eats, sleeps, and breathes for fuel
and burns its way downstairs.
I imagine The Future
and it is without sun,
without streetlights or smiles
and action figures are obsolete.
The ocean is salt-less, deserts are sponges,
snow spills out of the sky like blood.
It’s as bleak as an old writer’s attic
as hard to avoid as a bad habit.
(notice no one ever says “good habit.”
notice a lot of old writers have beards.
weird.)
The arm rests buckle and cities separate.
The banks crack open their safes
until money doesn’t matter
and it’s back to the barter.
More people are fishing again
fewer people are living.
More people would be reading
if there were any books left.
Science has all but killed itself
doctors have rattled the rhyme and reason
out of every bone.
The wealthy peer out at a blank horizon
and thank Christ for their parents.
The middle class is held back a year
and the lower class is gone altogether.
Kids aren’t so fat
in my sleep-deprived late-night sketch of The Future.
|
||||
36. |
And James Dean
00:38
|
|||
Sunday people.
Sun in the eyes is
the needle in the arm.
Running on two-and-a-half hours of sleep,
sputtering out in my seat.
She makes great faces
and has a weakness
for Ye Olde English
epic period pieces.
Surprisingly,
I have no problem making it home without dying,
unless you count the death of energy
and Alzheimer’s exhaustion.
Then I’m dead.
Fucking real dead.
But it was worth it.
Fucking real worth it
to lie awake on a marshmallow comforter
next to her with her glasses off,
a big star dangling above me,
butterflies in the corner
and James Dean.
|
||||
37. |
This Year's Christmas
01:02
|
|||
Fake snowflakes.
Me at a new job by myself on a Monday.
Nothing to do.
No crimes to commit.
No patrons to patronize
or chase around.
A friend in the Army.
A friend in the church.
A few friends with babies.
A few with wedding rings.
The only real difference between
stores at the mall and homeless people
is that the stores have more money and
the streets are cleaner.
They beg the same.
They drink the same rain.
Life is still
except for what the AC spins.
But there is eye candy,
a girl who works at the Santa photo place.
Santa’s Little Helper.
She entertains kids all day,
drives a remote-control-something around.
Slim, with long, curly, black hair
and probably not quite Forever 21.
And that’s okay.
She’s simply a way to make each day
easier on the eyes.
You have cigarettes,
I have roaming retinas
that suck in and soak up
my environments.
John Lennon’s singing “so, this is Christmas.”
He died 22 years ago yesterday.
Well played, John.
|
||||
38. |
shortenthetitle
00:36
|
|||
a heart vacant as the bare white walls
decorated with only a van gogh replica.
she put on poses by rufus wainwright
and we sat in the dim light
i knew it was wrong
but i drank anyway
and she got high.
the floating flower candles in the bowl
started sparking.
unusual for candles.
they were eating themselves to the bottom.
i guess it felt better than drowning.
and rufus crooned to the white walls
and weed.
without eating or sleeping or fucking,
i said “goodnight”
and she walked me to my truck.
our bodies are small cemeteries
forever burying memories.
|
||||
39. |
This Means War
02:00
|
|||
Pinstriped bathroom walls.
He doesn’t want to go back out there.
His red, troubled face doesn’t have to move
its mouth to ask the mirror,
“Who are the brains behind this operation?”
The overwhelming scent of urinal cakes,
like bubblegum, surrounds him in his gamble.
Olivia Newton-John sings through the ceiling.
He’s been in here a long time,
hopelessly devoted to finding
an alternate exit.
“I could say it was something I ate,”
he reasons, between rummaging his mind for assistance.
He really doesn’t want to go back out there.
“I can pretend nothing happened.
I didn’t see or hear a thing.
Everything is exactly as it should be.
As it was yesterday.”
The door swings open and he frantically
turns on the faucet and starts
washing his hands,
watching the man move behind him
with the mirror he was previously
staring at himself in.
The man goes to a stall.
Paranoid turns the water off.
“Great. Well. Here goes nothin.’”
Upon leaving, he notices
the floor is the same:
fax machines dialing,
pinstriped suits walking,
some on phones,
some of their eyes glance over
and find his eyes and keep talking.
Cameras are watching.
He cautiously but impatiently
returns to his office
and closes the door with
a sigh that flicks
beads of sweat from his upper lip.
He’s eleven floors from the ground
but that doesn’t keep him from wondering
if he should climb out.
The huge tinted window forces him
to stare at himself again.
The clock ticks. And. Ticks. And. Ticks. And. Ticks. And. Ticks.
And. Ticks.
The door swings open.
He spins to see a grinning colleague
who’s already talking
but it’s all like Charlie Brown’s teacher —
“Mah mah. Mah mah mah mah” —
until he asks, “Hey, man, are you okay? What’s wrong?”
(You can bet your ass he heard that)
“Nothing’s wrong.
Everything’s exactly as it should be.
As it was yesterday.”
|
||||
40. |
Soldier in Position
01:58
|
|||
Cold as a fox in the snow
albino month pans out gray and quiet
with a bullwhip on both ends.
Our washer and dryer battle it out
to see which one is loudest.
Our makeshift fireplace
will surely be used
and be blind soon.
I positioned myself like an author
at a glass tabletop altar
with a beer I wished was colder
in a chair we bought from our neighbor,
ready to write a story long and hard and soft,
documenting nothing
but my own meandering thoughts.
But now I’d rather just sit here
with this beer
in our neighbor’s old chair
and enjoy the stillness of the pool water
and the always-ringing of crickets.
The AC has clicked on now
and puts the washer and dryer to shame.
Japan has never seemed farther away.
All I’d need tonight are some fireflies
and those flowers we drank from at grandma’s house
and you’d be here with me
or we’d be in a tent in the backyard
with snot frozen to our noses and lips
and my brother trying to scare us.
The woman fears nostalgia.
I feed off it.
In a present boring and too certain
staring down the barrel at a future
sought after yet uncertain,
all that we have is the past.
Ours sewn up with tires
rolling over heads and accidental backflips,
swift kicks to the groin
and rude dogs stealing our empty cups.
None of that happens anymore.
Children get to live in movies.
I should be writing you a letter
but I’m writing you this
from across miles of dark water.
The proud, the few,
the kid who seemed convinced my dad had lassoed Santa.
Never thought this was where I’d end up,
drinking a beer in my neighbor’s ex-chair,
an unknown soldier of something
writing about a soldier I’d give anything
to be sharing this beer and this time with now.
Still walking around the briar patches and the cactus,
enthralled and in love,
older and fatter and wiser.
The haunted dogs,
they’ll tear your face off.
Rocks through Slip ‘n Slides,
they’ll break the skin,
but only if you let them.
The water will wash away the bad blood.
|
||||
41. |
Alone with the Ghosts
01:10
|
|||
Costa Rica’s sun beats down upon a beauty
I won’t see again until December 19th,
the day my roommates pack up
and drive to Kansas for Christmas,
leaving me alone with the ghosts.
I’ll give them the gift of skin
so they don’t feel so out of place,
lips to help me polish off
bottle of whiskey after bottle of whiskey,
hands so they can play poker with, and bet against, me
and turn off the TV if I fall asleep.
Present, Past, Future, and assorted dead,
they can share my bed.
I’ll take the floor.
(What are friends for?)
The story of our lives: Sleepless Nights,
passing through walls chasing termites.
I’m see-through too.
They can tell I’m thinking of you.
Moving through today
without even realizing it’s today,
supposedly working on something and driving a car
oblivious to road as they’re oblivious
to the idea of mortality.
Keeping me company, beating off loneliness
in a house in a town that’s somehow
tricked itself into feeling satisfied.
But not today.
Not December 8th.
Today I’ve convinced it otherwise.
|
||||
42. |
Attaboy
01:42
|
|||
The candles burn not so bright tonight,
casting shadows of shit I don't need
onto walls that keep us separated,
that catch Nick Cave before he can sneak out
and climb trees, drunk on moonshine
with Townes, who I let slip out
a week or so ago with the windows up.
These sounds are for me and me alone
to swim in or float on when my arms get tired
of moving this pen and lifting this Boylan
to my childish lips that spit back into my head
all the shit I never said.
The hiatus is over. The bough’s about to break.
Cat Stevens knows it,
as do the cats who come around,
looking up at me with alien eyes as if to say,
"Okay. Any day now."
And so it goes, as I've known all along,
the rejects we're proud of,
the rejects who would accept us,
they're no kind of heroes.
Towels thrown over the shoulders of someone
coughing up blood on the bathroom floor with the shakes,
they're no kind of capes.
But they're there for us
to wipe the blood from our chins
and hold our hair back and punch us
gently in the arm to say,
“Attaboy.”
And so it goes
and we will go
down in history as sissies,
as frightened men,
capable only of taking a stand together,
armed with safety in numbers,
boomboxes on our shoulders,
bibles of youth in hand,
closed with hard covers,
ready to rumble with the thunder
of Fate's hooves galloping toward us,
down the mountain, gaining momentum,
spurred in the sides by cold riders with high calibers
and bullets of logic and reason,
old age, and mass hysteria.
We will stand our ground,
willing to get blood on our bibles
and drown out the screams
with songs.
|
||||
43. |
Matchbook
00:41
|
|||
I’ll remember the siding of a Winnebago
when asked to recall our first night together.
And the thousand yard stares
of drunks slicing through the smoke
like haphazard lighthouses
manned by ghosts,
the way every car that drove by
wasn’t my ride,
the wristbands assuring lonely bartenders
that I was legal
stacking up side by side
like odds over evens
and the sympathy of rush hour.
I’ll shrug off all attempts
at convincing myself to believe
in fate with an, “I’m just glad I was still
sober enough to notice,”
but in those minutes before sleep
when you order hope with a side
of dreams,
I’ll believe.
|
||||
44. |
Hard Labor
00:34
|
|||
They came with shovels,
pickaxes and dirty faces,
in unwashed linens with
mouths to feed.
They came at the drop of a hat
without a pot to piss in
or windows to look out of at home
lured by the promise
of a full day’s work and half day’s pay
in a country rife with violence.
They gathered ‘round
with little choice
to board an old school bus.
There was no ticking,
no worrying,
during their last seconds on earth.
And their families will receive
no letters of sympathy
from a government that exists
only in their dreams.
|
||||
45. |
||||
A white minivan loves Jesus and America.
It says so on the back.
“Freedom”
“Proud to be an American”
“Real men love Jesus”
and something like,
“The People in the Name of Jesus” (in lousy small print).
He should make a sticker that says, “Proud to Be Jesus”
or “Free Jesus,” with a picture
of a pregnant Mary on it.
If I believe in God, I believe he has a sense of humor.
I think he’d get a kick out of that.
Corner of Ashford and Bay
on an end-of-the-summer day,
gathering my thoughts and feeling good about
the tea drying up that I spilled on my leg
when the lid of my cup came off.
They’re not all out to get you.
Most of them don’t even know who you are.
|
||||
46. |
Heads or Tails of It
00:58
|
|||
Doctors prescribe illness
long enough to stay in business.
Finished out the work week without wisdom teeth.
(take that, motherfuckers!)
Now most, if not all, of the pain is gone.
Today I drank through a straw.
After I shut my bedroom door,
I could’ve sworn I heard a little girl behind me say, “Hello?”
though there was no one else home,
just me and the dogs
and dogs can’t talk.
A mission easy to retreat from.
Black and white life.
More than enough fear to keep you warm.
Rebels sticking to bus seats,
talking hard to women with good intentions
and their zippers down.
Doctors prescribe illness.
(We were framed. We were all framed.)
A cold shock to the system.
Duct tape your shoe picked up when you cut across
the construction site waving goodbye.
Or was it hello?
Like the girl I couldn’t see
in my bedroom said, “Hello?"
|
||||
47. |
||||
Four-odd years from
a high school reunion.
Burning minutes to the filter.
It’s high time we heard
the cattle call and
moved toward their bellows,
surprised ourselves
like a car accident.
“Take a break … see my friends … sleep.”
- the kid in front of me, talking to his mom.
It’s reunion day.
Pressing flesh
and kissing babies.
You don’t have to fire blanks into the air
to understand distance,
eat so fast your stomach bursts
and muddy food really sticks
to your ribs.
The pounds will be with you longer than the taste.
The years will turn into lines all over your face
so that every time you look into a mirror
you remember.
|
||||
48. |
I Used to Be Drunk
01:13
|
|||
“On a day like this with someone like you,”
he began, years ago in a meaningless math class.
I’m right here for now
looking back.
I used to be drunk,
probably only several times a month
but it felt like every day.
Dry bones from dry heaving
and making “I’m gonna kill you” eyes at strangers,
men and women, from behind beer goggles
of intolerance.
Still surprised I never wrapped my truck
around a telephone pole
or smashed into a kid or house.
Surprised I ever barely made it home to the couch
to kick one shoe off with whatever movement I could muster
and pass out with no pillow and no blanket
and never woke up cold.
The headaches and bruises from uncertain origins
were souvenirs
to place gently on our mantles of memories
as they crumbled over a fireplace.
Months passed and we laughed along
with no recollection
and no idea what was happening.
“On a day like this,” he began, years ago.
“sobriety is overwhelming,” I continued
(right here, right now).
“But brief,” he added quietly,
from across the country.
|
||||
49. |
Walletful of Photographs
01:10
|
|||
if you stare at someone long enough
eventually you’ll catch their eye.
throw it back
smack it with a baseball bat
with the force of a racehorse
because you didn’t recognize anyone in the home movies
because two people care about you hard enough
to squeal when you say the right thing
or even the wrong thing.
this rash better be gone when I wake up.
the kids in the living room were bored.
it was written all over their faces
in 100 different languages.
maybe that’s why you didn’t recognize anybody.
their faces were shrouded in Hebrew and Japanese
and poor penmanship.
but no one was paying attention
until you played their favorite song
and opened up the evening like a
bad Brink’s job,
showering cash on those faces
smearing words in 100 different languages.
they waited their turns to perform and amaze us.
your angst was as sincere as a well-rehearsed cover song
and so am I.
circles of friends
sick little support groups.
a few spokes snap
and the whole wheel collapses
and you’re left with cake on your face
and there are eggs in cakes.
bound on/for the floor
playing Russian roulette with a gun
you made with a finger and thumb.
|
||||
50. |
Warehouse
01:17
|
|||
The warehouse was dark
and all their disco suits were pressed
so as not to collect sweat.
For every hair I lost worrying about tomorrow,
a new child was born.
They shouted to hear their voices
bounce off the brick walls
and startle the trapped birds.
With shoulders against the doors
and backpacks thrown over those shoulders
and panic in those backpacks,
they held fast.
Some were too fat for words
some could run around in the shower and not get wet
but they held fast,
kicking at the fallen to remind them to help
taking turns taking smoke breaks.
Their chests were heaving in and out
so they must’ve been breathing in and out,
singing to the wood,
singing from their souls
around panting
and tasting sweat
that tasted like fear,
like motivation,
like everything worth saving.
Sleep on your sorrows, brothers and sisters,
the best is yet to come.
Rest is yet to come when you can calm down
and call your mom
just to ask if she’s had a good day.
The warehouse is dark but I can hear them
and the trapped birds’ wings
beating against their chubby bodies.
It’s an arrangement difficult to dance to
but easy to appreciate,
sort of like these words
which have a bad habit of undermining
every endeavor
but they look okay on paper.
|
||||
51. |
a.m. decorations
01:53
|
|||
My mornings are decorated
with the neck-snaps of prostitutes
and lines of truckers holding convenience store
sausage/egg/& cheese biscuits.
I've grown accustomed to sitting on a quiet couch
alongside another unnecessary heartbreak,
not speaking but knowing damn good and well that if you count to
three and rip it off,
it stings a lot less.
Night, now, is just a darker version of day.
Sometimes I start out in my bed,
drive over to her bed, stare at the ceiling
and count the number of times I hear the cat's tag click
against the wood floor.
He counts down the hours
until he sees my feet and ankles
stumbling around stupid, looking
for socks and shoes.
I am a drunk tree trunk to him.
He is a cat-shaped clock to me.
She is wonderful to us.
Even when she plays a little rough.
The power lines on country roads
have a way of keeping time in southern slopes;
picking up speed when they hit the poles
and swooping back down
and back up
and back down.
We were those power lines one night
when we drove around and burned up fuel
trying to put the fire out.
I suspect you've accepted we're lost causes
wrapped in green mirrored Christmas paper,
showing the ugly world to itself
with more than a hint of our favorite color?
Okay. As long as it's green.
I expect to be gone before the city
finishes the new parking garage.
It's only going to block the breeze
and my view of prostitutes rubber-necking
at nice cars and bums that look like indie rockers.
Nothing's safe and everyone’s convinced themselves
they're not certain if what they're doing is wrong.
It's easier said than done.
I found the smell of her hair
on a piece of my pillow
even though it'd been a while
since she’d been there.
The morning was decorated
with glimpses of my future:
half of the bullets were bottle caps,
the other half was still bullets,
and she was going to France.
|
||||
52. |
Teach Me to Speak Creole
01:42
|
|||
The click of a filmstrip on a "Free Day" in 7th grade
punches me in the face 13 years later on a Wednesday.
A glass hawk with marble eyes
makes sure I'm not up to no good.
And I'm not.
It's okay, hawk.
The night folds in on itself
like wrapping paper on the side of a square box,
but like how mom does it (perfect),
with no fringe from scissors trying to fix a fuck up.
Pewter pieces bent at the joints set the scene:
Clever drunks above a bakery
in front of computers and playing cards
in tiny wooden chairs whittled down from toothpicks
fragile as the feeling you get on a road at 4:48 a.m.
when you're certain every other pair of headlights
is coming from a one night stand
or murder.
Autumn is inspiring
to roll the windows down
and check out corporate asses in office pants
or a girl fixated on her rearview mirror
to see if that hickey's still there (it is).
A low jump champion wondering if Jesus keeps tabs
on people who steal coffee cups from Denny's
or coasters from bars.
He probably doesn't. She's probably fine.
Early morning phone calls usually mean trouble.
Fingers run through the hair of yesterday's
frustrations until it's too thin to comb,
and soon too thin to run fingers through.
Locked in a heated battle with balance and time frames.
Jeremiah wasn't a bullfrog.
Jeremiah wasn't anything
Teach me to speak Creole.
Tell me how to say something you would say
to someone if they were giving you shit
and how to talk dirty to a girl
without her knowing it.
Icemakers work overtime.
They work when you and I are sleeping.
That's dedication.
The same kind of dedication it takes
to learn how to leave properly.
Night classes just aren't good enough.
|
||||
53. |
Equestrian Park
00:54
|
|||
at a casino in Amsterdam
he throws caution to the wind
bets the gambler, not the hand,
and walks away with 250 euros.
Fleetwood Mac breathes through a speaker
with a sinus problem
but children still get older
and I get older too.
David appears and disappears and reappears
smelling like permanent markers
and notebook paper
never smiling
and I get older too.
the last hurricane destroyed the
already decrepit roof over the stables
at Equestrian Park
and some of the more motivated children
used the sturdier planks
for skateboard ramps
(built their lives
around you).
the sleepy horses, like elder statesmen, survived,
relocated to the general manager's private farm.
and when they die from snakebites
or natural causes
some of the more motivated children
will use their manes as brooms
to sweep all this under the rug.
|
||||
54. |
Fire Rescue
01:37
|
|||
I sat at Alfonso's
eating a Sicilian
in a booth where I could see
above and beyond the Christmas bow
on the handle of a glass door no one ever used,
stained by too many washes
that were heavy on the soap,
past the Video Camera Surveillance sign (red base / white type)
that was backwards to me.
And I watched them wheel an empty gurney
to the ambulance across the street at Edgewater High.
The lights were on and EMTs,
some taller than others,
stood next to it talking.
I pictured a mother, upon finding out
just how much an ambulance ride costs,
calling the whole thing off
and sending her asthmatic daughter
to bed without supper.
Then I remembered a kid
whose name I can't remember,
a kindergarten classmate (circa 1985).
The memory begins with the girl-ish screams
young ladies have in common with young boys
and ends with our class being paraded
out of the room, right alongside Nameless Kid,
who's on the floor
with medical personnel surrounding him,
trying to keep him calm.
I swear there were other exits we could've used.
It's not like the place was on fire.
When we saw him at school again
days later,
he had cotton in his ear — maybe both ears —
and it reminded me of balled-up white bread;
which may be why, to this day, I don’t eat white bread.
That same year
some friends and I were made to sit in Time Out
for leaving the perimeter fence of the playground
to look at an egg that had fallen out of a bird's nest.
These memories live so near each other
they borrow salt and pepper from one another
when other memories need flavor.
And fire rescue rides away.
And an old man at the bar
explains to another old man at the bar
that an ambulance ride can cost you $7/mile.
|
||||
55. |
Party On, Wayne
00:48
|
|||
because Betco rhymes with Petco
and the pennies under my truck
fighting to stick to the gravel
against an onslaught of parking lot river
are just biding their time
(buying their time).
because true love exists only in the choruses
of Tony Bennett songs
and in that inch of space between shoe and dance floor.
because I like the way my hair looks in the rain,
segmented and crazy like I might be holding
a concealed weapon or know answers to
really hard math problems.
because someday a millionaire with a sense of humor
is going to build a day spa called Resort to Violence.
because the fact of the matter is
the only thing that's ever mattered is fiction
and how many lies we can tell in a given amount of time
measures our worth against the determination
of kids who died in clothes dryers
during ambitious games of hide n seek.
|
||||
56. |
Bulldozer
01:10
|
|||
it's hotter in the Philippines tonight
than it is in Florida,
with Jesus' shoulder to cry on there
and me sitting in a bulldozer here,
pointed at a playground I vaguely remember
and a church I have one memory of.
“Father Abraham had many sons /
many sons had Father Abraham /
I am one of them and so are you /
so let's all praise the Lord, right arm!”
what did it even mean?
ushered in with the fear that the stained glass angels
might actually start blowing their trumpets
and the windows would shatter
and they would fly off.
harmless enough, but still scary.
I am not certified to operate this bulldozer
nor was I authorized to “borrow” it.
took my glasses off to keep the headlights
of passing cars from giving away my position.
I want the cops to come before I start this thing up
but I'm sure they have better things to do.
if they'd only show up though,
I'd gladly climb down and into one of their cars
(hopefully one with AC)
without a fuss or a single word.
and I'd sleep in the back while they drove in circles.
|
||||
57. |
John Cusack in the Rain
00:42
|
|||
in the morning we'll rest on our elbows and laurels
watching The Price is Right.
immunity is my Ace in the hole,
the Bicycle Spade Ace
with all the card manufacturer information on it.
neither will speak
neither will have to
the city’s lights will blink and keep time overnight
until the rest of its people are awake.
there'll be a smile and a hug,
not a handshake.
handshakes are for doctors.
the soundtrack to another film
is the soundtrack to right now
whether I like it or not.
whether or not you hear it too.
all I need is for John Cusack to show up
and for it to start raining
and I'll be able to enjoy the drive home.
|
||||
58. |
Battles
01:01
|
|||
your bed is a battleground
where hearts and body parts fight it out,
sticking to sheets and twigs and crumbs,
rolling through recesses
and field trips to planetariums
to see stars cling to heaven like dead celebrities.
freckles on your chest
and my crooked teeth clenched
for every dead soldier and limping lieutenant
who held fast to their empty guns
and raced forth with bent bayonets.
this will soak up rainwater
on the side of the street
next to a For Rent sign
and never be treasured
as a historical site.
but I'll know better
until the next drink dropkicks this memory out of my head
so hard the helmet doesn't feel a thing.
veterans of the longest war,
retiring to bar stools and drinking
on Uncle Sam's dime.
on the lam, draft dodgers lived longer than patriots.
in your golden years
please carry a flag that is really a sheet
to my headstone
and cover me one last time
in love and sticks and crumbs.
|
||||
59. |
||||
Maybe mom was right.
Maybe this is a good place to die
and rest forever with the squirrels.
Music used to mean so much.
Now, after the sudden passing a few weeks ago,
I wonder why I care so much.
The importance of a timeless lullaby tucking soft babies in
glows against the darkening of a sky without birds.
A secondary relationship;
doctors can sew sons and husbands up
and keep life alive with tubes, monitors,
more tubes, and needles.
A long-ago bond we broke with years.
I should call
and let you know I’m sorry
but I wouldn’t know where to begin.
Love, dust, and spare tires.
I couldn’t remember her name
until I remembered the van
where it was written.
|
||||
60. |
Like It's 1999
03:04
|
|||
Can’t complain about this year
so when the ball drops
and the bombs drop
I’ll watch as one might watch
a puppet show or a film
or a film about puppet shows.
They’re ticking, be sure of it
and Jesus has mounted his broomstick.
For those atop houses
with binoculars and nachos,
befriend the FBI
and don’t take your eyes off the sky.
Be paranoid
be superstitious.
It’s healthy.
Trust me.
I’ll be fishing,
taking time to reel in a toss-back
and take in a toss-up.
Be afraid
of the big wick in Times Square
and repent until you’re blue in the face.
Don’t choke on the ticker tape
when your jaw drops
when the ball drops
and the bombs drop.
Nurse your need for a dose of a reason to be.
Smack your lips and count down
10, 9, 8, 7
6, 5, 4, 3
Chin up
to strap on your helmet,
your Army-issue goggles,
your underwater breathing apparatus.
Dive into the ribcages of others nearby
and hide from the firework war and the flood.
This is your resolution:
to climb into nests high above the high water mark,
sit still enough to not rock the lifeboat
or casbah.
Needles to scratch my wrists with
and scar and mix and fade this day
into the dissolve of another day.
A double zero year
the year of the loser
and sideways 8.
Scratch your wrists and mix
and pave your way
into the dissolve of another day.
They’re out in the streets
and raising their arms
to embrace the fat of a cowardly nation.
But this is just a run-through,
a dress rehearsal, on the stage set
to debut at midnight,
after the pine’s abandoned to the street side
and the stockings are plucked from the wall
and you’ve shocked yourself taking down icicle lights
and there are plans to return unwanted gifts.
There’s still money to burn,
airline ticket prices to soar,
there’s still turf to burn, time to burn,
highway to leave behind,
cannons to load to fire
babies into space,
geniuses to outsmart,
confessions to come clean,
prophecies to fulfill,
works to dissect
up on caffeine
for days in a hangover casket with a gray head
and a bottle of aspirin.
Stomach aches from surrendering the lining
to acid, ignoring the suffering suffix,
passing out in an oxygen booth in front of
24 hour surveillance.
This is your party if you choose to accept it.
I’ll be more than happy to cater to your guest list.
A crater for a dead race
past-tense
abolish to polish a good cause.
Clasp your hands together
behind your head.
We’re gonna frisk you up and fuck you up
and let
you
down,
meet all your expectations and then some,
make good your silly predictions
and cast some of our own.
Fortune-cookie-hungry
for excuses and explanations,
reasons to be happy on a Monday
and every other day of the week.
Your pink slip is here
now.
|
||||
61. |
96 Bags of Rocks
01:19
|
|||
The centerpiece of an uncomfortable triangle table
in a different city.
Tonight cops are stationed at the tents to keep would-be
art thieves from snatching generic still lifes.
Nature (is astonishing)
seascapes
horses in fog by trees
in this city.
Barflies speak
bar fights break out accordingly.
I am a walking shadow, a pedestrian by choice
and because the car is but a few blocks away.
Somebody bought a gun
because somebody is throwing away
the box of a gun case.
For one birthday, I broke a heart and,
for another, I volunteered my own
and my time
immobile in a deserted home
in a different city
where a headless Mary stands guard
to keep would-be soul thieves
from walking off with the best of us
and two churches
(I think I write “and” too much)
to patch together trivial thoughts,
aimless as the shadow I was
marching to my car parked a few blocks away.
The drive-in thanks you, Mayor!
I dragged my hand along a picket fence —
brown, not white, as some cliché junkies
might’ve hoped — and expected splinters
or at least one, really long splinter.
I was spared
like the ex-stray I cradle when he lets me.
Like now.
|
||||
62. |
The Ugly Hours
00:42
|
|||
Just a position
a creaky hinge I meant to oil
acting as a doorbell.
The ugly hours can’t hide from me
I’m onto those motherfuckers
pretending to be asleep on the couch in my underwear.
Just pretending.
I catch ‘em like rabbits
in bear traps
fast and sad and grotesque
pale and powerful
making noises I’ve never heard before.
I pin ‘em to Styrofoam boards
putting labels below them with their names:
“3:24”
“4:17”
“4:53”
If I were still in grade school
I could take them in for Show ‘N Tell
and talk about the various species
and wingspans.
|
||||
63. |
||||
the fire’s out again
the bottle’s almost empty
I’ve been cradling this fear
that I may not see morning
the cold counts my bones
makes me well aware
I have no idea what I’m trying
to accomplish here.
|
||||
64. |
Typewriter Red
00:30
|
|||
There was a beetle on his or her back
in the sand near the grass
and ants were rallying
ready to tear it limb from limb
and leave it for dead.
My initial reaction was to
tap it with my toe and hope
it would flip over and crawl away
unscathed.
Then I decided not to play god
and interrupt the food chain
but rather fly like a leather nightingale
with typewriter red fingers away
to sleep with the bees
and roll with the stings.
|
||||
65. |
Previously
00:24
|
|||
This is how we cup our hands for decimals
and shred our fence lines for animals
to run and die with dignity.
make mistakes
huddle in the puddle eating tadpoles.
Too freelance now
too untamed
to make sense and maim
like previously.
Pinch the needle
fold the cuff down
make mistakes
let the animals leave.
|
||||
66. |
||||
“And all those pretty girls who looked like movie stars, they look
pretty ordinary, 28 years old, checking out at Walmart with
babies in their arms.”
- John Moreland, “Your Spell”
She still has her Student Council President smile,
one perfect enough to walk across
like an enamel bridge,
but she no longer has the car she had
when she rear-ended my friend.
I doubt she even remembers it.
She married the son of a senator
and, when she realized she couldn’t
be a professional volleyball player,
got pregnant.
Her globe of a tan belly
shone in the dirty grocery store fluorescence.
I pretended to care about the cover
of a People Magazine,
watching her shop for
tortilla chips and shampoo.
|
||||
67. |
Horse Sweat
01:37
|
|||
Trailer smells like horse sweat and hardships.
We wake up long enough to ask each other,
“You fall asleep?”
All of the pens in this house
are damn near out of ink.
Nothing in the bedroom drawer but
pumpkin scented candles.
I can’t write with those.
Melt them down all you want,
I don’t have that kind of skill.
There’s a basket of seashells on the back of the toilet
next to an unopened cake of Irish Spring’s new Icy Blast scent
but I didn’t think it got cold enough
to be icy in Ireland.
I always pictured it gorgeous and green,
like the word “topography” at midnight.
Hedge trimmer on the sofa
ceiling fan on the floor
old hats that absorbed
memories from old heads
hanging ‘round the fireplace.
Brown rodeo shin guards,
faded as the ink in this pen
I found on top of the refrigerator,
busted and taped up with
gauze-flavored bandages.
The lassos make a figure 8
the only infinite anything.
We caught it all on fire and the truck died over it.
I waited to blow up that day.
Still smells like horse sweat.
Horseflies are full of blood from other things.
The fatter they are, the redder your hand gets
when you smash them.
We could study the side effects
of incompetent presidents and whittle down
the days or not give a good goddamn
and carve our lives into monuments.
Already greater than the sum of our parts
with splinters in our palms
and bruised hearts.
To the creatures that hide from the sun
and the doctors who cheat on their final exams,
the widows who never forget
who won the last argument,
to this Crown and Sprite,
goodnight.
|
||||
68. |
Speaks in Code
00:48
|
|||
When god really talks, I bet he sounds
like he’s talking through a city bus’ radio
and speaks in code designed to
stick to the basics.
Reading comics instead of talking to our moms,
we’ve all been disappointments at some point.
There’s a grocery store with a Coinstar
not four blocks away
but she rolls the dusty change
that’s grown like a desperate plant
in an old mason jar.
Keeps her hands busy
when they’re not busy being folded.
With skin as pale as the dead kid decal
on the rear window of her Blazer,
she prays to no one in particular
that next year will be better
with more room between the months and days
to catch her breath
and stretch her legs.
Reading comics instead of talking to our moms,
we’re all disappointments at some point.
|
||||
69. |
Glow
01:35
|
|||
You caught me with a phone call
on the side of the road
after I’d just hung up with a girl
I’d called drunk.
You asked what I was doing,
I said, “Pissing”
and I wasn’t kidding.
When I was little, maybe seven years old,
I shot a lizard off a fence post with a BB gun.
I was sure I’d miss
but I can’t remember if I wasn’t at least
half-trying to keep my aim steady.
At the post, seconds after firing,
I found the creature on the ground,
a Copperhead ball lodged in its skull.
Direct. Hit.
Its tail and legs still twitching,
I felt remorse deeper than ever.
It scraped aside any flicker of pride.
I mean, it was a great shot,
but seeing that helpless, harmless, dying reptile
extinguished all the glory of the moment.
I dug a little hole and put him in it
and covered him up with dirt and
wondered if lizards went to Heaven.
A while later, I returned to the gravesite and,
for some reason, tried to dig up my victim.
Curiosity, I guess.
Only I couldn’t find him.
I dug around the entire cemetery and
nothing.
So I figured God got him
and thought about his family.
I think about the things I know and know
there must be a reason I know them.
We talked all the way home
as we’ve done many times before.
Nothing is consistent
except for my skepticism
and things don’t just glow in the dark,
they glow all the time.
They just need the right environment to shine
like everyone.
|
||||
70. |
Good Luck Finding Jesus
00:37
|
|||
Mission control,
we’ve got nowhere to go
just the same old roads
and fast food restaurants.
Autopilot on
the day is gone
night took the sun at gunpoint.
2 AM
last call
time to drive home and eat bread
to soak up
the alcohol.
Christmas Day hangover headaches
and pineapple ham
a couch and a bed to occupy.
They’re selling dead celebrities
like used cars
while America digests and dreams
and I’ll sleep
eventually
blessed and warm
on Tylenol.
|
||||
71. |
||||
Everything is falling into place.
I look out the window in time
to see a tow truck hauling a
cherry red something-or-other
and I might as well be staring out
into the Canadian wilderness
from the warmth of a log cabin I’ve inherited,
with snow growing off the trees
and friendly bears nowhere to be seen.
The now-consumed greasy number 3
might as well have been a fresh salad,
a turkey sandwich from a pic-a-nic basket
I’m sharing with the kind of girl
who could stop a train with her smile.
The bug I can’t describe that crawled
very near me a few minutes ago
was simply on his way to the window to look for bears.
Bugs don’t know about hibernation.
I’d explain it to him but he’s gone now
and not seeing bears.
Her keychain said “Zero to Bitch in 3.5 seconds”
and I’ll be damned if she didn’t prove it right.
Ivy League teeth chomping at the bit
to rear up and ruin someone’s otherwise uneventful afternoon.
In short: she did and said
everything she was supposed to
and fell into place
like a log stacked on a log,
building the walls of this cabin
passed down from generation to generation
generation to generation.
|
||||
72. |
Kill the Moderator
00:53
|
|||
Saw through a quarter of a punch-drunk tired eye
in a sliding greasy mirror, the remnants of a young man
redundant and here before.
Scratch across the scab on your neck
to alter the shape of your boring body.
Not everything needs to be sad or clever
not everything needs to be profound or thought-provoking.
Some things are just beautiful.
Some things are just things.
And if the blood stains this shirt, it was meant to be.
It was too white before.
And if there’s blood on my pillow when I wake up,
I was thinking too hard while I slept
or losing a fight in my dream.
You want to swallow this night
this whole goddamn town
and spit it back out in song.
I want to line up empty bottles one by one
and build a small scale model of the Great Wall
and knock it down.
Indians 0 / Cowboys 1
some things are just things.
|
||||
73. |
Teak and E
00:54
|
|||
Stellar performance, your suicide
in the last three minutes of my Thursday
confusing hermits for heroes who couldn’t save themselves
let alone anyone else.
You’ve got it all backwards, man,
buying before even seeing the ads.
She said her body’d been to hell and back
to which I replied, “At least it came back.”
A cat would be dead by now.
In fact, two cats are dead now
and so is a mother
but not this mother.
Not today.
Her good leg lifts her bad leg
so I can wheel her from office to office.
Her good hand cradles her useless hand
but she’s always on time.
She hates that she’s in bed by 5:30,
says, “That’s when old people go to sleep.”
And she’s 50-something.
A real stubborn cunt.
Death must have black eyes and a cracked jaw and throbbing balls
‘cause she ain’t giving up.
|
||||
74. |
||||
The wooden head on a vast green beer.
A tent for a home
and leaves for toilet paper.
She calls irregularly
whenever she’s in town,
which is once or twice a year,
and it always ends with, “I’ll call you back,”
and I never do.
I’m sure she’s still got that guitar.
She used to live on two guys’ kitchen floor.
I saw her bed
her fort.
NO BAD NEWS ALLOWED.
She wanted to keep that shit out.
Not a lot of room for it
between her pillow
and the dog’s food bowl.
But I took her to prom years ago.
She wore a powder blue dress
and looked like Cinderella,
the kind of girl who’d grow up to be an actress
and you’d see me in our prom picture
on Entertainment Tonight.
Only she liked trains and drugs
more than she liked paying rent.
She liked decorating her apartment
with paint and words
more than she liked vacuuming,
more than she liked asking her landlord
if it was cool if she covered her apartment
in paint and words.
The girl didn’t like structure
didn’t like rules.
She isn’t dead yet, I don’t know why
I’m writing in the past tense.
She ran over my foot with her car once
and I drove off, throwing her off my car once.
We were Sid and Nancy without the knife
just romantic baths
and fingers slammed in bedroom doors
and broken glass.
She might be in Hollywood now
or Oregon or San Francisco.
I know she always wanted to go west
but I liked her best
when she worked in the bakery at Walmart
and hated her job
but came home to me smelling like icing
and making sense.
|
||||
75. |
||||
because Joey flicks cigarette butts
into our backyard.
Hundreds of filters later,
charred and wet and rotting,
not unlike my guts
after a night of drinking
and listening to old country songs.
I figure we’re due for a cancer tree
or gypsy figures
to sprout out of the ground
and dance around
smoking and smiling
lawn gnomes with a purpose
asking for glasses of Dickel to shoot the shit over
and discarding their own miniature cigarettes
into our backyard.
Shake it off, boys and girls,
walk it off.
Straightaways is on loud
but I can still hear planes
and trees and/or lawn gypsies growing
and coughing up bloody coughs,
blaming them on pollen
and prostitutes.
I sit among flames
next to the devil on his cell phone
making a deal or finalizing a soul
but not mine, not tonight.
Tonight I’m conversation.
Flammable fodder sneaking by
on the back of a nightcrawler.
“Yo, I’ll pay you a dollar to eat that.”
“No.”
And the devil checks his e-mail
and breathes a sigh of relief through a stuffy nose,
coughs a fiery
bloody cough
blames it on pollen.
And I can only smile at him
and offer, “My mom said the pollen count’s
higher than usual this year. We need some rain.”
And he can only pretend I’m right,
that I’m his friend
he can bum lights from
slow dancing with a full moon
and the biggest fool this side of the state line.
That’s not a freckle, son, it’s a growth.
Better do something about it before
they have to shave your mountains off
and drain your oceans.
|
||||
76. |
Going the Distance
01:28
|
|||
I was in line at an ATM
when I realized I’ve developed
a distant stare, not unlike
that of a Vietnam veteran
or a cheetah after taking down
and ripping apart a gazelle
or a man after shooting another man
for breaking in.
There’s an age and an agony behind these eyes
not of hate, but a lack of anything.
It’s easy to dub them “blank stares”
and push them out of the way and
into the street.
You and I have more in common
than you or I would care to admit.
Dirty shirts
torn jeans
rebel yells
from the inside out
and shark-like eyes that gaze
for as long as the light will allow
without registering what’s in sight
but think
"There are bills to pay ...
there is only turkey and one piece of bread at the house ...
there are starving kids in other countries
and in this country ...
see Spot run ... "
Catching a glimpse of another
one of these stares is paralyzing.
A mirror on a neck with a wig on that
and maybe a hat.
but think,
“I’d rather be fishing ...
I’d rather be a fish ...
I’d rather be staring at the backs of my eyelids
than at walls or at the back
of this guy’s head ...
incapable of blinking
or looking away ... "
Perhaps we develop these stares
because deep down we’d love to be
chasing gazelles and tearing them apart
or bombing huts or shooting some asshole
in the face for invading
our space.
Not exactly the creative race.
All of our pin numbers are birthdates.
|
||||
77. |
Cheer Up, Charlie
01:16
|
|||
A newly adopted dog
chained to a table leg
on the patio of a place where
people go for a thing called brunch,
to read the paper and think about
tomorrow and wear pajama pants.
Let’s just call a spade a spade.
This is your kennel now.
These are your wardens here,
dropping overcooked bacon
next to your warm water bowl and into
an ant bed like they’re doing you a favor.
But it’s better than it was before,
when you couldn’t see the dog next door
and could only hear its whimper.
You have a new name now.
Charlie just wasn’t cutting it.
And not because it reminded one of them
of an abusive stepfather
(his name was Jason),
it just wasn’t Jareth
and the first movie they watched together
was Labyrinth.
The morning paper blows around
and eventually into my leg
like a stray cat weaving in and out,
begging for a read,
but I don’t know where it’s been
or if it’s had its shots
or if anything is fixed.
I doubt that it is.
February sputters toward March
like a hand-me-down Chevy Cavalier.
Like the one I used to drive that I never
thought would ever drive me here.
The government’s a guitar out of tune,
playing us all like the three chord song
we are.
And from the orchestra pit,
Christ takes it all in
on a date with the Devil
and the best seat in the house.
|
||||
78. |
Indianapolis
00:35
|
|||
Staring at the world in reverse
via the mirror behind the bar.
It’s the opposite of all the same shit
without being the opposite.
A candle flickers in a red glass before me
and so it will be, weeks from now,
months from now.
I’m younger than I feel
but I’m pretty sure she’s as bored as she looks.
Our dumb beards and possibly-prescription eyeglasses
make us appear like we have something to offer.
But we don’t.
And the joke’s on you
until it’s on us
on one of our last days.
Bleed out, goddamn it.
Bleed out.
|
||||
79. |
||||
I’ve been outsmarted before
standing naked in a hallway
with the bedroom door locked,
after driving 40 minutes
just to bathe with someone
and wash the day off of me and away.
New York has my girlfriend this weekend
and Vermont’s got her.
Someone it was easy to be lonely with
and a smile the size of Texas.
Three states in one stanza.
Guess I always have been
more cartographer than writer.
Except I can’t find my way around the living room
of my own mind.
Keep stubbing my toes, tangled in the crossed lines
of semantic networks
and distracted by the scenery of memories.
Gone are nights spent clinging to the ladder
in a swimming pool
with no clothes on,
talking about monsters.
And gone are CDs borrowed
and never returned,
favorite shirts lost between the wall and the bed,
all the things you misplace
when you’re preoccupied with other things.
We’ve all got some of it somewhere:
a new closet
or box in an old attic
or basking in the sun
on a fold-out table at a garage sale for $0.75.
It all goes somewhere.
New York, Vermont, Texas,
Goodwill.
Now at night sometimes we speak electronically.
Tonight we did briefly
and she was angry.
But next time I’m sure she won’t be
(it all goes somewhere).
I’m sure she’ll be fine and say something
that makes me feel dumb
or makes me feel safe,
folded up in pages of yesterday.
“I made your big word longer,” she said.
And she had.
|
||||
80. |
Witnesses Wanted
01:11
|
|||
Where was I last Thursday at 7:15 p.m.?
Took me a while to remember,
but I’m pretty sure I was just about to leave the house
or walking outside to my car.
Sirens?
I don’t recall.
And I don’t remember what I had for dinner.
The sign at the corner of Bumby and South reads
“Help: Looking for witnesses to a motorcycle
accident that happened Thurs at 7:15 p.m.”
It said some other stuff too
but I couldn’t make it out
and I wouldn’t be any help anyhow.
But someone was there
someone was thrown.
I’m not sure if anyone was watching,
but at least two people were there:
the batter and the ball.
But I had not requested an invite
and wasn’t on the guest list for that instant
so I missed it.
I was in the parking lot scalping tickets
to another event.
Where was I Thursday, April 22nd, at 7:15 p.m.?
Not airborne over the thunderclap of metal on metal,
previously straddling a motorcycle.
Not driving an ambulance
bending around tight turns
or in the back of an ambulance
keeping a gurney warm.
Not wide-eyed,
frozen solid to a steering wheel thinking,
“Oh my god, what have I done?”
|
||||
81. |
Union Station Eulogy
01:36
|
|||
I charted two courses:
one to get his book out of my truck
and one back to the truck to get mine.
Same course.
Never mind.
My boss is a part-time racist
for the sake of a punchline.
But the caretakers of the Well’s Built Museum
aren’t laughing
or reloading
despite the myth.
In the middle of a night that bloomed
where bad dreams usually do —
at the tail-end of sleep, so you have to
remember every last, gory detail
all day at work,
even when you’re standing in front
of the mirror in the Men’s Room
unable to recognize who you’ve become;
splicing the similarities between yourself
and part-time racists
and plump, jovial careerists
like tiny atoms capable of catastrophes —
the fan my mom gave me stood guard
against stagnant air
and the hair of the lawn grew.
If God ever had time to donate to voiceovers,
here’s where He would say,
“Alison Krauss and Union Station
played their sweet little hearts out
to the deaf ears of a stubborn, aspiring sleeper.”
On point and undistracted.
Awake only to move the heavy, water-soaked clothes
from the washer to the dryer.
Just a 401K away from office laughs at unfunny jokes
and company parties with,
“Hello, my name is” stickers on my coat.
Lunch dates and people who hate you out of earshot.
Just a 401K away from standing in the shower
too long and melting but needing the flood,
as hot as you can stand it, to remind you that
you’re still alive,
though now your palms are pruney.
The fish in this bowl have started
to grow human hands exclusively
to strangle themselves with.
Our parents’ fuck ups
are catching up to us.
|
||||
82. |
Wish You Were Here
01:17
|
|||
House-hunting for the brawn and beautiful
paddling down 7-Eleven parking lot bug rivers
that have become floods
and building bridges, or trying to, from me to you
to Baton Rouge
or Boise, Idaho
only because I’ve never been
and I really like potatoes.
Goodbye to an era of stealing from better writers
and hello to all-night diners
and slithering headlights in rainstorms
at 617 Princeton Street
where the curb buckles around a curve
and makes cars look like snakes.
The weight of the water will sink our state one day, I think,
and the strongest will live in towers and skyscrapers
while you and I kick against the current
of a much bigger bug river
that has become all we can see for miles.
Legs will grow weary
wills will weaken
and comedians will own up to every joke.
Her body was exposed but her hand was under the blanket.
Patton would’ve needed a tank to bypass my walls
of uneasiness and disrespect.
All the more reason to smile
as the rain lands on my good senses
and I dream of a world without fences
and plenty of waterfalls
plenty of pilot lights
low flying aircraft at night,
slicing through the thin clouds,
not looking to rescue anyone,
just gazing down
with small town girl bewilderment.
|
||||
83. |
The Unbeatable Odds
01:20
|
|||
It’s July 4th in my hometown.
My mom, her boyfriend, my girlfriend, and I
are waiting out the rain,
which is truthfully a drizzle at best.
It’s the lightning that keeps us under cover,
scratching across the sky like there’s a panther
on the other side — the sunny side —
going mad.
A couple of blocks north is the lake
where the actual display happens year after year,
the climax of a day full of funnel cakes, midway games,
helicopter and pony rides.
Tonight is no different.
The townsfolk have come out in droves
to congregate under the unpredictable panther
and its claws,
beneath a constant mist of rain or cold cat spit.
Amateurs ignite their own shows all around us and,
coupled with the shitty weather,
make it feel kind of like a warzone.
It’s amazing how patriotic people become
when you give them lighters
or something sparkly to look at.
One night a year – even in nasty weather —
hundreds stand together at the edge of this gross lake, gazing up at
the same sky,
and those might even be tears in some of their eyes.
Or it’s rain
but that doesn’t change anything.
This is still a paperback mass of hope bound together
with a secondhand thread of disaster.
I like that.
The coming together.
The commons
surrounded by unbeatable odds.
|
||||
84. |
Duplex
05:11
|
|||
She has cigarette burns on the walls near her bed
hundreds, maybe thousands, of them.
I asked once why she didn’t use an ashtray
like normal people and she said,
“This is just easier.”
She has a gay neighbor named Craig and a little boy
who comes from somewhere, usually Wednesdays and Fridays, and
sits on the bottom step out front.
I asked him once who he was waiting for
if he needed a ride some place
he explained that sometimes he likes to not spend
his lunch money on lunch
and catch the ice cream man twice after school.
Craig calls him Trump
says he has good business sense.
I think the opposite, because ice cream,
good as it is, is a want.
A kid with good business sense, if he’s going to hold any
of his lunch money back at all, would save it,
even just $0.50 a week.
That’s $26 a year.
That’s half of my cable bill or a decent pair of shoes.
But it’s also a lot of ice cream.
And Trump knows this and, really,
I can’t fault him for living in the moment.
That’s where kids should live.
Kids and my friend,
the one with the cigarette burns in the walls near her bed.
She has a favorite Price is Right game (Plinko)
and two or three of those small mirrors
one might win at a carnival.
One says Budweiser, one says Aerosmith.
I can’t remember what the other one says,
so maybe she only has two.
Some people you lose touch with intentionally
not because they ever did you wrong
but because it hurts your chest
to spend too much time with them.
She used to be spontaneous
had one of the highest GPAs in our class
couldn’t date a smoker.
Craig’s boyfriend, Shaun, doesn’t like cole slaw.
I know this because, once while visiting my sweet little heart attack,
I heard him through the wall:
“Cole slaw?! You know I fuckin’ hate cole slaw.
It’s so ... blech.”
A few weeks later I’d gone back to see her
and Shaun was outside on Craig’s half of the porch.
I almost made one of those obnoxious Dad Jokes
as I approached, like,
“So, Craig still trying to get ya to eat some slaw?”
But thought better of it
and opted for the far less personal, “Hey,”
instead.
She used to know a lot about ‘80s movies.
Probably still does, just doesn’t talk about them as much.
We once argued over which director did a better job
depicting his audience and, in turn, keeping his audience interested
in future projects:
Crowe or Hughes?
She said Hughes, I said Crowe, and, in hindsight,
I think we were both right.
Though her Breakfast Club poster does sort of feel
like a victory flag, waving in my face every time I
enter enemy territory.
I hadn’t seen Trump in a while and started to wonder
but Craig, like a goddamned mind reader
out of the blue explained that it was Summer Vacation.
And all I could think was, “Bummer.
Less money for ice cream.”
I think I’d trade places with him anyway
just to get a Summer Vacation again.
She doesn’t wear a watch on purpose
to make the days go faster.
Although I’m beginning to think you can tell
which hour you’re in by the char marks
on the walls nearest her bed.
I think they’re keeping track of time more slowly
and painfully than any watch.
But I never bring this up and smell like I’ve been in a bar all night
when I leave her room.
Flash forward to Fall. Trump’s back.
Craig broke up with Shaun
(although Shaun swears up and down
it was the other way around).
That may be so, but I’ve neither the time,
the polygraph test, nor the interest to prove it.
She tells me she’s writing a screenplay
about a closet homosexual who inherits
a Southern Baptist Church from his preacher father
and has to stifle his queerness to oversee the congregation,
even though he’s grown exponentially more flamboyant
since his move to New York six months prior to his father’s death.
I wanted to say, “Sounds kinda like The Birdcage,”
but opted for the less critical,
“Holy shit, that’s awesome.”
She asks if I think Hughes would direct
and does so with a coy grin
just to dig up our age-old debate again.
I smile back and laugh once with a quick but audible
bullet of air through my nose.
Dirty dishes crowd the nightstand and dot the floor like disgusting,
obvious landmines.
She asks if I’ve eaten
and offers what’s left of some nuked ravioli
still sitting in the microwave.
She says, “It’s probably cold”
and I wonder how fucking long it’s been in there.
I almost say, “I’d love some, but I don’t think
there’s a clean dish in the house”
but opt for, “No, thank you.”
We joke a lot but there are buttons I won’t push.
Buttons that, once upon a time, triggered a young lady to start
habitually extinguishing cigarettes
on her bedroom walls, nearest the bed.
I could say a lot of things
as you have probably made a lot of assumptions
but if she were to ask either of us why we
weren’t saying precisely what was on our minds,
I assure you, we’d be better off to reply,
“It’s just easier.”
I gave Trump a dollar that day
thinking it might be the last day I’d come around.
I told him not to spend it all in one place.
I don’t think he understood the phrase.
Maybe he’d never heard it before.
Maybe that’s why the ice cream man got all his money.
A stray cat leapt onto an old lady’s lap across the street.
I watched the clouds move out of the way
of the sun on the ground.
We couldn’t all be race car drivers
but the pit crew is just as important.
|
||||
85. |
||||
Frankly, I’m surprised this house still has walls
to hold the roof up,
that the whole goddamned thing hasn’t collapsed on itself
that I still plug quarter after ever-loving quarter
into jukeboxes to hear songs
I could hear for free at home
inside walls that have surpassed and undermined
my expectations.
I’m not surprised that nothing I’ve said
has been recorded for further analysis and criticism.
Not yet.
He’s trying to wash his clothes while she’s in them
scavenging for loose change and trying to mend torn stitches.
Hunkered down at a desk with a computer on it
turning a deaf ear to the questions and comments.
Makes about as much sense as the President
of the Coors Brewing Company swearing off drinking
or R.J. Reynolds speaking out against cigarettes.
Fueled by fire
and booze bought with what should’ve been gas money,
he staggers out into the street with no shoes on,
not even the ones she said
he looked so good in.
No shoes and a plain white undershirt,
plain with the exception of the pit stains,
trying to talk so fast his tongue’s bleeding
from biting it on accident.
While she sleeps
nestled in with a lukewarm cup of Nestle’s Quik
on her nightstand and a roach she’ll never see
inching its way along the headboard.
Wet from sweating and the dew of a stellar southern morning,
he wakes up in the yard with one hand in an ant bed
and the other tucked under his body with no blood in it.
Tingling. That not-so-fresh feeling
like all the stars joined forces
to form another sun
to battle the other sun.
His feet are muddy — good thing he didn’t wear those shoes!
There’s a world of difference
between bullfighter and rodeo clown:
one is there to kill the creature,
the other to save the cowboy and put smiles
on the faces in the crowd.
Neither was there for him last night.
His hair, a greasy tangled mess of barbed wire
wrapped around kids who threw caution to the wind.
His heart at the bottom of a paraplegic’s golf bag
next to a blind man’s old pair of reading glasses.
The screen went black, then to color bars
and nothing’s in focus
and none of us talk.
|
||||
86. |
||||
Country stars tell jokes I’d laugh at maybe
if I were five years old
and single out all the good Australia has to offer.
This guy’s way too pretty to be a cowboy
with his scarecrow mane and silk shirt
unbuttoned halfway to his waist
revealing his silk chest
with no scars over his hairless heart.
This man has never thrown a rope
this man has never fallen off a horse
this man searches desperately for Band-Aids
when he bleeds.
Country music needs bruises
apple pie at suppertime and blood on its boots
not actors with half-decent voices
who’ve half-perfected southern accents
and bad jokes and hired guns.
She asked why all my writing sounded like a sigh and never
had a happy ending.
I don’t know.
Maybe one day it won’t
and it will.
|
||||
87. |
Pate Boy
01:22
|
|||
Amazingly, my reflection in the window
still makes me think of Christmas in Germany
and all the fallen snowflakes that died
for our holiday state of mind.
Someone has given a name to this postcard:
Going Home
Over dinner, my mother and I discussed people
we knew in that speck of a hometown
people who are dead now
people who are dog catchers now.
The small creeks are pregnant with embryonic rain
and starting to dilate
eager to drench the low-lying land in amniotic fluid.
It is our birthright to grow too large for bellies
and cribs our fathers or our mothers’ “friends”
assembled themselves.
It’s our right to drive far
from the hospitals we bled in
and bedrooms we bawled in
until we slam into something.
After dinner, we took a drive
to the cemetery to see which Pate boy was killed.
He and his girlfriend had been buried side-by-side
like a country song
bouncing off trees that line a gravel road
(like a country song).
Mom knelt to brush grass clippings,
fired from a lawnmower drive-by,
from their headstones.
It felt like a scene from a movie with a soundtrack
that might include bands like The Shins or The National or
something off Beck’s Sea Change.
My reflection doesn’t remind me of shit now.
Never really reminded me of Christmas in Germany.
|
||||
88. |
||||
Tonight I'm going to do it for the cemetery
of discarded airline headphones
under salt & pepper shaker tombstones
with the fine print of broken leases
(of broken homes)
ironed on as epitaphs.
As soon as we landed, I started to miss my first car
and all the crumbs that evaded
little vacuums.
The rust-kissed trunk full of memories.
I suddenly wanted to track down whomever
bought it for parts and ask him or her
what his or her favorite part was.
The New York cold stole my reflection
in a tinted window of some
four-star fiasco
with ice in my beard
while cliff note careerists tore along the perforated
edge of Tuesday's remaining daylight
like scissor-fisted soldiers on a mission
to hurry.
I know how this movie ends.
Don't feel like sitting through it again.
|
||||
89. |
Austin
02:02
|
|||
A wall of records like The Hall of Presidents in between shows;
silent, immobile, cold.
So this is Austin?
Looks about right.
Like a child cramming in as much outdoor fun as he can at twilight.
Where the grown-ups go when they’re terrified of growing old,
and where marble unicorns above the fireplace here
might very well be statues honoring the unicorns
who used to run free there,
in hooves hovering just above the concrete,
slaloming around buildings downtown
where windows look like jack-o’-lantern teeth,
stabbing their single horns through the chests of every
“You must be this tall to ride” sign
and Bible verse
and law written for the express purpose
of protecting us from ourselves.
Or so I assume from what I’ve been told,
as I stretch out on this loveseat
with little regard for the blood in my feet
and imagine a therapist on a barstool, five feet away
and 23 years old, with a wall of Zeppelin, Zevon,
The Who, and Rush
where there oughta be degrees and certificates.
And he wants me to talk about me,
but nothing too “extreme.”
He asks things like, “Top five desert island albums?”
and “Van Halen or Van Hagar?”
and I’m dumbfounded but I answer
and I won’t fall asleep any easier
than I did the night before.
But we keep at it and he cracks open a Lonestar
and replies to my innermost thoughts
with phrases like “Right on”
before moving into really uncharted territory:
“Beatles or Stones?”
when it hits me:
none of it has to be relevant to be therapeutic
if the cure we’re trying to find is not feeling like
we’re all going to die alone.
And somewhere across town, a unicorn covered in tattoos
slows down,
shakes what’s left of the blood-soaked blazer and khakis
from its forehead,
curls up with a good book
and settles in for the night,
ready to fight another day
like a child refusing to leave the outdoors behind at twilight.
|
||||
90. |
For Robin
02:01
|
|||
Something about him always reminded me
of my dad’s friend Dan,
but it was strictly physical
and maybe something as simple as the smile.
But, as a kid, I had a thing where I’d compare
my parents’ friends to stars.
Mel was the mall Santa from A Christmas Story.
BJ was a young Merle Haggard.
And Dan was Him,
but not as fast,
not as manic or funny or hairy or strung-out.
And Dan left when dad left,
so not as familiar,
since He stuck around,
willing to walk a tightrope damn near upside-down,
doing whatever it took for us to take the bait.
From the inside pocket of a tiny coat
tucked into the inside pocket of a regular coat
in the innermost closet of an underground bunker
the government nicknamed Inside Joke,
He gave us exactly what we needed
while still remaining Top Secret;
one small step and light years ahead.
If laughter truly does add seconds to our lives,
we owe Him for years.
Meanwhile, our leaders moonlight as war criminals,
or vice versa, and lead us astray,
and it’s never our best interest they have in mind anyway.
The wrong finger’s on the trigger when,
in the other hand, there isn’t a trigger at all.
The wrong mouths blow on trumpets to signal a charge
and, time after time, it’s a false alarm;
The Fonz, fully-armed, jumping the shark,
putting a bullet into the top of its head from mid-air
just to say, “I told you so.”
A country without cause,
a tightrope for a string,
our jesters should be kings.
But someone has to fall
so we can laugh it off
and distract us from the fact
that it will never be.
Our jesters know all too well
freedom isn’t free.
It’s loaned out at high interest rates
to you, and them, and me,
and someone’s putting snipers in the trees.
The worst possible people have paid to play the game
for a chance to be in charge of things,
but our jesters should be kings.
|
||||
91. |
Succumb
01:12
|
|||
Arms crossed, head toppled right
against the seatbelt, a sort of makeshift pillow
that might break my clavicle and save my life.
I gazed out into Texas as though it were on
the other side of the glass at an aquarium
and it was understood: all the fish were dead.
From the long-dry riverbeds and sky lid
keeping God from ever seeing
what’s gone so wrong with this,
I looked down, at where “down” still meant “out,”
— down and out, I guess —
and appeared further than I was.
Still, I could see the lines in the corner of the eyes
and the garden of beard being invaded by weeds of white.
I was a stranger — a sailor
10 million miles from any anchor
but the barnacles began to show.
These roads connect the dots
into constellations shaped like whatever
might represent love and love lost.
A train depot, maybe.
A dying grandmother cradling a newborn baby.
A diamond ring down a kitchen sink.
Never quite sure what we’re running from,
but eventually we all succumb.
Like father, like son.
|
||||
92. |
I Can't Breathe
00:51
|
|||
We don’t have to go it alone,
but they will insist we wear pepper spray cologne
dabbed on our necks with bullets
and chokeholds so it lasts all night,
through the last dance and after the last glass is raised
and slammed, empty as all of this,
back down on the bar.
A toast!
To punching in and out and back in again,
to being sworn to secrecy for as long as there are eagles left.
To fear!
The constant comfort we can all agree on keeping us company;
cameras in the red lights and stop signs
and this book you’re reading.
To standing your shaky ground!
Through earthquakes and hurricanes, shackled in place by hollow
laws.
Touchdown!
Where was I going with this?
Doesn’t matter.
I don’t have to go it alone.
|
||||
93. |
With the Wolves
00:52
|
|||
A step off a ledge and she’s sinking
to the bottom of a brick pool,
stabbed adrenaline into her chest, hard.
A tour guide by day, nights are spent
betting on greyhounds named
Star Party and Dionysius.
And after one more afternoon
of waking up in a stranger’s backseat
with a racing form stuck to her thigh,
she’s justified stepping over the barricades
to run with the white wolves.
The tourists can take all the pictures they want
and zoom in on her eyes
and Cheshire grin
and they can bet on who will win —
the wolves or the girl.
Unable to agree on names, they’ll call the wolves
Wolf 1, Wolf 2, etc.
and call the girl Crazy Lady.
There,
there is your happy ending
racing to the edge of whatever.
|
Larry Fulford Florida
Larry Fulford is a writer and comedian and used to play a bunch of drums.
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