Austin

from Perfect Sleeping Weather by Larry Fulford

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Scrawled into notebooks from the familiar comforts of temporary homes and the passenger seats of mechanically unsound vehicles adrift on the highways and back roads of America, Perfect Sleeping Weather is fifteen years of thoughts, observations, facts, and fictions hammered into a collection of poetry that, according to one reader, "sounds like a sigh."

In this, his first book, writer/drummer/comedian Larry Fulford reflects on the usual -- life, death, love and leaving -- while still managing to name-check Van Halen. Twice.

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lyrics

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.