Races and Aces

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

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.