Has
there been older elsewhere’s than these? If at one time opening new to some
kinder mist of sap, sure, it does mean that we’ve been told the same. I’ve
lived my life this long. I know certain things. It takes two to know one,
sometimes. You hear the same song enough times and it’s all the same. The
magic, if there ever were any, is gone. And the lord’s luck just ain’t enough. It
just ain’t. You get full. You get a bellyful. You munch way past the point of
satiation. A crumbly, x-mas-tree-snowy feeling that soaks you, I guess. A crisp
and clear hold on the place where you’ve got to know you are to know where
you’re going. Yes? It’s applicable. Trust me. Tap right to it and moreover’s
the reason. Right on. Or wrong. Who gets most of it anyway? A daytime
television special and a crick in your neck. That’s about all. The colors of
daylight winding down, afterwards, and some closer fashion of breezing through
with it until the night hits completely. No, it’s not a fly-me-to-the-moon
serenade. Be aware that it’s crawling closer than a horse’s song. No turtles
allowed. No in-other-words left to say. Not today. Not until the day goes on and
slips away.
No
open bounding in the farthest fields of other’s decay. No round of curtain
calls coming for midnight’s cheery bloom. Basketball scores and jousts of
terror pinned to the heart that waits. Well, a mustering of lonely arias from
the shipwrecked crags. Gob stopped and plain. Poorly in the middle of mirrored
halls.
Cheaper
surroundings go futile. I am not mad. I am saner than it makes sense to be.
A
nyala strides by. The proceedings go as if they were never planned. Bands lead
themselves. Openings are inevitable at all points along a scale that never
slides. Bad thoughts go grandly through to places overt and lacquered slick
with too much care, and France declares war on Prussia.
Could
you think ever of other thoughts than those you’ve always got? Always cutting
away at yourself. A minor manner of keeping mum. Maris creaming one into the
cheap seats. Everything’s won only one day to have to lose.
Charged
with the untold volts of lost-tooth memories. Bent to life and back again to
live what’s left in a suitable cheap-suit existence. No pianos needed. No
backup catcher taking up space on the bench. No cards left to play. It’s a boy.
It’s never a balloon painted the color of mars. It’s never choosing what’s
choicest in a dream-settled world. It puts ignoring in the bleachers and fans
cocktails to sleep. There’s no death like ours, alone in parked cars, folding
blank checks into paper airplanes, kissing the windows to steam. It’s always
the fault of a faulty life being led through diurnal cycles of doomed regret.
Good is not the way of steep climbs towards failure’s greatness, at least as
far as assuming will allow.
A
green-and-blue colored pint glass of glitter and mud. A little less light for
the stage. Hips slamming against the wall. Laundry’s in a heap by the unplugged
record player on the floor. Why would stopping leave a go without a get to be
back again? Open for nobody’s business. Closed for four seasons. Minded and
hurried to be crowded in and left out. Always one keystroke away from a total
disaster. The back roads of hindsight are deserted except for a hurrying
retailer named Bud Hamm who is singing with all the windows down in his Datsun
Bluebird, “Self-absorbed people. Selfish assholes. That’s all there is. That’s
all I know. And there’s a seahorse on my bottle cap.”
God
is going broke over your smile. Cut down long before all of this. Orders walk
the course. Gold soldiers get going. The squash prepares itself for a meal.
Mash the merry out of me. Violet light soaks it in. Nothing to be got.
Everything to be given. Air space crawling with flickering bits of chopped
sequins. Better nights just behind you. There are no photographs left to marvel
at. There are no more no-mores to steep in brightness. Undo the math. Erase the
words. We are smaller than atoms compared to the sky-blue thoughts that have
themselves for lunch.
To
be mustered with a snort. To be uttered with a slight sneeze. Galloping north
by northern. Then a jab and a stutter step spit life into a manifold and jumpy
way of behaving. A jar of bioluminescent jellyfish rap in unison, “Halfway to
flying, we Vida-Blue blind, and the day makes stew of you, and shit, it’s a
draped dream of drool. We got a deal that’s all bums. We got no thumbs. We
light night and sleep away the day. There ain’t no bubbles in our gum, son.
What, you got nowhere to run? Well, ho to the damn hum.” The hardest parts
of floating degenerate into jumper cables and broken promises. The glamour of
me sings fireflies their dreams.
Pretending
is dragged from garage to fire station, from emergency room to ice cream stand,
from box office to swimming pool. I give no-thanks to the sighed gravel of shy,
let-go contempt. You are not a yard sale or a hot-air balloon. Everything is
peanut shells crushed on blacktop. Teardrops are nickels. Vultures are supper.
And there is no had here to make-believe in. Not since we were left trailing
spasms back to slight tickles. Numbers crunch. A wheel invents motion. Winds
sell other winds. Pianos get serious.
If
there has been other has-beens on order from newfangled buffets and starchy
suit-and-tie T-shirts and olive-oil-soaked moon goggles, if there were a way to
shade a shadow, then there’d be plenty gone wherever where’s leaving to, if
there were stopped moments to not think about too much.
A
mug shot of Clubber Lang duct-taped to the dashboard. Diamonds studding the
steering wheel. Our hero is wearing neon green corduroys, an ocher velour vest
over a white V-neck sweater, and black leather fingerless gloves. The windows
are down. He is flooring it. He is resilient and insouciant. His hair is thick
with pomade and his smile is made of glass. His avocation these days is speed,
and there are no clamps on his temerity as he hauls off through the dismantled
grunt of his existence, careening and gutterballing at red lights towards ends
he can’t even imagine imagining. Squinting is his only business. Maps are
bonfire material. “People who see me are people who see me.” A quirked
have-at-it that bites the melody his thoughts make. Sensitivity scents the wind
with motor-oil dreams. A garnish of pluck harmonizes with the guts he’s
spilling all over the road, and it is not a weekend’s sensibilities that spur
him on-- it is the dangerous appeal of fleeing, of putting some miles between
who he was and what he’s finally getting around to becoming. He spits at cop
cars and makes wishes on yellow lights.
Posh
gets its own back. The listeners become unhinged and leer more than you’d
expect. For the best of it, this cure takes no medicine. Plurality back floats
through dust motes and flower-replete heads and the love of Jesus and hardly
soft-boiled desire and a hold that won’t take and telling that singularly whips
the worst of you back into game shape. There’s nothing left to suck the poison
back. We have at it with bike rides. We walk away from trails blazed by bees,
setting fire to carrot gardens and fields of saffron. We are not shapes of
letters or the way numbers sound. We are more than a dare and less than credits
rolling. Forget the love of God for a second and roll around in autumn’s arms.
Clothes disappear around here all the time. Aesop’s in the clink. We’ve got
clocks that chime Jesus’ name over the tinny toy-piano plunk of Walk On By, and
it’s a toe tap, almost a whirling dance to send you off to find your own way to
the lord. We go and we do not. Making takes up most of what makes up time for
now. Things born in cemeteries. Things lost on whoever’s around. Forget the
armless two-stepping bastards who make their own darts, the ones they’ll never
throw, and things nobody’s left to know, like worm dollars and hairnets for the
bald. We lie in dugouts and chew sunflower seeds. Nobody knows never-hammered
nails like this. To be echoless. To be the only proof of sound. Sewing backwards
through stitched laughs. I open. I close. All the time. Flower me. It’s almost
morning’s last light, and everybody’s out of cigarettes for good.
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