Also,
here’s an even more odd take on the whole deal:
There
were rubber-cement lovers in line to buy some, I don’t know, new system of
withdrawal, a banked-on shyness, well, there’s the glassy glint of it, slunk
awnings, horrible gutter water the color of Mars, and off, and on, there we go.
I had to walk, so I did. It prepared me for shinier courts to say, “Easy now.
How? How?” to the big-uppers of half-on sales. Art-show bystanders, plugs, a
rabbit in the window, dead or alive, easy in the knees, leaves, groping, the
usual and the unexpected there as well. Training-bra wearers down to no good,
if at all, if any, and so I kept walking, plunk, stomp, turn, twist, and all
that, towards the microphone some guy’s placed in a high place. It was to be
seen. I got there, of course, and used it. I said stuff and it went out loud,
booming, filled with purpose. I brought up eating and sleeping. I hacked apart
what was telling, what wasn’t, what seemed like it should be. I trundled on. I
messed around with boiled-pea lovers. I walked away. Litter, glass shards,
leaves, the usual. I make my own resistance. Patter insists. I mosey on by,
shoes, leaves, dirt, pant cuffs. I am not eating any cake.
Fatty
ran up my tab for me, it seems. I’ve got more than work to cut out what’s in. I
sit down. I prattle on a bit, and then I’m done with that, and it’s over, so. I
always keep a bottle of absinthe on the shelf. I never count cars when it
rains. I get by and then some. Sure, defeat stalks the afternoons too, but I
find the less of it is more, for the most. Fatty couldn’t get me down, though,
or hold what I didn’t have responsible for what the crows were behaving. Guns
that’ll never draw. A frown is all that sticks. Jump the tide with it, I’m just
pant cuffs, dirt, leaves, shards of glass. I’m just the half of it that nobody
ever knows, never quite safe or dangerous enough. I once made Fatty cry: my
claim to fame.
In
the past, brave enough, I look. Fatty’s gone. I’m on my own side, now. I use
commas like shotguns. There aren’t faces, only laughers. A replica of
scavengered love. Somebody send me a line; I am not as well liked as I think.
There
are only a few Oh-Wells left in me. My night’s glittering with strange
exchanges. Look, it is all leaves, dirt, pant cuffs, shards of glass. I rank
leftover from the rest. I almost register moonlight on my scale. I take
rock-solid occupancy rates to better churches. Every task is unassigned. My
promises are louder than car alarms. Get the hell out of love. It is closed for
the season.
More.
Please.
Left.
Room’s dead. Life’s a gamble with some music on here and there. Going under and
under everything. The opposite of problems. Straightening out that week-old
cigarette you found in your pocket; that sort of doing okay. Something almost
dying in the atmosphere around here. Like craving champagne. Somebody call,
“Cut!” I’m done.
Ventriloquising
ideas. As it welts and stings. We have none of it all. We’ve got dead phones
and sad hearts. We call old numbers and mumble through static. The hardly
together and the keep it takes to keep you there. A meadow of rot and cold. A
hand that’s too shaky to hold. We’ve got bills to never pay and places to keep
heading to, over and under. Hell. We don’t even have the right pants on for the
job.
(PAUSE)
That
time when it was to say, “Were you blonde, Suzie?” But it was never an asking
arrangement. It was not for shallow places for the rain. It was not in
television laughter. “Let me not tell you, about or for it.” Or, “If you let
me.” Teeth that frown. Paddling dogs. A faucet out of drips. Shoulder, hip,
moonbeam, bloody bathwater. A child’s room emptied. We had races, at times, in
singing mode, a little stiff. Tatters, sea arms, clips torn too. And a belch.
There will be time, if it is seven pm. If it is not Friday, yet, then we can be
sinister.
A
gem gone missing. The arm wrestling champion of Calexico has gone north for the
evening. Eddie Pascal’s got his finger on his robot’s pulse, and we’re all
playing for grabs and holds. In casual visor-wearing some attitudes drift and
splurge on slightly worn attire. The garage is filled with firewood and tires.
“You
answered for it.”
“Who’s
asking?”
This
motioning of the pivot foot, this harkening before any after.
We
have time to cut the funding from your left ear to your right. We have time to
cut, tonight. If you take yes for a question. If you make lies out of lies.
We’ll stroll the scales from all the tunes and tackle what’s left of the room.
If it is glory time in Hallelujah Town, if it is raining indoors, if the scoop
of miss is gone from take then we’ll have what’s stayed and lost.
(FAST FORWARD)
I
cannot bear dreaming of you anymore. It is a stubborn burden of blotting, of
teeth grinding at its meanest, and I will not sweat through another night of
it, my dear.
My
dear,
The
munching away of my resilience is a conman’s threat. I do not reveal my innards
so truly and easily, whether they be figurative ones or the real dead things of
it. Can we not part like seas instead of hair? I mope more than you’d ever care
to notice, still, and the windowsill is never dusted properly. Yesterday I ate
a single grape before disposing of the dead snails, shells and all, in the
garbage compactor.
The
young get lonely too.
“I
woke up; I got lonesome; and I needed someone.” The cry of the whole world.
It is very sleepy in my hair, this time,
you must know. My address, lost or buttered with fragments of hearing, bearing no
slip of hand, held or let go, is running for away, now.
Some
things you should know: The wind here is lightly toasted. Only the seagulls
have terrible names. And the flags ripple with love of country and the likes.
Windows
shut to most of it, under the rattling of the casement, I look, I divulge less,
and the mockery of shut-ins does its worst to me too, if you must pry. I do not,
pry that is, and this all you’ll get out of me about it.
(REWIND)
Pant
cuffs, dirt, sidewalk cracks. And I am breathing, two, three, two. And the
count’s off. Open to bad times. Head in need of shape. Orphaned leaves lying,
crackling, and I am sliced in for this, shards of glass, dirt in sidewalk
cracks, pant cuffs. Walk. Walk. Keep moving. My eyes always diverted. Gum
stains. Suspicion never leaves, not laughing, not otherwise, and back to the
lettering I go, pant cuffs, dirt, shards of glass, yes, and then nobody’s
looking. Me? I’m playing it dangerous, almost like always. Almost.
(PAUSE)
All
the ways a letter can end. Nobody reading. There are expressions of excitement
all over.
Start
singing now. It’s a solo shot in the ninth when you’re down by eight. The light
will fall down on you.
“If
it is? Friday? Yet?”
“This
all because of it, something wrong.”
“Seven until thirty past it.”
“Eyes
that won’t wander enough. Mine. Yours. The clock, it never strikes.”
“Good.
Penelope. Good.”
“I
was not blonde, and now, but if I were, then.”
“Hold
me in your lazy arms and tell me that you’re mine. Or just hold me with your
eyes. This is an order, asshole.”
“Something
is wrong, here.”
(REWIND)
The
croaking voice, it smacks of counting. Past the avocado trees. Past the hours
and the minutes we get, here. And then I put a “dear” in there so it all sails,
so that it all becomes allegation and tactful tract handing. To put the drapes
up, to drench it all in kerosene. The scent of lion ragout in the gusty lure of
the shore.
Nothing
will come from this. No back. No forth.
The
charred remains are only what they are: a place where nothing grows.
(REWIND)
“Suzie’s
belly has grown more of late.”
“She
is accompanied by child.”
“I
do not think that is the correct phrase.”
“Something
here is wrong.”
(STOP)
Clap.
Shout. Somebody is ironing shirts in a dim lit corner of a shabby room. Clap. Go
ahead. Cheer. And then remain silent for what will not ever come next, or after
that too. Somebody has made an entrance. Clap. Cheer. It is okay. Everything is
good.
(PLAY)
Walking.
Pant cuffs. Rain. Leaves. Blonde. Shards. Glass. Dirt. Pant cuffs. Walking. Walking. I
am, was. Footsteps. Leaves. Gone.
Who?
Posts
