Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Non Sequiturs Without Rabbits


            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?