Sunday, November 10, 2013

the title goes last


      “Sure, I got my foot in the door, but only to have that foot hacked off at the ankle, and the door promptly slammed in my face.” --    

the telling spontaneity of walking blue-taped to surer fires (bloody, if not) in the necessary equivalent of bottomed-out time (shared or spent) waking mushy, kind, ill-sorted, factually obsolete, encapsulated with worry (or from it), jest-lunging, set-to-tasks, or almost dull too in the robotics of it (that’s insistent) for what could matter and meekly grow weekly weaker, that too a robustness (called for or not) in the stationary lull of mailboxes clanking closed, in the rob and rot of it, in churched chance, in the shanked surface (for the winter’s up for it) that hurls in on the mess, inscrutable, of course, as the orders never get placed, last to the fence’s picket (never light or just for laughs) runs body-wise to the rescue, recourse to the harp hearted, refinement for the lower crusters, not pie-eared for now (at most), not ruining the beer bar for the better, not only the worry that goes along with all those whys, not numbered, not days (or the longing for them) rusting to nights, a better-this-or-that-way to carry along in a soldier’s pouch, just a rest for us (or them) too in the whale order of shoe strength, sure as shutters shut, not at all likely (in the weather to fly) if it caters to getting mad at the way flowers won’t grow    

Some cushy job, some Nerf life, some conspicuous consuming later, he went out and got himself killed. There it was, in the expanse of envelopes and tweed curtains, something to call far away about, or just to leave, kind of alone. He had none of the younger parts of a person you’d expect. To the latest, to the oldest spanked brand new, money was just an abstract concept, something to be whittled away and worn like epaulettes, something to show rank or lift in the power structure of soft living: a showy wattle-and-daub attitude and tempered-glass exterior covering up a fiberglass soul. A low skim of responsibilities nudged towards the next skipped disaster. Teflon for the moon’s mistakes. Gaudy stuff for the needy. He was always going about reaping what he’d never deign to sow. Some rudely established hierarchy of willful ignorance. Some spackled bunch of gloom, a glitch in the woodwork, a harp in the junkyard. Just another sap attempting to get famous without anybody noticing.     

You, sir, have got some serious reneging to do. On the surface we will not support it. Your taillights dim in the distance of whatever wake this turns into or out of.  Most persons are of the most uninteresting sort, you’ll find. They go bowling with the balls of others in rented shoes with their life. Am I to blame for the shortcomings of persons I do not wish to know, or even walk on the same side of the street with? You? Well, sir, that is about a third of the same story, in all the cases, covered, as it were, with your maligned dog-shit routine. Practicality is the same matter. Shame or no shame. Go under it; come in cleaner than most surroundings. I am not at all waiting around for it, though.

The years are long and strafed. We’ve got no defense. All the contesting’s done for. In peachiest instincts, get the cropped substance of what’s been had and taken. Nobody’s whistling. Color it all in. We’ve got lots of nowhere to get on to. If you’ve stopped listening, I don’t blame you.

Don’t get me right, there’s a speed we’ll never accomplish with the rainy way of things. All’s inherited with a squeegee’s swipe. A third’s full’s mostly empty. Got a reason here that needs taking. Music that crept by unnoticed on the water on its way to Peaksville. Sad is all there is sometimes, and that’s misery crowded out, left for where’d-you-be or chased-until-grown and the trouble with staying awake. Corner the pass. Greet the moment in placed stays. Quality’s in the lingering of worry’s solemnity. How aren’t you?

Reports on the world since you left it are all bad. I am not tipping well enough. There are mockingbirds in the basement. No truck tires. No hats or glasses. Just a room, a place to sit. The music’s for suckers, of course, and the dancing’s all out of quarters. Minding it, here, with just red socks and a martini glass full of olive juice. You don’t know the difference anymore. In the dirtiest resting place around, I guess it is fair and delicately gooey enough. All we own, or all we were, is displaced, rust-ribbed and charred with undoing. A rugged affair, and some things still go unnoticed. A slip towards the universal, and then pattering, and slowly a creak of steps, indistinguishable surprises or tactics sent packing, the movement of mush, and the streets have lost their shine while the onagers tame the rest of us into stability. Released hurry does its liveliest. Caressing’s gone the way of toaster ovens. A cube of frozen Sprite for your thoughts. Any? It’s a rip’s wave of sad. Loosed care hungering for a taker. List, and it gets worse and better, to the up of no down. There is no chocolate in hell, baby. And the highest ranking among the troops of now get hitched to better-off-without-them daydreams. Lyrics are meant to be sung. Me? I am not troubled. Not at all dangerous to the touch. And if the news runs on and off, it’ll be a resuscitated evening, something hard to spell, and in the middle of a laugh something worries itself out. Or, then, well, in the best of it you could clench a prayer and spook the neighbors. Traipsing gets me through. And if there is no “it” to have, then we’ll haunt the movie houses and the junkyards and bowling alleys, and the best rate going on coats checks the devils from my head. And if we fall in the rum, and the running gets us done, then the spool of whatever’s going to punch your guts out makes its own amends. Outlining the cascades of fallen leaves, and we dash and drop and get taken in and out for the lash of tomorrow’s tomorrow. We run on cash and candy bars. Something suits the necklace of being, in the harsher ways of being me. And I still dial your phone number in my dreams. At least there’s a liquor store close enough to feel like home. Out of cards. Caught up in the tenses of time’s lend. There are only pears here, and not a peach for miles. Not a robot in the merchandise. Not a curl of cream in the coffee’s cup. Let’s spread nothing but the old, in the bananas of our days, in the cusp of sopping dry, in the worms and in the sand. I am labeled Do Not Find. Age is wasted on the old. And, so, here I don’t go.

draining backwards