tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58509840426624878822024-03-13T14:44:29.571-07:00Excess & DefectExcerpts of my unpublished writings as they become available. And that is all.Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comBlogger417125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-24723269752166089492016-03-23T12:01:00.001-07:002016-05-09T17:06:28.603-07:00nabbed shade<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
“And what, pray tell, is your definition of soon?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The works. That’s all. Nothing left in. So slightly, ever
so off and on.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Expensive speak. Flying the true expletive nature of
rounded not-so-well.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“True’s the new fake. Don’t get it, please.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Happening. The first gets dusted, ditched by last, and then
the backup generator kicks in. We’re all just new diseases waiting to spread.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Galloping towards Tripoli. Backs wretched. Heads low. There
are no good buys in the warehouse of farewells.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Sneaking defeat sinks out and makes the vinyl sing.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“And it is never very terrible at all.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Of course. We capture frequency rather than modulation.
Or…so we think, maybe?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Maybe we don’t think. Maybe even the tides are
commercialized by capitalism’s stinky feet.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Too accostable, this guy. Always getting accosted wherever
he may chance to go.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“People want to grab, to reach out and touch. Attention’s at
a premium, and it doesn’t last. Faired less better than well, in the brusque
stifling ornaments of paid hype, artificial accolades, and the re-purposed hope
of a censored generation. Feeble? Maybe that too.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The TV’s ruined my capacity for abstract thought. We need
better drugs. Something more precise, less opaque. Something that will catch
the puniest bits of experience and denude it down to a form rife with capabilities
and untapped energy. We need to be out of ourselves and completely of ourselves
at the same time. Nothing left to ruin the afternoon.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Giving quiet instead of keeping it. That’d do, right?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Not quite. Just a richer substitute for knock-off pride.
What we’re doomed to never forget.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“A word not worth a thousand pictures.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Something pertaining to the illusion of opposites
contradicting each other. Plus, there is illicit understanding for you, too, if
you get too short with distance, if it comes to it, of course.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The glimmer’s what remains. Nothing that’ll stain though.
Nothing that’ll take up a permanent residence and hound you through cacophonous
mornings of little or no sleep. And if we are allowed, we have the privilege of
growing old.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Places!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Yes. Into the spotlight we go and hide. Run to rumbles and
tumble to shittier estimations of just where it is that you will stand and
sit.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The letdown is plenty. The bad liar is forced into
uncomfortable admittances. Truth beaches itself, irrationally, on the shores of
giving up. I wear dark sunglasses in stormy weather. Tell me what to see? Hell,
I’ll see what’s there and what’s not, and then we’ll see if the difference
evens matters.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Listen. The sound of automatic doors closing. A grizzled
swoosh. I’m going from hotel bar to hotel bar. I’m sensing a rampant departure
from reality, imminently—but who’s? Mine’s a flushed-out, reinforced barbwire
job slapped with impromptu casket-waiting. What else are we doing here except
holding out until we die?” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“A parked Chevelle, two walkers folded up in the backseat, a
couple long-stemmed roses lying above the the dash, handicap placard dangling
from the rear-view, upholstery fairing decent enough. We are stills of what we
wish we never were.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Shout that from a tall place and take a number. I’m walking
down the stalled escalator of my inheritance: the bulk of what’s been passed
down to me through the stink and bile of innumerable others, the hand-me-downs
of evolution, going with the bones, still.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Crabby confluences be damned. I’m playing the universe’s
smallest recorder.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I heard that.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“A Peace Lily for your dearest memories. Some Florist’s
Chrysanthemum to clear the air. It is soon enough. Rise below. We’ll be had.
It’ll be later. And the curses say themselves.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“My stomach growls like a police siren. The steps we used to
take. You know, we used to go to bars and sit in the corner and get drunk, and
then walk home singing and laughing. Such a shabby elegance we lost. Or it was
lost on others. The dark’s comfort fit. The mistakes turned eye-ward. Legs,
liquor, and love. The only holy trinity I’ve ever known.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Based on that, we’re all in for it, sooner…or soon enough.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I wish I had longer thoughts.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Like, ‘Who likes me enough to like me back, Slim?’?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Generosity of spirit gives me enough. Back’s faster than
forward ever was.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Another day not like this. That’s enough. And we all never
do get it.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“As for me? I’m just the drunk at the end of the bar. Don’t
pay me no mind.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Won’t do.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“And then the big bastard upstairs turns up his radio and
drowns all of us out.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-31133530097491053792015-03-14T17:42:00.004-07:002015-03-14T18:12:55.153-07:00Misleading The Way<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Gin martini, straight up, heavy on the olives.”
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“How many’s heavy?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I don’t rightly know. Three. No. Five.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Let’s agree on four, then. I gotta watch the inventory on
garnishes best I can. Gin’s a-whole-nother thing.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You know what they used to call gin?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“What?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Blue Ruin. And beer was Heavy Wet.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Have another, will you?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well, you know, these things probably ain’t cheap. And
besides, I’m going steady with another bottle of gin. Don’t want to make it
jealous.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Gosh bless you.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Gesundheit.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Nobody sneezed.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’m preparing for an unknown future.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Settling in, no?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Yes.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Perhaps the mood’s defunct, or at least deficient in airy
wonder.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“All I notice is all I got.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Cherries are all picked. Better back that rig up.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Hedge all the bets, too. Fearlessness backs up worry’s
tough-guy stance with cashless transactions of kill-or-be-buried-alive
politics.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Hell, put the artillery away, will you? Somebody’s going to
get an accidental bullet to the chops. Besides I’ve got a heavy date coming in
here in a bit.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“How’s that?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I don’t know. It just happened. She’s a tiny wisp of a
thing, just under a bill, and she dresses like a Russian Peasant. The kind of
girl you wouldn’t think twice about hefting up over the threshold.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’m getting in of there.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Trust me, it’s a bargain to be born this late into things.
A real inert reaction to medicinal motivation. I just can’t get myself to
believe that it’s butter, or whether it makes a difference, or if butter’d be
better, or if not believing that it’s not butter is the better option to
retreat with. And guffawing’s all I’ve got to show for it.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Don’t let the NSA catch you crying. Hold your phone at
arm’s length. Place all the trinkets of your past in recycling containers. Be
false to all senses of self, or selves, or others who categorize your
delicately applied indifference as being a sucker for a girl in cowboy boots.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“But just think of all the displaced citizens currently
residing in a tent city beneath a freeway overpass who go batty with waiting.
Are we blaming the right structural fixtures for the complacency of the
passed-over many?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’ve got to just start being more daring.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Therein’s the rubric we are too shallow to follow. All the
whimsy’s in the getting. And we get by with it for the satisfaction of appeased
appetites and unruly sight-setters.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’m in desperate need of a guru.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“A watchful, mindless grace imbues your lackluster spirit.
Keep rummaging around in the red. Empty’s just a clear-cut in the forest of
glum, aspirational, dance-move gestation. So, go ahead and shortchange yourself.
What’s the point of all this itch-scratch-scratch-itching that you’re plying.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Better get a refill, here.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Who’s babbling?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I left this conversation a good while ago.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Who?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Another necktied bastard with his thumbs up.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Is that bartender ever coming back?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The chances are extremely unknown. Maybe we should take
matters into our own fists.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’m giving myself a standing ovation.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Who?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Not you. Does it really matter after that?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Praise be the holier momentum of these wishy-washy times we
abide in.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’m back.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’m front.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well, competition’s the gray day’s wane, and I’m none for
it, any of the ways. Been beaten down too much to care what I’m being kept
from. Get me another and another, and then another two, too.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Thought you split with that bowler from Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Nope. I left him for a bottle of Pernod and a rack of
flashy gowns.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Play it perilous, kid. We’re all from not-around-there. And they're playing craps in the drained fountain on Boardner's patio again.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The sky’s sweeter than a bagful of jelly doughnuts,
bursting apart all pink and orange flames, scratches of bright streaking
through baleful tatters of cloud, and we’re stuck in here discussing and
ordering our own demise. Misery loves its own kind.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well, the water pressure’s been downgraded to low in my
building. Showers are a sad affair again.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Nobody lives the magic long.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’ve just become a stock character witnessing these live
events of my life unfold.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Where’s Lady Addendum?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Not far off, I figure.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Or left, or rights away, too. Maybe the culled stoicism of
reformed lunatics will assuage the guilt of grumbling through the years. Man’s
inhumanity to God and all that blowharding. Fellows, we should all take that
drink now.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“That last long swim.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“To cash-hungry rapscallions on a scarecrow’s diet with an
easy touch.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“To last laughs and later loves.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“To be restless moonlight resurrected by daylight.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“To fishy love: an old relentless song a drunken fiddler
plays.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“To air-conditioned cocktail-lounge songs and more foes than
any honest man could count.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Patch it up. Down the gullet. To triumph and broken chains.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Playing quiet?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Another hard night to get through.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“A voluptuous crucifixion: the featherweight burden and
bitter beauty of being alone.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Did you hear the one about the nihilist who found meaning
in nihilism?” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“He imploded with importance, with…mattering. It was all,
well, not enough?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“One is always, at best, alone.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Where’d that old blonde girl run off to?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Some place sadder. Somewhere more kind and gentle, and less
human.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“To outrun a few more devils before injuring any more of God’s
creatures.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Just more betrayal of despair. Blanched sky and all, we get
the least out of it, not so courageous now, are we?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“One of these days we’ll stop running at our loosest ends.
We’ll rest well and often. We’ll scrub the mud from our worst deeds and get set
free.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“A woman’s presence is required.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Of course. Of course. Of the most casual and complacent course.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You know what I say?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Too much.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I say this: dance with beautiful girls. The rest works
itself out.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“So you say.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“So I do.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-41872195833501196552015-01-27T12:21:00.001-08:002015-01-27T12:22:17.338-08:00Liquid Daylight’s MeniscusA frivolous young woman, with a brand-new pair of dancing
slippers and a mouth like a valentine. She goes out, laugh in hand, without as
much as an easy time to never have again. Backwards. That’s how it always
happens. In good-old reverse, permanent rewind, at the beckoning globules of
nose drippings from a certain dubious cretin. That’s the reckless way the story
usually rolls. Life: just a boring way to go through the motions and watch
other people have all the fun. I sure could use a special occasion now and
then. Sometimes your head just gets stuck, and you’re done for. I know. I’ve
dated my share of cocktail waitresses. Named 19<sup>th</sup> century presidents
all in a row. Put the sights away for later, the lead bringing up the rear. Not
for something, all pastures gone to heaven. Butterfly Weed for the whole
cacophonous mess. Mostly all’s just trying. The scrimmage for attention, bowed
or hunched shoulders scuffling by in scuffed shoes, drawn, only noticing what
will keep the process going until the final grinding halt of existence.
Longshoremen, daffy and dull, wipe tired smiles from daylong grinds, eying
lady’s asses with quick double takes as they stroll by, say close to sunset on
a muggy late September day. A crazed beeline for the Underground, the trains
echoing up morbidly through the street’s grating. Nobody’s asking the time. The
Russian’s aren’t coming. Giant cranes take in the scene from godly heights.
Construction’s taken over. Noise is all there is.
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then I just thought, ‘Well, I’m going to be dead someday. I
might as well do something with my life while I have it.’ Then it all just
started to happen. It was easy. Nothing to it. I was only surprised by how
little any of it mattered, and the less I cared about it the easier it was.
Typically I only wavered on Wednesdays and Sundays; and even that was of little
help. My overall demeanor was mildly disinterested. A hurl was slopped in my head
to tinker with drafty thoughts: a natural kempt hold on what tried to never be
there, or just a nodding off to precipitate rational reactions to other more
dizzying flights. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“There just wasn’t anyone to talk to tonight. So I got
scared and came over here. Here? Here’s where the flophouses get flipped for
somebody else’s living. Bottle it all up, shut in, there. There? There’s here’s
other motivation. Try me. When it rains we pour. Freeze-dried Americana. Remind
me about when there were better things to come. Because, I tell you, a looser
tie you won’t find. Your dilly’s my dally, Parlay Vu. And before any tick’s
attack you’ll find limes in the freezer, spoiled, left for comatose, creasing and
golf-ball pocked. Stalwart and underfed. Fended off. Bored and elated. Badly
punctuated. TV staring. Pajama wearing. Head in a sling. Worried about every
last thing. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“There’s got to be casement for it, you know? Some outsides
to hold it all in. Well, who knows, or can tell, what’s the beef, not where,
no, but what, of course, you know? See? Well. Yeah. You heard me. Well. Well.
Well. It’s a scorched matter of scalding facts that beat the shit out of, once
and after all, the dreary way you make sense of these fuckers doing the
fucked-up shit that they do. Ignite. Incite. Whatever. I’m bored with people so
easily offended. Go take a bath and get over it, you sissies. There are more
horrible institutions making your breakfast goodies than in all the cartoons
you’ll ever not see. And that’s the thing. Why do you feel the need to look? If
you don’t want to see something, well, just look at something else. There’s no
shortage of stuff to see, you know? Gentle looks and big, dark eyes aside,
we’ve got to come to grips with being spared or the world will rip us a new
one.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A few laughs lots later, a man enters a small office
building brandishing a tennis racket and a pocket bible. Riotous applause,
please. Thank you. Now, this guy’s befuddled over some minor trivialities in
his demeanor. Nothing suitable or “at will” if that’ll do. “Be little so as not
to be noticed.” Some bad advice, followed, and he’s in under his ass. Can’t
just will these things away, you know. He takes out a solar-powered calculator and
starts crunching numbers. Mild laughter. That’ll do. And he thinks, ‘Just some
ramshackle tabernacle.’ And the choir’s warming up in the basement with some
seriously phlegmy throat clearing. “Lookin’ mighty likely that it’ll try to
scare up some rain here,” goes the building’s Water Officer. Highly qualified
to make distinctions twixt the norm and the careless & unusual, the
customary and the cosmetic, and soon to not solely just be a “cop” in terms of
position but a worn and recklessly edgy cog in the lower-down movements, not
unlike a battered cello in need of some heavy-duty servicing. Some shocked calm
here, please. Thanks a bunch.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“To pee or not to pee. Or to forever hold your pee,” he
quietly asserts. “Level me, soon. I need a John close by at all times, like a strapped-for-cash
Lady Of The Night. Maybe with steam coming out of the manholes while she
balances herself ass-down atop a fire hydrant, heels kicked up, alit there like
Grace Kelly or something, maybe the moon’s glint and the streetlights hazy
shine providing the backdrop a halo of class, schmaltzy as it all might be,
before reality crumbles her dreams to a morbid halt.” He totters, swung low.
The wall holds him up. His lean comes in quick, feet still flat, about as
delicate as a bulldozer, as he tries to pluralize his bearings, and his
shoulder takes the brunt. ‘Pain’s all that’s real, now. Pain’s all there is.’ A
comforting thought that surrenders all other thought to eternity’s tiny grasp.
Blunt and traumatic. Forcefully adept. His instincts trigger nothing suitable
to surviving. Plus, there should be some gasping and oh-my-god stuff here.
Okay. That’s about right. ‘Keep moving. Keep moving.’ The refrain assists his
ambulatory struggle. A heaviness lightly strums in his boots. ‘I’m not much of
what I always am. Just an idea in others’ heads. Just something dreamt up and
put here for kicks. I don’t imagine any of this will last.” Down the primrose
path he continues. All’s as it should.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“We cannot keep compensating you for the use of the unused
portion of the premises. Here’s your mask. Put it on. Save face. Be critical.
Take your clothes off. Leer. Bring that body over here. Have a blessed
afternoon.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, the guy slims and slides along the wall. A purr’s excuse
for a whimper, a sidled prayer. A shush followed by some awed gasps perhaps.
Voices recorded in a bathroom. Pretty good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So long Marianne. The glow’s gone from the cheek, but he’s still at it,
again and again, while over the intercom a hushed booming voice declares a
state of mandatory incongruous dismay: “Who’s left to withstand the pummeled?
Deeper shallows of swallowed reasoning conduct their own all-thumbs
investigations into these sucker-punched situations. Standards of decency be
damned. Drawing distinctions is for the petty and softer-lensed. Be of good
care. Take cheer. There’s a moan here somewhere with nowhere left to go.
Silence. We’re through.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Stumped. The mortician’s slumped out of thought. The
ceiling’s pocked, Styrofoam, stringy zucchini strands dangling in the a.c.: the
confetti of modernity’s rusty interior waving in the chemically antiseptic
breeze. Sporting a tweed Chesterfield coat with a gold cigarette holder
clenched sideways between a few cracked molars, the guy wends his wiry way
through the slightest of gestures. Nothing noticeable let go of at the right
moment. And so the burnt-out ex-holy man states his case: “I’m standing as
close as possible to the TV from here on out.” A real sketchy marginalized sort
of foul-mouthed beast, something to be pounced on, never-questioning looks,
expeditions lusted together through halos and sobs, tepid insight doomed to
colder smiles, postponed restitution, the closing of all doors. And then the
odd-toed among the creatures got even. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-23505209241652544422014-12-06T21:49:00.000-08:002014-12-07T11:38:19.818-08:00maybe just happy<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: Were we less free then?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: Not now. I think. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: Then we’d have to please the court, if it would,
I’d venture to guess, please them to have us.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: Not a chance in a pear tree for even a drop of
accountability.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: Can I not get a witness?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: Without even a partridge to your name, this time
of year.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: Lying in the street, pretending that you’re dead,
trying to whip up some rabble to be roused over it all. I’d dare a peach.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: You’re sinister enough without it. Stranglers
make bad scapegoats. Trust me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: Bishop takes rook.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: Something like that, but less essential. More
universal. I don’t know. I don’t breathe anymore. I don’t hold up my hands in
surrender.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: A taciturn mold for the egalitarian modes of getting
around. Elvis always said that only Jesus was the king. For me? I don’t think
it matters. We make up what we want to see or believe. All evidence aside, I’m
phoning in my sentiments. Not expecting much of a return, if any.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: Belated sorrow or regret tinged with disbelief
over the willful ignorance of some power-hungry sucker in a $1,000 suit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: Not so grand, really. Reckless? Hell, we’re an
endangered species, taking potshots at each other, pretending that the subtle nuanced
differences between us make any bit of a difference. Take that, you person with
a darker hued skin tone! You are not as deserving of a human being as I am.
It’s all a bunch of name-calling, bullying, and other grade-school theatrics.
It’s stupid.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: Nobody notices.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: It’s a really dog-gone shame. Really. We could be
nice to each other, but we choose to be mean. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 33.5pt;">
RIOTER #2: Being hateful towards
others makes cowards feel better about themselves. “At least I’m not like that
guy, you know? I’m better than those people.” That sort of thing. Justifying
one’s shortcomings by attributing false ones to other, usually less fortunate
persons. Passing judgment to shore up your self esteem. We’ve been going too
damn gentle into these horrible nights for too long. I want the
meat-and-potatoes of me to mean something. Nothing need be ideal, but shit,
maybe head in that direction at least? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 33.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 33.5pt;">
RIOTER #1: Mattering. Is that it? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 33.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 33.5pt;">
RIOTER #2: I’ve heard it. Maybe
just checking under your own hood for faults before telling others about what’s
wrong with theirs, because maybe the check-engine light’s broken and you’re in
dire need of an overhaul. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 33.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 33.5pt;">
RIOTER #1: Be able and willing to
be judged before passing judgment on others. I mean, if you’ve really got
nothing to hide and have done no wrong then what’re you scared of?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 33.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 33.5pt;">
RIOTER #2: I’m indicting myself.
From here on out let’s let it all hang out. I’m a willing participant, see?
This is me not resisting. This is me playing along. Ain’t even going to
struggle. Let me tell my story, you tell yours. Let’s see where any of this
gets us.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 33.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 33.5pt;">
RIOTER #1: Nowhere, most likely.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 33.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 33.5pt;">
RIOTER #2: The truth dies easy
under the gaze of the partial eye. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 33.5pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 33.5pt;">
RIOTER #1: God awful, these
positions we are put in, the things that come to define us, the horror of
living with the fear of retribution, or dying by it. I am me just because I am.
There’s nothing else. Get over it. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: The minor inconsistencies of major network
failures. I am speaking no language. The rest is not up to anyone. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: Bare it all. Or bear it?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: The difference is lost, failed and familiar, on
all onlookers. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: Structural integrity, lacking the imagination for
a real empathic quality about one’s own perilous sojourn through the sadder
fields of plenty. People come from all over to leave here, and to ask stuff
like, “How will I think about this strange time of my life when it’s all
through.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: I need a body double, a stand-in for the
reasonable essence of guilt, courage, and strife. Plans to never attack. Those
wayward whiffs of pacifistic, surcharged enough-is-enough marginalized into
victimization. I play it dangerous. There’s just no other way.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: Sure. And mercy’s just a plea deal gone wrong. A
broken sort of miracle that hampers your better instincts for escaping the
pressure of fitting. There are blocks and blocks cursed by false grades drawn
up by no-good wealthy industrialists with greedy pens, where the widows mourn
through shallow fits and the stray dogs nose through junkyards of foul
promises, probing for reassuring signs of the past.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: The safety of it. The comfort of being forgotten.
My edges have been dulled by financial institutions who need naught but
themselves. There used to be a wig shop and a funeral parlor there where that
40-story condo complex now stands. Taking back what they long left to let grow
fallow, and now bulldoze in a tax-free exchange to build castles in the sky for
yuppies. We are the diminished, the refugees of capitalism’s greasy smile, the
chased and the frisked and the choked, the ones who cry wolf in their sleep and
crowd the hidden fringes of a world with no need of memories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: Place stripped of time. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: Try not to breathe. I believe in such miserable
things.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: And by the way, no. Everyone is not entitled to
their own opinion. We are a nation of the lazy and the busy, the misinformed
and the needy. What we lack’s all substance with a surface sheen. There’s an
undelivered keening just below the sound commercials make. A mild sort of
despair, timid and brash, scared and selfish and mean. I used to know a guy, a
fire eater who would get drunk and burn his throat. He dated a lady we used to
call Priscilla the Monkey Girl. She looked just like Uma Thurman, and danced like
Rita Hayworth. Couldn’t take your eyes off of here, twirling through the
drugstore. The way she swayed through a barely lit room, no stage would’ve cut
it. But when it was all told and said, the lather told the housesmith to ruin a
hod carrier, and it got loneliest at the bottom for everyone. Just more failed
greatness. A nation of wannabes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: Christopher fucking Columbus. I could use a good
week’s sleep. No. I am not mighty. I just toss with no more turns to take.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: Hey God, you can go fuck yourself, you piece of
shit.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: That’s more like it. Our rebellion is too mild,
too easy to overlook. Seldom is the slice of it all that all of our laboring
gets us. We are easily made before our time’s ever got a chance to come. Wither
and fold without even a flash…or a pan for that matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: Revenge never served except as an
appetite-whetting rouse. I mean, what the purgatory’s happening to those
so-called innocent-until-proved-guilty among us? What a dump. What a dive. What
a devil-damned shame. I am not so moved. Not ever less than now, then. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: Put me in your will. Sew me as a seam into all of
your I-have-a-dreams. Then the neighbors start to whine and we all dress for
church, and the real reason you’re fomenting the rage of so many window
smashers is merely the unique properties of forced demand poorly disguised as
options . Retribution slips in through the service entrance while the waiters
smoke in doorways of discontent. We are without the true channels to willingly
make the proper choices. Everything is rigged. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: Perhaps pretending to behave is best. Falling in
line just to eventually, quietly, without notice, destroy the whole idea of the
need for a line in the first place. And nobody knows or cares when it goes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: Fuck that. Fuck God and country and all that
other jingoistic, egomaniacal bullshit. I’m burning the ship before I go down
with it. The video replay will be ruled inconclusive.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: Cudgeled saps. Conked on the pate. Fustigated to
an early retirement from the big show. Castigate! Retreat! Rebel! Attack! Lie
low! We are all made of and by things outside of who we believe ourselves to
be. The eye squints until it can perceive things the way the mind wants them to
be. These are just things to say out loud in times of doubt and rumination. Well,
because, strangers in relation to other strangers, all the stitching and
unstitching is for not. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: An entire generation tossed aside, lost in the
byzantine circuits of gadgetry, addicted to being entertained, never looking
back, entitled and comfortably ruined for daydreams at such a young time in
their lives. The same mistakes. The same whimpers of giving up. Put a catch phrase
on a banner and wave it in the streets. Chant the same phrase in a mob while
clapping hands. Block traffic. Stand up. Lie down. Dance. Follow along with the
crowd. Shit. Just more useless histrionics. Is this the best we can do? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #1: Probably. Hey, I hear there’s a party going on in
the basement of a burned-out building on Mission. Super underground sort of thing.
Music. Dancing. Hallucinogens. Real live girls. Ramen burritos. Locally grown organic
beet-and-goat tacos. Gluten-free microbrews. Whisky distilled from apricots and
guava seeds. Wanna split?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RIOTER #2: Sure.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-54263329317407350742014-10-18T12:37:00.001-07:002014-10-18T13:55:00.404-07:00click here to avoid nervous breakdown<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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My older brother’s mustache was a prized possession of our
family back in 1989. We were reeling from the effects of Dukakis’s defeat, and
the mustache had come to have a polarizing effect on our way of life, our
instincts for inching along towards victory. For further surety, father was
polishing his remorse with fall-down drunk theatrics. The rest of our household
went on posing for family portraits without him—mostly funny ones, though.
Calmly and with as little aplomb as possible, the neighbors were driven insane.
Was it really all just the fault of my brother’s mustache? Hunches were thin in
those days, and we were all enduring a fairly great drought too. The few
flushes of the toilet we partook in were unkind and, well, putrescent at best.
The lawn dried out and tanned to a hard tawny hue. The gutters went desiccate
and filled with old trash and crumbles of dead leaves. The only thing that
wasn’t getting dry was father, whose inebriated escapades were legendary, and
at least something to enliven the doldrums of our days. I wore a t-shirt on all
weekdays reading, “I’d rather be flying!” My brother preened and trimmed his
mustache in any of the dozen or so mirrors in our house: in the parlor, in the
boudoir, in the shitter, in the kitchenette, the den, the hallway, and even in
the playroom where my younger brother and I played tiddlywinks through it all. We
placed no restrictions upon all things mustache related. It must be maintained
at all costs. It was either this or be doomed to an even baser mediocrity than
the one we’d grown— along with the mustache— to know so well. To my eldest of
siblings, chores were off-limits as long as he kept that mustache in order. The
rest of us plugged along and kept the bill collectors in business.
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That was the season when my uncle Wilbert was running for
mayor. One balmy day in September he woke up and uttered apropos of nothing,
“Fuck it. I’m running for mayor.” At first we took it as one of his unusual non
sequiturs kissed to life by troubled sleep, but he proved resolute in his run
for the highest office in town. “I’d rather be reviled than overlooked any new
day here,” he'd rattle off through the breakfast silverware-clink of tines. “This
is not some soapbox I am seated upon. I am a born taker of music through
contextual exaggerations, not, let me repeat…not obligations.” These were the
unbuttered bread of his unappealing spiels. I took him for some folk hero come
down to us from the tattered pages of some hobo baron’s history of drunks and
train robbers. I also took him for my uncle. I had to. When all of his
loquacity finally diminished to a whisper-thin rant he abandoned his haphazard journey
to the top. “There is nothing to accomplish. Or at least nothing that a few
thousand bucks won’t fix right up. And all of this bragging and boasting like
teeth implants, good for me? Yes. Good. For. Me.” That was the last I ever
heard of or from handy uncle Wilbert. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The mustache reigned through all of ‘89s conditions. My
brother kept it tiptop. He believed in the power of grooming, that hard-won feeling
of accomplishment that comes from steady upkeep. It kept us all dreaming well.
Strangers would smile in passing, and some might come right on up to him with the
burden of wheelbarrow thoughts to say, “What gives?” To which he might reply, “Art
is the highest form of communication.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My father’s tippling became the stuff of legends. “I don't know what's right with me. That.
That there’s my only home,” he’d wheeze while pointing at the mustache which
began to curl up at the ends of my brother’s lip. He would lie still on the
carrot-colored carpet at times, once clutching an empty bottle of Chartreus,
once with a Macy’s One Day Sale ad tucked into his belt. I remember him best
lying on that carpet, not quite passed out, not quite awake, misusing his
prayers, his buckwheat hair matted and unruly, his face stuck in the middle of
a scream. I brought his bottles to him when he needed them. There were other
emergencies to muddle through, cabals to get around to hatching, and back then
that was the take and give of things. My father slept through or slept off
where none of us ever left him off. We’d escape in glassy gazes over him, my
brother’s mustache, slick and shiny and laced with eel oil, in the middle of it
all. And then my father would let slip a query: “Whatever does any of this
mean?” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Reworked gimmicks like the too tidy get mildly crushed soft
off to peace. Trust me. If that weather back then taught my instincts anything
it was that. My name got changed to Oliver for a while. I signed it once during
an identity crisis, and it stuck around some. Then it was Claude. Then it just
became a sound I made like giving directions to the found. I called myself what
seemed suitable for the present’s just cause. And people just nosed and poked
around in the rubble of our backyard while I was at it. I’d pull open the
screen door to tell them things. “I am a closed circuit provider. Blacklist
your burials. Put some toast in your fist and squeeze. We are our only
armaments, so keep up your digging. A shovel for the old guy. Who among you is
never always sure? Telltale contortions, sympatric and unclaimed, let the bodies
fall where they may not.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then time passed. Then it came to be that my older brother’s
mustache had vanished. Our family gathered in the foyer beneath the crippled
chandelier. We bowed deeply to each other, over and over, being civil and
silent. The remote control was lost. Everyone was home, at last, and we built
telephones from microphones. We ate dinner one at a time. The mirrors were
taken down and laid out on the sidewalk. I had no reason to be myself. I was
stored in music and wishes and cocktails, and I didn’t need to exist. This is
the best I’ve ever felt.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-75360503713110538842014-10-03T15:17:00.000-07:002015-02-20T11:29:57.608-08:00Laughter Is The Best Poison<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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I can’t keep track of the days. One runny midmorning leaking
into another boozy evening. It’s with great dysfunctional style that I grace
slender-of-thought (my thoughts, they’re all doing 99 years) nobody’s presence
but my own. And what’s happened in some misguided moment of sloshed terror is
only mine to keep. No harm…or all of it merely my own…a sipped mirage downgraded
to a swallow and a belch… on to dangerous keeping. When’s tomorrow? Has today
happened yet? How soon’s yesterday? A certain allotment of questions I can’t
quite care about anymore. Just more insects to kill.
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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The anonymity of the supermarket gives some ease to my ways.
Going from liquor store to liquor store, well, they get to know you, and I
start to worry, “When’s the last time I was in there? How many bottles does
that make this week? Who’s going to be working the counter?” As if that
matters. I don’t know. I guess I’d rather keep some shred of dignity. After years
of this, the same routines of scurrying out late at night, not knowing if what
was left in the freezer would hold me until daylight, with the same baleful
looks and creased brows staring back at me, I somehow started to intuit some
deep sense of resentment, or perhaps just disappointment in this friendly yet
taciturn stranger who comes in way too many weeknights to purchase the cheapest
vodka on the shelf. Maybe they didn’t care. But as the years move on, well, I
am sensing a shift in their attitude toward me. So, I tend to buy ahead of time
more often now, and to make my purchases at the supermarket where I’m fairly
sure none of the clerks recognize me. There are more of them, and they don’t
last as long at their jobs. I try to pick out newer ones to go to, ones whom I
don’t recognize. Still, I’ve recently started noticing some disapproving
glances even from this larger and more random sample of humanity’s checkers.
Then again, hell, it’s probably just some paranoid quivering part of my agoraphobic
and anxious nature that thwarts my attempts at getting along well in social
situations. I am always polite. But I tend to fidget and blurt awkward
truncated responses to their smiley rote questions. I have trouble with eye
contact. I sweat heavily. The liquor stores are open later though, and I know a
few close by that stay lit until last call. So, well, I sometimes must resort
to the folks who know me way too well. I wonder how many guys they know who are
just like me? Maybe I don’t even stand out among the regulars. I guess I
shouldn’t worry so much, but that doesn’t stop me from making it pretty much
the most salient aspect of all the things that compose who I am and what I do.
I point to the bottle. I pull some neatly folded bills from my wallet. I ask
for a bag. I pay, cradle the bottle in my arms like a newborn, and walk briskly
home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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There is a gesture I use— it’s almost like praying— when
lifting the shot glass. I used to think of whisky’s wonderful golden burn
steaming down my gullet: the magical gift of a slight dab of poison’s risk,
what the body instinctually rebels against on first contact. Then the warm
trickle down into the gut. A glow that hums and soothes. I’d tip the shot glass
a bit as I lifted it. First to one side, then the other. And soon this became a
circular motion, though always careful not to lose any liquid on the way up. My
eyes closed, the glass delicately wobbled its way to my pursed lips; and then,
with a stern and stolid sniff and a jolt, I’d deftly snap the glass back and
open wide in one fluid motion. The glass would then be set back down with a
powerful thud as I swallowed and sighed, “Ah. That’s the stuff.” Now I just
drink ice-cold vodka from the freezer. It’s not quite as dramatic, but it gets
the job done, and I feel that the gesture is still extremely important. The
routine is what matters. The continuity. The special order and control, and the
almost appeased, beseeching nature of it all. I don’t know. It’s what I do, and
it works.</div>
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<br /></div>
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A paucity of light. A mosquito’s sharp ear buzz. And I am
swatting madly, then upright. I flip on the half-crushed lamp by my mattress
and scour the walls and ceiling for that little fucker, picking up my favorite
mosquito-killing book: Witold Gombrowicz’s Cosmos (Mostly because of its white
cover, which makes it easy for me to spot the black smudges and bloody splats
that convince me that I really have killed the bastards. Though now it is
filled with so many scars of past victories that I might have to abandon it
soon, or wipe it clean.) I taunt the hungry pest, vehemently: “Survival of the
fittest, motherfucker. Come on. Show thyself!” I rattle the drapes and the
blinds to see if it’s planted itself behind them. “Motherfucking pussy piece of
shit…you’re going to die, you’ll be dead soon.” I keep up the vitriol as I scan
wildly all across the room, attempting to pick up even a trace of its winged
escape. I get a flashlight out and stand up on a wobbly chair amid the dirty
clothes strewn like rubble across the small space of my room. My eyes dart over
the wainscoting, the little dusty nooks and corners, as I swivel the flashlight
in meticulous and deft patterns. I am thorough in my search, going from
bathroom to hallway to kitchen and then back to the bedroom, sometimes fooled
into action with a swat at an already dead bloodsucker from the past. I try to
clean up the corpses, but sometimes forget and let their memories stay like
some tiny dot signature on a gruesome portrait, perhaps serving as a warning to
those who arrive next in search of a quick meal. Also, I’ve been known to
squash moths and other winged insects by mistake, though not one I regret at
all. I have a strict no-insect policy in my place. They know this full-well
going in; yet they continue to take their chances anyway. I don’t understand
it. The chair-standing is dangerous, as one of the legs is bent and almost
buckles under my weight. I get down on all fours and start flashing my beam
into small crevices between objects near where the carpet meets the wall. “Damn,”
I mumble to myself, “I really need to start dusting down here.” The space
behind my television set is like some long-ago bombed out city: all tangled
with dust bunnies and ancient cobwebs, small pieces of things dropped down
there who knows when or how, the cords from electronic equipment like gnarled
power lines fallen and covered in thick layers of fuzz. Good getaway spots for
a lurking mosquito, but my flashlight’s beam reveals none. After a few more
rounds of inspection I head to the freezer. The vodka bottle’s still got
plenty, and I pour two quick shots for myself and drink them down even quicker.
This will help the jangled state of my nerves that’s been brought on by this
nasty intruder into my world. There is nothing to be done for now except wait.
So, I pretend to give up, lie down on my mattress, and turn out the lights.
Feigning sleep with my eyes open, I wait for that all-too-familiar buzz, still
gripping Witold tight by my bed in hopes of a murderous strike if Miss
Culicinae returns.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t even know where they come from. I put up a screen on
my window on those rare occasions when I open it to the outside world. There’s
no standing water, except in the bucket catching drips from the kitchen sink;
but I empty the bucket quite often, at least enough to be rid of any larvae
that might lurk in there. There are no leaks to the lobby that I know of. Do
they sneak in behind me when I enter before I can close the door? Are they
spawning in the toilet water? Where do mosquitoes go to when they sleep? I
can’t find any answers here, so I just keep plugging away with trips to the
bottle and the ugly earliness of these late nights. And I still wake up with a
few mosquito bites at least once a week.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The wine gnats take their time here. They wallow near the
sink, sometimes sunk to a drowsy flight or plunging erratic darts in odd ovals,
like a mime trapped in an invisible box. Guessed to pinpricks of precise
indecision, they eventually drift off to other wafts of despair, searching for
the scent of alcohol, even a drop, perhaps spilt on the tiles or hanging around
in the bottom of an unwashed glass. They hover and circle, waiting, perhaps
holy in their attempts to hang on. More so than mine. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Daytime TV, with its catalogue of droll images: the chippy
car commercials, upbeat cellphone provider jingles, promises of low insurance
rates, the plush blandness of addiction recovery center and weight-loss ads,
the sitcom reruns, the talk shows. The 24-hour entertainment cycle. Always hankering
for more: foaming, bright, luminescent, oily. Flattering the viewer for
sponsor-paid attention. Faster food. Discounts and bargains galore. The droll
flat subterfuge of an invisible sarcophagus that bathes and encompasses the
viewer in the addicting pleasure of complete surrender, of not having to think
or behave, of just simply being entertained to no point or reason or
understanding. A spoiled grapefruit slowly caving in and turning to mush.
Fifteen minutes can save you five-dollar footlongs based on the bestseller
moisturizing wash no money down free quote no APR loan our operators are
standing by.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I needed a loan, some resourceful nagging that’d buy me a
favor, and nobody was writing me back, or calling me back, and the menace of
another night surrounded by commercials, by bickering channels of escape, of
myself dropped completely flat and dull to the bargain of being entertained by
half-assing it morons, was not a thing I wanted involvement with again. I’ve
been spurned by all the publishers, all the editors and agents, the magazines.
I can’t even get a pen pal. It’s real big-time stuff I’m involved in, let me
tell you. A very stupendous way to be making my way through life’s finest
glazed parchment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There was banged-up furniture right out on the sidewalk
being given away. I didn’t need any. I had no use for objects. I wanted
unrefined delights to put in beautiful places. Sense? I left that up to the
tense captains of industry with their taut roped-off seasons, their categorized
assaults on decency, and the pastors of profit margins. Pull up to the curb.
Dust off the top. Feel for grooves and nicks, and test for strain and wear.
Shake gently. Be polite. Get nothing accomplished. Leave. Go on waiting for the
rain to come back to town.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was time for a new lamp. I didn’t have any ad jingles in
my head just then, so any ideas I could’ve gleaned from the hampered remnants
of my mind’s personal effects were just puffs from imaginary worlds. I had
time, then, or just about then. I took it. There was a lamp to purchase. There
was some ideologue’s violence to peacefully protest. I put on shoes. In some
minor haste I took what heed I could, shoved what was left after room-and-board
into my pants’ pocket, and headed towards a light.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After walking around like Napoleon all day in the sun, with one
hand inserted between the two front buttons of my topcoat, I decided to find a
dark bar to hide and repair from the weather in until the blasted sun had gone
down and things were more livable out. This was not an easy proposition, as it
was only two in the afternoon and most of the bars I deemed suitable for this
activity did not open their doors to the public until at least four. Some
tourist in shorts was staring at me as I was pondering all of this on a street
corner, in the shade of a bramble bush. I barked at him, “Why don’t you not
take a picture, go back home, and put some damn pants on.” He walked briskly in
the opposite direction of me. Finally, something good had happened. I’d needed
it badly. It was the Ides of March and already hordes of people were traipsing
around dressed in green. It was bullshit. I kept myself from telling them all
to go to hell as groups of them went by, giggling and shouting nonsense like a
bunch of yuppie sissies, which, really, is what they were, so I needn’t have pointed
that out; but the hell with it. I’m done with small talk. I’ve moved on to the
medium-sized stuff, in my head at least. There were few options for me there,
standing around like some dope with a hand in his coat. I opted for finding a
place to empty my bladder, which was petulantly whining to be drained.
“Curses,” I muttered to anyone within muttering distance, “This is bullshit.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, I ended up strolling over to Russian Hill, the very top
of it, and glanced through some shrubbery at the view of North Beach. I sat
down on a stone bench cut into a wall there, and soon got bored of that, and
got up and walked to the other side of the street. I was having quite a time. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A few pigeons were staring at me. I kicked some trash their
way and they fled. It was a grand occasion. A movie should be made about it
all. Really.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’d somehow forgotten about my urgent need to micturate. It
seized upon me suddenly, and there were no two ways about it. I scurried off
into the outer reaches of things and events beyond my control. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My foot on a stool. Something careless in my attitude,
something touched. A noise like lips from a cigarette. The creases are so worn
in my act, the holes so gaping in the gaps of my mind. I want to sit and have a
comfortable beer in relative peace. Apparently that’s asking too much, still.
Over there, a place where I used to stand so well, stand all of it, or so I
thought. Just pushing by it all maybe, making puddles of thought instead of
seas of action. I just sat there and held on tight to my beer. There was
nothing left to wish for. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Watching the streetlights pop to life one by one as evening
hurtles down on us, on the mush of what I’m pacing myself through. The amber’s
gone from the floorboards. The sun’s away for the remainder of the festivities.
I pour sweet foamy life into myself. I find the time to stop thinking. My tired
face in my hand, I allow myself to relax and not care who’s looking. The
barman’s scrubbing glasses and humming the theme song from Naked City. I’ve
been erased. I no longer care to exist. A man no longer in search of meaning.
It is a mistake: everything.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The night started. The blue bled from the sky and spit its
way into a vermilion meshed dark. A barstool fell over. Somebody said, “She
only wears her hair that way when she’s drinking. Shit. We are all so damn
reserved. I only scream ‘Jesus Chirst’ when I’m taking a leak. Why do I drink?
So I don’t have to think about the answers to questions like that.” I felt safe
at last, tucked away in that dark dingy bar, harboring my best sentiments under
the perpetual and/or proverbial radar of my gutless satisfaction. The barman
was quick with his “another one?” and I appreciated it. I was in a “keep ‘em
coming” sort of mood, and it’s good to have the guy behind the bar on your side
when you start out. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The lights dimmed. The music got turned up. Bodies crushed
their way in and crowded up the place. Many folks were wearing green
mushroom-like hats and had necklaces of green beads and green-rimmed sunglasses
on. One girl had a neon-green afro wig on. Everything smelled of urinal cakes
and bad perfume. I didn’t like any of it. I ordered a shot of rye and another
to wash it down with. I tipped one glass and then the other down my gullet.
After a few minutes I felt well enough to get up and walk out of the place. I
got up and walked out of the place.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Out on the street there were already mobs of people forming
outside of the bars. Some had lines stretching around the block. Things were
bad all over. I plowed my way through the scrums. I took a toothpick from my
vest pocket, danced it around in my mouth for a while, and then dropped it in a
treewell. I finally found some space for just me, and I stood in it, in the
dark between two streetlights, and I leaned against a green wall, trying not to
think, behaving rationally to the untrained eye, and I buttoned and unbuttoned
my coat a few times, and I checked out a sycamore there like I was ogling a
lady with nice legs. I told it, “I’m not a teenager. I am not the sky. There
are bruises all over my emotional makeup, and scars and rifts that’ll never
meet again. All I want anymore is just a good place to sit. I don’t know why I’
m saying this to you; maybe I thought that as an artist you’d understand.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I leaned there like that for a bit more. I’m not sure how
long. No people walked by for a while, and I felt thunderously calm and
triumphant too. I don’t ask for much in this life. A nice place to sit with a
decent view. A girl whom I like who likes me back. Perhaps a stiff drink and an
avocado-sardine sandwich every now and then. A roof over my head in case it rains.
I don’t believe this is too much to ask for, God. So, well, you got a minute?
I’d like to bend your ear about it some. Whadda ya say? Huh? I’ve got loads of
time on my hands and I don’t think I will be going anywhere for…well, perhaps I
won’t be going anywhere ever again.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The folks upstairs are upsetting my quiet again. The music’s
awful and blaring. And it’s like they’re dropping bowling balls on the floor
(my ceiling) up there. Wild shrieks. Howls of dumb delight. Stupid scrawny
laughs. Perhaps a few ladies who can’t handle their liquor and a guy to see
that they won’t. I imagine them spinning each other around by the arms in the
small apartment, like some grade-schoolers at recess, throwing each other into
furniture when they let go. Whatever it is it’s not dancing, and not cruel or
real enough to be a fight. The phoniness of the whole situation stinks. I want
to go up there, pound on the door, and when they open it loudly shush whoever
it is who opens it, and briskly walk away. My night is ruined.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Who are these people? I know so few of the other tenants
here, and rarely know in which apartments the ones I see in the lobby dwell. It’s
not a large building, maybe a dozen or so small units, but I don’t get out
much, and I keep odd hours. Perhaps it’s that large Salvadoran girl who wakes
me with her ritual rumble down the stairs most mornings, way earlier than I’d
ever wish to be awake. Or the needy and overly social Korean named Sam or Maury
or something who’s always trying to get me to go bowling with him. I always try
to scuttle through the lobby as quickly as possible, but he always seems to be
checking his mailbox or tying his shoe or something, and tries to converse in a
very energetic manner with me. But no, that pugilistic nonsense doesn’t seem
like his thing. He’s small and odd, and seems anxiously aware of his
surroundings. He wouldn’t want to bother others with those sort of theatrics.
His are the moves of the magician: short and quick and hiding just a little
something from everybody, before he brings it out at the last moment to
surprise them. I pray that when he does it is benign.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I give up caring about the amateurs upstairs. Their noise is
minor league, and it dribbles down to a low roar, tempered by longer and longer
moments of less-talk, less-rock. Let them damage their own little galaxy of
despair. I’ve got enough of my own to last well beyond any lifetimes they could
imagine. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now they are squealing and moaning sex through the bleat and
thud of the music. I am out of toilet paper. My penance down here, it seems, is
never done. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s too early to be alive. Some morons are pounding nails
into the walls downstairs. It’s a perfect way to reenter the waking world: the
intermittent thrashing of your brain between dry-mouth teeth-grinding
nightmares. I lie in bed unable to move but also unable to quite get back into any sort
of sleep. My throat’s a lost cause, filled with mucus and scratchy. I feel
about as bright as burnt-out light bulb, and my back aches in about twenty
different places. Of course I’ve got a headache. Why wouldn’t I have a
headache? And there’s a tingling sensation going all the way down the back of my
left leg. It’s a good show all around. I thank god for the blessed life I get
to lead. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s too hot to move, to even wink. Really. My eyebrows are
sweating. Turn off all the lights. Lie still in just swim trunks. Insert head
into freezer and count to eleven. It’s too hot to think. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The hallmark of a scoundrel masking his duller tendencies in
chimes and blooms and clumps of dead-end history. Dusting up on my
routine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hints of sunset lingering
salmon-laced shadows across drowsy brick old-hotel facades. Licks taken.
Screaming, “Shut the fuck up!” at the mirror. Good moods last for a limited
time only, and then it’s off to blowy rooftops; leaning wistfully against
stanchions, rusty lawn furniture, mistaken weathervanes; sharp, hard pebbles to
kick around and off the ledge, to send to the street below where they crack and
patter in some lonely splintered patois. “One for the ages.” If there ever were
a day for it. Probably be another year, gone, and then nothing sticks yet
everything stays. It just stays and stays. It’s always nothing. It’s never
something. I don’t want my life to become some store-bought, commercial thing.
I want to crawl up out of the woodwork, bloody and scarred and hanging on by
the skin of my teeth, and scream, “I am alive! I live here, damn it!” And if
that gets taken away from me? Well, I am well secure with my destiny. I will do
what I can do. I can wreck more havoc than you’d ever believe. I don’t give a
shit. Let my moment pass. Let ‘em all pass. There’s something seedy and raw
warring around in my head, and I’m pushy as hell too. History won’t care. It
just won’t. Leave me be or you’ll get sautéed in the distance. Put that in your
thoughts and see how they come out.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I believe in a god who knows how to dance.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sitting at a dark bar, alone, in the late afternoon, staring
at myself in the barroom mirror, wondering at this crudely dismayed image
staring back, making these bogus motions: tugging at my collar, my sleeves, my
tufts of disarrayed hair, rubbing my hand across the mist of a glass of beer,
twitchy gestures and all. I’m getting too predictable in my behavior. Some
Thelonious Monk is playing on the jukebox; it’s helping my mood adjust and
plunder a bit of satisfaction from my current modes of behavior. I don’t mind
it a bit. Being dim in the darkness suits me. I find it helps the mind to heal.
There’s a retired drug dealer at the other end of the bar having a sneezing
fit, and then he’s growling nonsense at the bartender, blaming the small
television above the bar for his troubles. The bartender nods in some sort of
sham approval and skims a newspaper. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The beer’s hitting me quick, as I haven’t eaten all day and
am going on three hours sleep to boot, and my head gets blurred and mushy. I
start to feel as though I might tip over, capsize, and lose all control of my
proprioception. Somehow I manage to stabilize, shaking my head some, like I’m
mildly in disagreement with somebody. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The artifacts of the bar step out from their blending into
the scenery on the wall. I take short sips from the beer and let my eyes roam.
There’s a row of extremely dust-ridden model airplanes hanging on wires from
the ceiling, with the exception of a lone ancient hot-air balloon or airship of
some sort. Some toy soldiers are gathering grime on a shelf along with bowling
trophies, some featuring headless and/or armless bowlers on top, and a viola
with only two strings left on it lies on its side between two bottles of gin. The
ceiling’s got the rafters showing, something I’ve always admired in places, and
there’s a Schlitz-themed clock leaning against the bar’s top shelf set 15
minutes ahead. I only know this because the guy at the other end of the bar has
just screamed, “It’s a quarter past four! My good fucking god! A whole damn
quarter! I want my money back! My change!” before slumping back into a woozy
stupor. The bartender didn’t even look up from his paper.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My left palm on my chin. Right elbow on the bar. Making
faces at myself. Pulling at tufted wisps of my hair. Squeezing my eyes tightly
shut at sudden intervals between narrowing my scope of the surroundings and
craning my neck. Another Sunday afternoon in the universe. The thicket of dull
bottles behind the bar start inveigling me from my pondering, as they are wont
to do, and I begin to ache for a dousing of my sordid ratiocination. A sharp
sense of loss slaps me a good one. I am lonelier than a phoneless phone booth.
The lord made very few creatures as weak as I. The bartender, who’s got thin
white slicked-back hair and a good solid chin on him, strides down and asks me
how things are. I tell him things would be a lot better with a tumbler of
bourbon in me. He pours. I drink. I tell him that I am suffering from a distressing
bout of transient global amnesia. He pours me another, on the house, and walks
all the way down to the other end of the bar where his newspaper awaits. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A badly dressed man comes in and takes the stool two down
from me. I wince and look the other way, towards the street, where a guy in a
yellow safety vest is sweeping the sidewalk. I know the inevitable inane
conversation is lying in wait for me, but I want to put it off for as long as I
can, at least until the bourbon hits. And then, just as the golden elixir
begins to swirl in my head: “There was a ship!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“And, man, I woke up and was in a hospital. It was a
complete blank. The whole night. Apparently I’m an epileptic and had a seizure.
Thank god some Good Samaritan lady found me like out on the side of the
highway. I could’ve died, man. I was just out there wandering around like dead
drunk in my boots and I passed out or had a seizure or both. Hell, I don’t
remember any of it. A complete fucking blank. Shit. I need a beer. But I can’t
drink on the medicine they put me on. At least that’s what the doctor says. But
this medicine, I’ve got to take it like five times a day or some shit, and it
makes me all groggy and I can’t take it at work. So now it’s like, I don’t
know, take the risk of having another seizure or not work. And my money’s so
thin you could feed my life savings into a vending machine and get like a
Snickers or something out of it. Shit. Did you know they named that particular
candy after a horse?"</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know he wants me to offer a drink to him. He stinks of
Lysol and holy water. I scratch at the back of my neck some and slowly shake my
head. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“That’s a raw deal, buddy.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You telling me.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“How abouts I stand you a beer?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Ah. That’d be just about excellent of you.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After purchasing him the said beverage I begin to feel the
rumblings of an intestinal dilemma, the likes and scopes of which far outweigh
any nonsense happening at the bar. I know the sorry shape the joint’s
bathroom’s in all too well, so I decide to make my egress, with much celerity
and little aplomb.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My eyes didn’t want to adjust to the bright world outside
after being dim and half closed most of the day inside the bar’s dark. But I
squinted my way along good enough, and eventually made my way to a hotel that I
knew had some of the best facilities around. What was stewing and going rancid
inside of me wanted out, and soon. I clenched and rushed through the lobby,
narrowly avoiding death about half-a-dozen times. Menace had seeped into the
checkered gray-blue of the carpet’s twill. Aspersion was being cast, towards
me, from all sides. I had no idea what this hotel lobby had against me. Even
the baffle lights wanted me banished for life from all doings on the premises.
And I wasn’t in the mood for taking one for the team; and more importantly I
didn’t have the time. I gathered some swiftness and took a no-nonsense approach
to the business at hand, preparing for what might soon develop into a minor
catastrophe. No employment opportunities were coming my way, to say the least.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In fear’s dangerous grip I held on to what was left of my
good sense while my innards heaved and slushy brown liquid roiled its way out.
The bathroom was crowded with conventioneers in lanyards, dawdling about,
making inane chatter, whooping it up a bit, and not washing their hands nearly
well enough after lacing the urinals with unreal amounts of tepid urine. My
stall-bound splashes were minor league. I flushed twice before getting up to
wipe, and then again afterwards. It was a small disservice to the drought-like
conditions, but a necessary one. I decided that instead of drinking water I
would only imbibe vodka for the rest of the day to make up for it. I washed my
hands thoroughly, sang Happy Birthday to the mirror, dried my hands in the
wonderfully efficient Dyson Airblade hand dryer, and slunk back out to the
lobby. It felt almost decent to be alive— almost. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There was a smattering of pedestrians out hoofing it through
the early evening’s lush reign. Some streetlights were starting to show signs
of life, and the traffic picked up, and I, of course, found myself wandering
into a bar. It was a cute place all done up in pink and white: Formica tables
and plastic chairs, velvet portraits of lingerie models on the striped walls, a
Naugahyde cushion over the bar ledge, and two small TV sets at each end of the
bar showing a loop of vintage porn while the sound system played a steady diet
of 80s pop trash. It was like some posh, horny lunatic’s wet dream, and I was
smack dab in the midst of it with little hope of making it out alive, at least
until those first few drinks went down. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I ordered a double vodka, iced, and a can of Hamm’s. The
lady behind the bar had a pink Mohawk, a face full of piercings, and some
dragon-like tattoos on her arms. She hated my guts, immediately, but took my
drink orders quickly and then left me alone. I decided things weren’t such a
disaster. Not a bit. I swilled my way to more excess and left the place a much
happier camper than I’d been before. Pink and white? Nothing wrong with it.
Nothing at all. I went out to walk the streets, briskly, wonderfully, in the
haze of another joyous night amongst the horror and doom of this damned human
race.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-4670977903730539692014-09-27T15:16:00.000-07:002014-09-27T15:25:06.101-07:00Nudniks<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Why did you stop drinking?”
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I used to talk too much. It’s like street signs or
something. Always telling.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“That matrimonial glint in your eyes.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Nah. Just a lump of mud. Let’s go somewhere and talk about
your instincts about guys like me.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You ain’t got no mortgage on me.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Who’s the deranged one now?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I used to brag about my obliviousness. Now I spend hours
roaming the aisles at Home Depot, inspecting the higher shelves for signs of
wear, listening to the emptiness of long echoes.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“’Take me to the zoo,’ she said. ‘Take me to the zoo.’”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Sung without a dash of remorse, I hear.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Wink. Wink. A less or more subtle way of approaching
oncoming boozers.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Not like bits. Not in the pieces. Not the manner of being
scripted in all of this garrulity. Be peachy, but never keen.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Like good old Horace said, ‘Don’t get to be one of those
foot-and-a-half suckers. Stick with the quick and the brief. It’s good for the
liver.’”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Sesquipedalian bastard. Me? I don’t trust the long or the
short of it. Anyway, the clock’s a ticking, like always. Can’t stop it. Even
standardized time couldn’t come up with a way to slow it down. All these different
modes of control. They don’t stand up to the constant movement forward.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’m playing through the existential pain of it all.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“It’s practical at least, this waffling over oblivion’s
purpose. Forever lost in espial. We brush through other flushes of lost force
without a tidy budget or even a haircut. Mostly it’s the loss of some
anchoritic charm as you bowl your way into the overcrowded lanes and/or lines
of connectivity.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Go on and bash your head in somewhere else. I’ve got my
own sorry soup to slurp.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“This is all really very mature, isn’t it?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Juvenilely jejune, at best. Poached insipidity running its
course, and then we drown off to more luxurious pools. I’ve been sleeping on
such stuff for years. It just leaves me let down and scurrilous. Some
opprobrious bastard waiting for an opportunity to hunker down and relax. But I
am never ever at ease. Calm is something I can’t get close enough to to really
know. Always a bit jumpy and on edge. You can place your best bets on it.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Too rocky. Too stuttering. Too distracted and not apropos
enough. Spellchecker, on! Right hand, raised! The moon? In my fucking pocket!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“From eternity to…well…to here. That’s all. Just to here.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Some sugar snob sings it like this, ’In the middle of
sneeze. In the middle of a sneeze I call your name. Marco Polo. Marco Polo.’”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The swimming pool is on fire.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The sprinklers are smoking.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“And then, ‘My hate will burn you down.’”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“We’ve got much to go on.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Yes. On and on and on. It is not such a splendid thing.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Why would anyone stop drinking?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“An ‘Out Of Service’ sign’s flashing on my imagination.
Something too telling to go on about. A glumly stuck gear, or something turned
off for good, a blame placed in the ignition. A wanted need gone spoiled and
dumb. Dizzy enough?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Surely, Shirley. Hand me over them keys now.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“No. No. No. Base what hits on what never does. Look.
Totter. Nice, I am just shaping up not so.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Told off too many Wednesdays at a time. Pay off the
drafters. Remind the clock watchers to not be so shell shocked. Put a benign
spell on something more happening than all of this. The music here doesn’t rock
and it is not so fine of a thing.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Being you is not such a fine, fine thing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“There’s nothing going around. No. Nothing.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“A public citizen privately ill with buying and being
bought.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“A most cautious individual, here. A commercial for
herself.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“And now what’s left is a blurted goodbye through your
ambition’s ivy’s selfish coil. A twist in the gut. A mind’s leftovers. Just
don’t do as you’re told. Drink away the murk around your eyes with a sly twist
and a coy shake. Best of enemies, peepers all misty under influence’s draught.
A manila folder’s being exchanged through heavy weeping. Nobody’s over a thing.
Where’d the sandy stretches go? Who stinks of cheap brandy and boysenberry?
Accordion thieves get what’s coming in the swaying chandelier light. That’s
what. Crooks. All of ‘em, anyway.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Traded in the wind. Left off at the start. It’s like
stirring wet cement, this stuff. Grueling. Trying to grip around the edges. The
soft fragility that gathers around all middles, it gets you too up and down to
believe much, in or of or about.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Gummy drips of who you’d be without all these
advertisements corroding up the works.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The dollar sign’s lost its distinct flavor, for you. And
with a pleased kisser you mug for the live video stream. Nowhere left to be
abandoned in, to be left alone.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I dreamt about my late father the other morning. Some other
morning than this or that one, over there or here. About how he held that
pistol to his ear and screamed one last time, bellowed all he had left at his
own face in the bathroom mirror. Alone at last. Done. I dreamt about my father,
wallowing in self-pity and doubt. So recherché in his despair. I dreamt lastly
about my father as of late. He always woke up to be just who he was. And then
he woke no more. A temper finally quelled. A symptom of intersecting lives left
to dwindle out and on away. He went out strong and wild, alone, still dripping
from his morning shower.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I haven’t had one in years.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“A shower?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“No, a dream. My fantasies have grown so tame. I grow old. I
grow lame.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“To the laugher go the plunders of peace.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Sure, just because the grapes of pity have grown sour, it
doesn’t mean this bored, disaffected monster called mankind will not stomp them
into anything but— kind that is.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Listen. I forgot my mantra last Thursday. Apparently it had
escaped me and fled to poorer quarters. I vowed to seek it out, to degrade it
into submission and drag it back to where it belonged. And when I found it I
put it on a T-shirt so I’d never forget it again. Now I’ve lost the shirt.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“And leads?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Passed on purpose. Guessed the stars to sleep. Lived in a
bottle. Lived for another. Let the chords get away with the verse. I am not
made of anybody else’s thoughts. Changed to this, born into any other glimpse
of what’s not ever here or there. Bubbly or thoughtful? Just a sipping sound
selling you out at just the wrong time. Really. Come on. The battle’s not what
you get from being simple around the ones who are around. Bounded by these
made-up bonds, never so in the clear like here, surrounded at all times. I am nervous
and misdirected by nature. Disoriented by choice.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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to say to me, ‘Well, at least you’ve got your health.’ And I always thought it
just a load of platitudinous drivel. And it is, until you don’t have your
health anymore, and then you realize that having your health is really all that
there is. You really do have absolutely nothing without it. So, take care of
yourself, goddamn it. All the rest is eyewash.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Yes. That’ll do. I’ll drink to that.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-19458213470862815632014-09-09T18:13:00.001-07:002017-04-01T15:58:02.729-07:00Bo Jackson Was A Royal<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="endnote text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="table of authorities"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="macro"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="toa heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Bullet 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="List Number 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Closing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Signature"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Message Header"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text First Indent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Body Text Indent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="FollowedHyperlink"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Address"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Preformatted"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="HTML Typewriter"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
Name="Table Columns 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
UnhideWhenUsed="true" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 6"/>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Sometimes you abuse alcohol. And sometimes…well, sometimes
the alcohol abuses you."
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“My right side’s never up. But my wrong side’s high enough
for ‘em both. Plus, you only die once.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Don’t you know we’ve got a fifteen-drink minimum up in
here?” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Don’t worry. I haven’t had near enough.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Do you always sound like that?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Only when I talk. And let me go ahead and tell you, I’ve been
flying too close to the sun for so long now that I get the chills in July in
Death Valley.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Right. So, whatever happened to Sour Grownup Jane?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Man, she’s meaner than 52 rattlesnakes. She’ll eat her half
of the cake without ever halving it.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Some for no one, huh?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Not some. Not for me. And not for you.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“A codicillary act if I ever knew one.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Added down and off. Subtracted up and on. A stirred
movement on formerly placid waters. A deceit that suits.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well, me? I say arugula to all that. Failure’s always been
my only destination.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Salad rocket?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Not just your garden variety eruca sativa, buddy boy. It’s
hell’s cabaret kicking up their heels. Shorter skirts and taller women. I gave
up cussing when I ran out of coins to toss in that proverbial mason jar of
suffering and mad hinge-squeal pitched lowing. Some jaw-rubbing, tawdry things
that just never don’t ever make no sense.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’m sure any occasion when you’re around is special. And
remember, September’s on the make. And we can’t tell the movies by the reviews.
But, but, but…but nobody here knows the things that I know.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“We’re all pragmatists over here where the grass is never
very green.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Sure. Everything’s over there, where the grass always grows
just a little more green.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“A terrible night for avocado fishing.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I hate it when things get too precious. I don’t want to
need objects, to have to have them stay and age and be with me just the way
that they are. I want hardscrabble things that I don’t have some sacred value
attached to—things that I can throw away and be done with and not have to worry
over so much.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well, then let me tell you something not so very dear at
all. This was some time ago now. I had a girl to call my own. We lived on
Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island, then. A mongrel thought turned stray in the
cruel bluster of a night’s roam. We got tuckered out. We got slow. Nobody was
more brave or alive. Now I’m just a craven cowering bluff of a guy who stands
himself up for cocktails before even the sun sinks into the drink.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Get this, then. Showed up for a job interview. I was a bit
rusty. I was nailed to a plaster wall with baited habituation. I filled out
multiple forms to get the damn thing. And then some lady with a wooden tooth’s
going to tell me how it’s going to be? I’ll be damned.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Doomed to a life of mediocre orgasms. Somewhere there’s a
curse with my name on it wandering around in search of a finder’s fee. Lately
it’s been lowly and the finesse has worn from the finer points of telling it
like it never will be.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Yuck.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You, my unkind fellow, are manipulating molehills.
Distorting. Magnifying. And, ta-dah! Manipulations a plenty.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“This is the sound of me oohing and aahing.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“So, then, well, um, you see, but, ah, here’s the thing: my
father built a swimming pool so we couldn’t have kickball games in the
backyard. He had a room added on to the house where the attic used to be to
separate my brother and me, to keep us from fighting. Grandiose solutions that
didn’t deal with the problem directly. Ways of avoiding things, going the long
way around them, ignoring the root to spare the branch. Now? Well, so, you see,
ahem, now I’ve got these structures of boredom to keep me in line. I am never
at ease.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“A body in motion and all that fronting. To what purpose?
It’s like what I read on the label of that bottle of vodka you keep beneath
your sink: ‘Emergency Bottle. For EMERGENCY USE ONLY! (i.e., between the hours
of 2-6 a.m. if, and only if, there is no other available alcohol in the house.)
An emergency does not include being too lazy to go out and buy a bottle during
the afternoon. This bottle is only to be consumed on those dire occasions that
warrant it, such as extreme, interminable, and completely nonfunctional bouts
of DT-induced insomnia. Anyone found drinking from this bottle in a
non-emergency situation will be dealt a swift kick to the groin or nether
region of their person.’”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“It surely is not like that. It is not like that at all.”
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Don’t be so smug and sure about stuff like that, Schmoe.
I’ve got my calculus glasses on. I’ve got my gut finder. I’ve got my ambition
monitor. I’ve got my suspicion bootstraps too. And these here boots, they stomp
capitalists dead.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I am living through all this on the assumption that every
day is just a countdown until there are no more left to count. Or would that be
dying through all this? Just something else to shake my head over, to lie low
in, to cuddle up to and hide. Confusion’s bottlenecking conundrums are the
safest places I know of.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“This Chucky Chaplin mask is losing its luster. And me, I
know where the rain goes slower than the sound of trains. So, what’s making a
pass at being rambunctious going to hurt? And maybe I ain’t asking so much as
remembering badly.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Buried in your overcoat, again.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Just a febrifuge for my ailing, temperamental judgment. Somehow
strained to see success as the superficial illusion of erroneous meaning. Our
over-videoed lives come with certain binding clauses. The cameras are always
rolling. We’re debilitated by the reaped self-consciousness brought on by the burden
of our own digital images, the stored potential of our past actions to ruin us.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“At some point you just have to say, ‘Fuck it,’ and get over
yourself. Who really gives a monkey’s ass what rumbling and stumbling way you
make your way through the days.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Roughed up and rusted like an old water tower, killing time
like snakes as a laughing kookaburra would. Covered up, resistant to all antibiotics,
burrowing deeper in the catacombs of a corny ego’s bones.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“If it were my dime, I’d spill it.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Sure. And we hotplate the stuff we don’t care to know about
ourselves. Just the burnt crumbs remain for us to dawdle in. If it were up to
me, I’d say we use the crosses for firewood, leave the martyrs begging for what
we’ll never give ‘em. And let the yuppies take the biggest flying fuck of all:
let ‘em go on being themselves. I don’t think there’s a more cruel and unusual
way to go than that.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Come on. It’s all big-rigs’ backup alarms blaring you awake
when it’s way too early to be alive. A real stick in the muck forever leased
with no option to buy. Resale value’s gone. Caveat emptor, I guess. That’s the
real doozey of it.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“A thumb’s oath. A pinky’s law. We all push for the un-meddling
of our affairs. And just so we can beat the traffic and go moan alone.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I tell ya something. I says to this gal, I tells her, ‘Face
it, Doll. He’s a yuppie. He ain’t the one for ya.’ But it don’t matter none,
you know? She keeps fallin’ for him all the time. And I gots to go throw in
that towel. Maybe you can’t make a horse drink, but he might piss in the water,
ya know?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Beats me. My goat’s been got for years.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Ah, there’ll always be butt faces out there to dour your
good tidings. Sighs floating around in search of a mouth. But I don’t let it
get me down. I’m a real trooper when it comes to such stuff, even while camping
sadder in the thousand or so frowns I’ve begged answers from over the years.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Tell the kids I’ve gone out to November again. They’ll know
what it means, eventually.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You don’t even sense the making of your own sense. I mean,
whatever.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I will not scram. Don’t test me. My colors will fly higher
than the troposphere.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Honey Bunches of Oats. I don’t go in for all that garrulous
peace mongering. Casual constriction deepens all ties. I am only my body’s
keeper. My mind’s final fouetté, less graceful without motion to conceal it, will
encompass more than should ever rightfully be only mine. Only not for keeps,
this once that is also, by the way, infinity. Choco Taco.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You’re like a real fucking Viking sometimes, you know that?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Fruity Pebbles. Pop Tarts. Lunchables. All of these little
stabs at happiness I keep making. A big step for me; a small step for the rest.
Cup Noodles. Hot Pockets. Runts.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Brand-name philosophizing might get you just about nowhere.
Or is this just the spit of the poet?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“All great artists should be contradictory by nature. Ford.
Chevy. Dodge. Onomatopoeia! See? When the artists creates he is holy, even if
just for that moment.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“And what a dull moment it can be for the rest of us suckers
who are merely waiting around to enjoy the view from the cliff’s edge before we
leap.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The lonely sport of distraction. I’m a good one though.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Sport?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Ask any copper-wire thief around.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Sure. I get it. Because copper has excellent creep
characteristics which minimizes loosening at connections. So what? I cloak my disillusion
with delusions from carefully timed swills of the devil’s flask too, just like
anyone else does.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Aleve! Bayer aspirin! Motrin! Advil! Tylenol! I am weary yet
true of heart. Count Chocula!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“It’s hard to tell so much in this light.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The bale of it all, so misguided into lugubriousness.
Better than the treacly sort though, I suppose.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Please excuse me. Necessity has called on me again. This
time it must impose itself on me in the form of a poorly timed vomiting
episode.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Wretch away, you poor bun-bo-hue of a thing. Wretch away.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(this space unintentionally left mostly blank)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-78877852385433513802014-08-31T18:03:00.002-07:002014-09-01T12:20:22.241-07:003 poems by Ma Rainy<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="Table Grid"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" Name="Light Grid"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" Name="Medium List 1"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" QFormat="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" SemiHidden="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="41" Name="Plain Table 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="42" Name="Plain Table 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="43" Name="Plain Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="44" Name="Plain Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="45" Name="Plain Table 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="40" Name="Grid Table Light"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46" Name="Grid Table 1 Light"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51" Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52" Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
Name="Grid Table 7 Colorful Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="46"
Name="Grid Table 1 Light Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="47" Name="Grid Table 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="48" Name="Grid Table 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="49" Name="Grid Table 4 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="50" Name="Grid Table 5 Dark Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="51"
Name="Grid Table 6 Colorful Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
the shards that cuss
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
my feelings are all hurt</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
just like the old days</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
when the rain washed the beer away</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and the motels still held their neon close</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a rooftop to sit on</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the ledge of your hope to lean off</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a patch in a swear</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a loaded answer</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
and the moon’s swell for now</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
just dashes and maroons</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
my luck’s a raise in the stakes</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
my harm’s lost in the drying paint</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
do not fend off what’s wrong with what’s never right</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
the lack’s what’s never missing for long</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
another yes to all no</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
wear a complacent smile while you still can</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
all of my thoughts are doing 99 years</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
in all the degrees of a mind’s slaughter </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
honeyed and husky howls</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
barnyard manners</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t want to be associated with my name anymore</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
fuckers</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am slurring through most evenings</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have given up mixers</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am headed for morocco </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to be nothing</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
The Same Old Colossus
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sliced pickles through fear and good tidings</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Trickles of kid-like tough</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Erased from my permanent record</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eroded spandrels kissed into shape </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Below empty gesturing’s cornice</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Something penciled-in</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A rot without a scent</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nothing to give off or back</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Just an afternoon to wait through</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To get over</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While bad moods pile like dirty dishes</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the proverbial sink of my chances</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Heading blindly into oncoming traffic</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Perhaps</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Or another outbound day spent heading in</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Icing’s gone</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nothing left here</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The cake </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bless The Dead Here As The Rain Falls With The Last Drink's
Hammer</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nothing’s as it seems. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am only me, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
here. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That is all.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nothing to be concerned </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
with. Something to trifle with, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
maybe. Not </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
a blackbird ready to </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
attack. Not </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
something skyward </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
at all. That is all. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The buses go by. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sky’s all blown to bits of gold and peachy orange.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The scene moves on with the leaves. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Life’s a mistake, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
but a grand one.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Pay off the piano player. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’ll escape with a little loot </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
at least. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-90960564789416344242014-08-08T10:54:00.002-07:002014-08-08T10:58:11.051-07:00A Tower To Tumble Through The Trees<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]-->-The business suits are all on time here.
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Unless less siphons to more, more or less, then all of them
are out of it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Time?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-I would it were so, but for the time it would take to
believe it were is a ploy not from above.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Not like business as such usually suits.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Or as likely it were so, strictly during business time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-As I see what I do not, for a most unpleasant taste arrives
as-is. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Or it is as its "is" is an "is-not."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-No.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Not a word as a yes would never do.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Ever the time it plucks a real live doll from the clam
house. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-And not the world’s clam, too.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-As any shucked oyster might tell.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-In that sneaky place where the good lord split us all,
perhaps a moan suffices?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Not a place’s claim to lay, as it weren’t, and the bold
traces of a skysail’s wind e’er do show the lost the loneliest way to golly about
their lollygagging business, as per the unusual escapades of what do show faces
less than worth saving. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Or do they not, or just not?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Just. What a solipsistic belch to wrangle to the sawdust
with the stench of. A narcissistic proposition snared in a preposition’s bind. And
do justice’s mirrors show what’s just, or what just is? Just being the margin’s
right to be out, with or without wit, ended touched just a touch with just’s
minor wrongs. Just? I pray differently from the norm, if the norm’s just is as
you tell it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-I tell none but what is, as just or not, allowed or slaked
for what thirst devours first. And to be not solely as just seems (well-known
fibers of being, yes, I’ve staked juicer claims to be dry) for precursors of a
seedier sort, weeded ere they’re wed, and trumping those tapped-out well-water
blues.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Justly so.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Not a working order’s say, if I shall have mine. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-And so in saying there is a will’s “be done” to contend
with. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Ah. It cannot be overlooked. I dare speak it, therefore it
is.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Reflect, damn it! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-A damn’s only insurance is what it lacks. Don’t be
forewarned too easily. You might mistake today for tomorrow, and in doing so
lose what it is to what might just never be.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Easier traded away than done. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-A keeping’s try, at most. And what little’s left shores up,
steels away, and moonlights as a snake-fearing gardener. We almost were what we
excrete, while wasting’s still closer than away. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-There is a biplane droning away in my safekeeping, for the
thoughts I do not have do replenish an endless supply of newer news. Some of it
treks sadder tracks than any thought’s train, sure. But reasons stand to
reason, for man’s is a surer thing, as laughter or slaughter show, if not just
sky-blue trades to a worrier such as I.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Mandrake in your coffee again?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-A cluster of crumbs from crumbling clouds is all. And races
are what we never get off to.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Speaking from one or for one?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-A win away from placing, that’s all. A poser’s poster boy. Routine’s
practiced hold on events. I am less tattered than what appears. Do me all
favors to return whence I came, with no longer a whence to go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-As to dust, we are in it and of it, and we all perchance do
dust, returning always, and to some we reappear too, just as dust does, to be
wiped away over and over. The upkeep’s the thing. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Tomorrow always knows, does it not?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-What today would could yesterday allow tomorrow to be
without today’s say-so. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Alas, another refrain’s rife tickle. So, justly or no, is
this the mood of hate?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Love’s cursed twin. Yes. Go on. Assuage my most minor
opinion. In the twist of parallel sky motioning a journey’s yet, yet never to
be, just yet.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Just!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Not a thing to be counted on, wearily to go where nary a
long-toothed among them has gone not ere the devil’s take gets counted out.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Not on?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Never. I swear it were never a cursed word of mine that
dangled as would Damocles’ sword over whatever events might pass for current,
now. Oh, but for the mangled wreck I leave behind, area code and all, with only
my topcoat left to cover it, maybe some galvanized shiny steel thing in the
poorest parts of the machine-bright city to count on. Just a dial tone remains.
Maybe some popcorn. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Who left to phone?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Just phony simulacra, the ephemera of lost modes of
communication, dropped calls and lost voices going unheard all of a quick
eternity. No basics to get back to. Nobody to call or return a call at all.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-To bet heavy on the undercard and go light on the main
course. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Would it be less appetite to whet in light of less-heavy entrées?
Or could we milk what’s suitable from the grains gained of coarser entreaties? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Loss bemoaned’s still not spun to win one’s only one, is it
not?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Be it as a haggard disposition’s surface may arise in the
doldrums of another’s prize.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Purse loather.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Loathing’s lover.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Nothing’s all, is all. Let’s not agree to be less agreeable
to whatever clumps and dents our personalities might take. In the clearing
stands a boxer, or perhaps a woman of bounded sorrow. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Turn the trunk, burnt from branch, into a totem to scream
your lullabies to. Your clearing, my dear hoarder of thought, is not so clear.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-And if I may not?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Go on.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Well, then in the stoppage time of my life I extend a hand
like so. Dexterous. Surely as sure as a shake’s firm grip’s less than shaky.
Which brings us to ponder why sometimes there is a buggy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Aye. At some time. At some point in it. A driver. A paid
attendant. A backseat voucher gone to misuse. And to what expertise do we draw
the curtains on days unlike these?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-To any but our own, I take it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-The unimportance of not being less than truthful at most of
all times, whilst eating crow as well, or merely just not as well liked. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Hold thy tongue. Here cometh thy one true love.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Gilroy the stinker? By jingo! Thee speak to a ruined
landscape.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Yet one that still speaketh. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-All to a withheld account. I’m wont to be shushed at
best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Be shy. The wind reeks of an untoward scent.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-One too common to my whiff, though uncommon as they come. To
suffer so by my unfortunate nose, if it must be smelt all would know by whom it
was dealt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Cork thyself! The horrid whiff nears.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Whilst we drink a draught of silence we shall squeeze our
nares tight.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-God’s wounds. Thy voice be drowned. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-‘Tis zounds, my baddest of asses. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Part with this babble and live a day to babble once more.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Noted with what is duly left in my temper, these lips shall
persist in being tightly pressed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-How now. Here cometh the one of rank. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Silence ‘tis forever held, by thee, by me, by all parties
whose foul stink never let us let freedom ring…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br /></div>
Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-73347276449240361592014-07-28T16:09:00.002-07:002014-07-28T16:29:02.957-07:00Suicide Note #1,073<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
This time it’s not for real. I’ve yet to run into Louise
Brooks in real life, but in black & white? All the time. The problem? It’s in
the typewriter’s ribbon. I’m sure of it. The previous pages were held in check
by a checkered future’s chances. This page, as it slings its way into existence,
borrows little from those lachrymal and disparate diatribes. Something
comforting? My mule’s gone to Moscow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sodden compassion lacks dignity. I’ve been sore with more.
Unless less were to become more. But it never seems to in the experience that’s
been mine. But I have none that is otherwise. What cannot one do? Be humble and
try to keep moving.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Strange memories on this nervous night in Los Angeles.
Something comes tumbling, troubling from the streets. Mariachi music wafts up
from a car stereo: a steady rhythm to fall into a trance to. I dry my socks in
the open window, and some guy’s got the Eifel tower painted on his balcony
wall. The buses make their noise and wheeze by on the street six flights down
while a man in a white cowboy hat sells carne asada from a barbeque stand on
the corner. A nun escapes from a rundown apartment complex and crosses herself
at the light. The stifling drone of a helicopter’s whirling flight Dopplers
back and forth in a smog-smeared sky. Nobody’s paying attention to the laws. A
giant crane is stalled above a church like some lunatic god gone fishing. I lie
back and stare at a palm tree that’s got nothing but wilted, white fronds to
show for itself. The tall buildings gleam almost downright resplendent in the
afternoon’s hazy sunshine, their windows like shiny scales of some ancient
reptilian thing petrified for a brief eternity here where I just so happen to
be doing my existing for the moment. I’ve got sunglasses on, a salmon shirt
with silver buttons, green and yellow argyles, and a powder-blue suit jacket
that smells like a girl I used to be in love with. My head’s all mush and
strangled courage. I’ve got nothing to do but wander and get drunk; and that
seems a suitable enough proposition for this here battered bunch of hurt. There’s
no way in or out that I don’t got. There are no accordions left around these
parts. The hat’s on the bed. The taxi lights have all gone out. A fly’s joined
the party in through the window: another paying customer to witness my doom and
disposal. Cussing out everything and handling nothing very well. There’s a
detour sign in my heart. It reroutes my hopes and tells my love to take a left.
I’m sure there are guts I’m in need of. I’m sure that I might not ever get the
hell out of here. There’s violin music coming from the room next door. Two
ladies who know what’s better left not done and then done again, I suspect. An
airy moment to enjoy in this temporary abode between what’s gone and what’s on
its way out.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I am not thwarted by inanition. There are more prevaricating
forces at work than just some mild lassitude spelled by indifference. The
choices I don’t make keep piling up, behind and ahead of me. I am hemmed in on
all sides by stagnant gulfs between decisions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so it is that I teeter back on my heels, reminisce,
attempt to hold on to fuliginous memories that haunt me like some Murfreesboro
barkeep with whom I am forever never settling up my tab. My mind steers steadier
than you’d imagine, waylaid and rollicking over this rocky terrain. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I remember mother, aging as she was, bandy-legged (or was it
bow?) delivering soup to the tenants, the one’s in need of caretaking—or
perhaps they should be considered boarders—, all of whom were left less well than
the drooling palaver of their situation should’ve conscripted them to. Radios
scruffy and crackly with overuse, piping out dreams hot and cold for rapid
consumption. “How’s that?” is the belated refrain that wanes sluggishly through
the shrubs of all my tenses: presently just the past. To the patois of children
go the lowly and crushed, and I am forever dour about the clemency of the
surrounding troops.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fooled to the common errands, I root about for bunchgrass
before the gardener arrives, stymied to concoct Maileresque advertisements for
myself in this back-soaking humidity. I am lost. The butler moans irreverence
from bad spaces in the universe. Crayons heal themselves, wrapper and all. I am
snagged by some common Falstaff into blame’s verisimilitude. Nobody home? Well,
I believe mother would have lurched, albeit steady and subdued, like some
bibulous funambulist arching towards blurred pit stops on the way to hell—or
gasping with a sudden fall’s terror, perhaps. But I’ve forsworn all hindsight peeks,
at least until every notice has gone to further.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We are suckers for cloud coverage, spotty and transient as
it can be. A teal, like baize, that swamps and lurks and spindles and then
fades to a clumpy pewter. Surrounded. A glimpse or a wink’s twinge. Melted butter
baked into pastry soaked golden by sharp javelins of sun. And it is I who tend
towards scurrilousness as the crepuscular insects arise. Waiting. Shod softly
to barefooted times. When the room wages war on bits and flecks of nostalgia
locked holy and away in motes and beams of distraction, of television’s warm
glow. We are dirt sprinkled and spread over the beveled, shiny, marble lid of a
coffin. The spit of the world is mine to swallow. A slim share of sky. A
rough-hewn burst of cloud bottom scudding through. A latticed groom over
sleeker shapes, and the stalled company of being between spaces: ever longing
for never.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Drapery’s thick folds hold illicit memories, ancient and
arranged, pulled to rest, and at times reined in to gaze at restful moments.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mother’s queries would trim the lard from the most brazen of
the boarders. I (the “who” who is meddling in all dramatis personæ) attain
reports nightly of what that business previously entailed. It is lapidary, it
turns out, and its tides are the cheer of blame and turnstile humor. What
mother held closer than breath was the cloying rant of her inheritors. “It’ll
steam you some, son,” she’d chance in the rout of her possessions. A scuffle of
dreamy buyers, a spill of droopy silver ringlets from a formerly regal head of yellow
curls. Top light. I have forever been returned to sender.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A keeling sigh palpitates from the room next door. The two
ladies are ushering off their farewells, blighted with a balmy sort of pleasure
that comes from balancing pleases on the edge of a razor. Soon the music dies
down, as do they, and all context returns to its usual forms. I hereby
absquatulate from the race of all things, abjure all sentiments and concordant
instructions on what it is to be alive, to be a slight wince among those who
cultivate food and raise animals just so they can consume them— <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>those who believe that they own things. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are no rafters left in my drafty torment; only the crumbling
sliding-dovetail joints of my ruination remain, along with some wind-lofted
pages ripped from a King James Bible. I do not wish to lead any person to
believe that I will just up and Bojangles my way away from these parts. There
are ants between the tiles in wait of wayward crumbs. The windows haven’t been
washed in 18 years. I’ve forgotten what rain sounds like. Mother would tell me
to just be kind to myself, to go about half-flummoxed and a bit drunk,
remembering the different names for flowers and insects, clumsily drafting and
rearranging whatever’s sulking its way through me; and I’d take her cliff
diving now, if I could. Maybe all the way to Dover. But I am all out of feeling
like home. And I am just dashed against the rocks for all my trouble.Only a shredded tie and a torn panama left to take care of, to notice or appreciate. I’ll
take it. I will. It is probably just another fall to be wrecked at the end of. For
all matters at hand I am just a rattletrap scream barreling down the tracks on
a clattery old steam locomotive forever headed through smoky tunnels of what it
used to mean to be me. The hour’s grave. All the roads are closed. And for me?
Nobody knows. And nobody knows.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-23897421928984975422014-07-17T20:45:00.001-07:002014-07-17T21:03:12.577-07:00Of Nets And Webs<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
“You can have all your days. Just let me have the nights,
and maybe the mornings too. Imagine, if you will, two colliding elliptical
galaxies wrapped by a string of blue pearls. That could be me, or even, I dare
say, you. Let’s make a list of things we’re scared to think about and then burn
it. Take Vic Serf."
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“What’s the matter with him?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“He’s probably wishing he were back in Roanoke, in 1999,
smelling the stink of bar rags and Rolls Royce aftershave. No. Further back in
the pantheon of higher-ups, the runners of the show, and weak with it too. All
the way? Surer than ‘83’s flip of the switch, the one that turned this whole
god damn monster on.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Yeah. And he’s thinking, ‘Leave me alone. I’m working on my
forearm shiver.’ Or something like that.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Wait. I mean, wait. No. Wait. What’s not the matter with me
now? What next? What now?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well, it does seem that another sucker-bait blonde’s got me
on the hook. This time, or even next, or would that be all the times before?” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Let me tell you.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“No.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I tell you what. I remember Siskel and Ebert on TV, sitting
with a few seats between them in an otherwise empty movie theatre, screaming at
each other, just like my parents.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“And?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“And, about once a year I go down to LA, get a cheap hotel
room in one of the seedier parts of town, the same hotel where Raymond Chandler
spent a few dark nights contemplating suicide, and I drink gimlets and pound on
my typewriter and smoke a carton or so of cigarettes, and think about Raymond
Chandler a lot and I take myself out to dinner and I walk the streets and look
at things: all that old neon and the faded movie palaces and glorious heights
of art deco buildings and the longing and drag of skid row’s gloomy abodes. I
stay about a week. And I’ve never got bed bugs from the trip. Not even once.
And I haven’t jumped out of any of the hotel windows yet either.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well, for me, in my case, it’s starting to look, or at
least seem to me, that I’ve been dawdling around in the same crumby rubric for
too long now. And maybe? Maybe’s a really thin reed to hang your hopes on. You
see, it’s been such a long, lean time since I’ve enjoyed sitting across a table
from somebody and staring at plates of Chow Mein together. Hell and heck and
all the mugginess between. Sing me a song of sourdough, up through the Klondike
trail of ’98 or around the Pantages theatre circuit. And sure you can say stuff
like, ‘A bunch of the boys were whooping it up, etcetera, etcetera.’ But that
won’t cut it. Just another machine cranking out form letters. A remaining
balance never to be spent. Something unlikely in the swarf of troubling metal splinters
that keep spewing from the cut of my jib. Nothing burnished. Nothing remaining.”
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’m hungry. Let’s make some coffee.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Sure. We can talk over it. It’ll add steam to our gestures.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Plagued by Technicolor dreams, and then waking up to
history tossing its empties out the window. All of it pointless yet necessary.
Shrugging off to more Modest Mussorgsky territories, in the lap of need’s want.
To whom it shall never concern, express-written, told-on regards pass more
bottles through the war-torn strife of up-yet-not-quite-at-‘em concerns.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Nary a worry, lady.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“In the meantime, some sustenance. At last.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I was on a stroll just this afternoon, through a park. I
benched myself on the lee side of a slight slope. I watched. The TV antennas
planted on the rooftops like crossbows. A diving thing gone hidden to a swale,
fields of lavender and bone-white palms rustling in adamant gusts, tennis balls
crammed into the diamonds of a chain-link fence, a sign reading, ‘No dogs
allowed on athletic fields.’”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“What do you make of it?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well, you see, our brains are not made to understand the
concept of time. We want linear ways of looking at things: beginnings, ends,
the stuff between. Time doesn’t work like this. It just is. The start is the
finish, and all the stuff between too. In order to survive our brains had to
adapt to see things in a way that would allow us to continue on with some type
of order in the chaos, so as we could craft our own reality in a way that made
sense to us, that helped us make sense of the world around us, the one we
suddenly and constantly seem to find ourselves existing in, over and over. Just
to acknowledge this is something incredible. To overcome all of our limited
senses (which are limited for a reason, as we couldn’t survive without the
streamlined way our brains let us experience things) and doubt about what’s
really happening in this pale-blue-dot of a place, and somehow acknowledge that
we’ve only got these limited brains constructed over millions of years by
survival-of-the-fittest evolution just like the rest of our appendages and
innards; and that they only allow us to have these thoughts and render us
incapable of seeing the world and time as it really is: infinite. All we can do
is use what we’ve got, and see things like we do. But, I don’t know, perhaps we
should also keep it in the back of our little brains somewhere that what we
experience is just a tiny piece of what really is, and accept that there is no
way to break out of this hardwired way of experiencing things either. Maybe
this is empowering in some small, strange way. Anyway, these are the sorts of
thoughts that keep plopping into my head lately. You can’t prove any of it.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“It’s like were going outside for a cigarette and saying, ‘Let’s
go out and see the world.’ Conniving to convince ourselves that this it, that
there’s a whole a lot more going on within us than we’re afraid to admit there
really is.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Uh huh. And this, this is the place where I do my
dwelling.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Where’s this this?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“At the corner of Maligned and Confabulated, just past Remorse,
close to Puttering Along, down the street from Apotheosis.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“And me here, left dripping with hackneyed nonsense and noiselessness.
One eye glued shut. A hole punched in my tongue. Toe hair plucked. The Square
and Compasses shaved into my head. A cracked-mirror of a guy.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“What happened to you?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I was at a Tupperware party last night, and, well, things
sort of got out of hand.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Funny.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“No. Not really.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Forget it. I’m in desperate need of some Big League Chew.
But the dugout’s empty. The bullpen’s been battered by the straw-hat-and-beer
crowd. Nobody left to toe the slab. Nobody left to play fungo until the lights come
on. Nothing’s as swell or as dandy as it once was, or used to be. I’d be sorry about
it but I just don’t have the time.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You cannot space these things out properly, maybe, for
sure, and that’s where you get into the kicks of the thing, the seamy
transition from one who moseys to one on whom moseying is lost.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Complaining of which, I was out walking around on a Sunday
night in the financial district, feeling completely miserable about myself and
everything that was happening to me, the horrendous predicament that I found
myself in, the whole deal, all of it, just a drag. The vacated buildings and
desolate streets. The movement of birds like vowels flickering in some lost
guttural tone. Something too-bright and unsettling about the whole thing.
People sleeping on curbs, in storefront enclaves, lying tattered and bare as if
crucified on the sidewalk. The cop cars slowed to watch me as they murmured
past. I looked up a lot. I stared at the smallest things. I noticed the stuff
that gets overlooked. There’s no way around or into it. I’m not fit for the sort
of consumption that this world requires.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Not in this lifetime.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Getting behind. Losing. Getting lost. Being alone.
Ruminating in odd landscapes of discontent. Attaining stillness without the rub
of lassitude. A preemptive strike at the bored, blasé attitude towards life
that this world requires of one who wishes to succeed in it.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
“Success is a load of shit-smeared feathers, right?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“If you like.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I do. I mean, I don’t. Like. I guess. I mean…what?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“That’s it. Go listen to yourself think. Go sit on the
toilet and talk to yourself. Take a shower in the dark. Play the same record
over and over until you hear it for the first time. I am making too much sense.
I’ll stop before the price of derailment gets too cheap to bother about.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Is that a good thing?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I couldn’t tell you. The good leaked out of here long ago,
and we’re all still running from one stage to the next, trying to remember what
it was like to act like ourselves.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I could use a batting helmet. Being grandfathered into this
shit is really a catalyst for dementia and fear—that horripilation and
downright teeth-grinding toe-snapping sense that you are not at all what it is
that you are, and that is exactly who you’ve always known yourself to be in the
tiny subterranean nook of your unconscious that you always seem to be just a shy
(or careless) whisper from weaseling your way out of, or would that be into?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I ain’t got the foggiest.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Yeah. Me too. Notions are for the flag flyers and the
welders. Who are we to care about such stuff?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well, we still could, right?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Hell, it’s too early. It’s always, always too damn early.
And then, of course, it gets too late too soon; and then? And then it’s all
gone, and you think, ‘Fuck. I never even got a chance to know any of it very
well.’”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“And that’s the bullshit we abide by. The guns we stick to.
The hole we are in.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Our only worth’s our net worth. Our only hope is to pay our
way through our days.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I am going to sacrifice myself into an active volcano. Go
out with some flare, some dramatic timing perhaps. The Good Samaritans in my
head have gone native, and they’re restless as hell.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The drop edge of being you. It’s about time.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Time? Hell, what do I care about time? I don’t think it
even exists.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Of course.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-44608807904307401712014-07-05T11:38:00.002-07:002014-07-05T11:41:29.794-07:00Hic Habitat Felicitas <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]-->I have heard it said (never mind where and by whom) that
seeing a three-legged dog on one’s first date bodes well for future chance of a
romance. Perhaps this is an exaggeration, or just bunk. I have come to believe
so, at least.
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Carey Grant found my lost cat. He cradled it in his arms,
cooed to it some, and brought it back to me, mewing (the cat, not Grant.) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve retained the rights to my Grandfather’s WWII helmet. It
took some serious nicks and dents, but is in decent shape. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The last shoeshine parlor in town has closed down. Nothing
but tufted eyesores left, and the engagement of a tortured mind with the world,
of course. Everything’s outside my wheelhouse now. I’m moseying around with a
Stan Laurel fluster, and all my troubles just spill down my gullet at an
alarming rate.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I remember you when you were smaller than a tear. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A hungry scent roaming in a whispery slip over slapdash
tables set with undiscovered moods. It’s in headfirst. A wild right at just the
wrong time. Just another circus girl, here, in a place where nothing goes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The ballgame on in the background. The streetlights buzz and
glimmer to orange-yellow life as dark encroaches. The salmon’s gone from the
bricks, and nobody’s home. A hurtling past of screech-calm heat. Another
by-the-way to contend with. Rolling out of bed in the afternoon to puke back
into the glum-dreary mush of the world. News of my demise is highly
fictionalized. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve got a clip-on personality. It goes with most moods. I
got it on loan from a joiner named Bruce. There were scraped-out lobster shells
to cozy up to right there on the street, piles of them, picked ragged by street
people who never leave anything but the bones, and sometimes not even those. Crunched
and mangled, everything bleached from spending too many hours on the hot
sidewalk. Something ripe and sour about the whole ordeal. And that was before I
met Jumbo. And that was also before I lost the art of knowing what to do with
my free time. A rutted way to be moaning through it all. Underslept in some
Nicaraguan hotel. In the window. Always in the damn window. Squashed here among
the ruins and artifacts of a worried life. Other ways to go where most don’t.
I’ve got a trade-in soul: a real bargain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This paunchy sauced son-of-a-bitch growls out some orders,
and I go heel-over-kisser into the fray again. Yep. That about says and or almost
does it. I haven’t made any scenes in years.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is not a thing you have or have not ever in the space
of all the years said or in the chasing after of done that’d make even a single
louse of a difference in who or what you could’ve been, or not been.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lastly, these are the financial difficulties of the
emotions. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Adults who have wine collections, who favor certain types of
delicacies, who worry about what color shoes they’ve got instead of how they’re
going to pay the rent, who own nice cars they drive short distances to do
ordinary things like get their pets washed or cut their hair or exercise. People
who believe that they own things. Who wants to be a sucker like that? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I forget how it feels to feel things.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Days like these are rummy with dissonance, tussled costs, born-again
losses, repaired samples of past coming back to piss all over what’s in season
or out, and then there’s the piano dealers to have to face when the music gets
bleak like this. I’ve got my own concerto of a toilet to compose for assholes
to shit upon. What I don’t got are reasons; and I can’t ever, ever concentrate.
Trying’s for the dead dogs. The music’s still here, but I’m afraid to listen to
it, or even think about it. Mostly it’s church-bell stuff. Don’t worry. I’m not
running off to dance with it or anything. I’ll leave that to the more
open-to-suggestion sort. Me? I’m already starting to feel enchanted enough to
stop drinking for a day or two—not a night though. Not in this lifetime.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My clothes are falling apart. So many stringy threads
dangling, holes, patches like Band-Aids, white stuffing in ripped pocket
linings. Socks gone thin at the toe and heel, limply hang on above shoes in
much the same shape; and the shredded remains of a once regal button-up. Hell,
I’ve even been wearing the bottoms of my trousers rolled for so long, and I’ve
forgotten what walking on the beach at night does to you. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The buffalo roam no more.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When you’ve been sad and lonely for as long as I’ve been sad
and lonely you forget what it’s like not to be sad and lonely. I don’t believe
in better days to come. I don’t believe in anything but what’s left in this
bottle of scotch.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I met this girl walking around Huntington Park one night.
She wasn’t hustling along too fast. Just at a nice trot coming towards me. It
was hard to tell her face in the dark, so I kept looking. She looked back,
thinking I was eyeing her, which I was, though not maybe like she thought I
was. Not an ogle at all. Anyway, she smiled, and I did some half-enamored
gum-chewing gesture. I have no idea how it must’ve come off. I called her Joan Wayne
in my head. She kept walking her way, and I kept to mine. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You’ll have to excuse me. I’m a bit deaf in both ears.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I said, ‘Just booze? No mixers?’”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Mixers are for yuppies and poetasters.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Huh. So…um…how’s your night going?” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Horrible. I’m going around sweating like Charles Dickens in
this damn heat. But I guess it could be worse. I could be working as a grocery
clerk at 9:45 on a Sunday night.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You’re really going grey there on top, aren’t you?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You think that’s something? You should see my chest hair.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And some out-of-work studio musician says, “We all are where
we’re supposed to be, and we all get what we wish for. It’s just that we don’t
know it yet. Put value in all of the things that you’re doing. All of them.
Otherwise you’re just waiting for more waiting to pass.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I need to be more of a contemplator these days. Instead I
invent things to distract myself. I can still taste last night’s vermouth on
the bile climbing the rungs of my throat. These louvered moments press the
jelly beans out of my mornings. Land’s End. Day’s turf ground to rust. Stamped
to a less bright sort of gum-chewing trespass. I’m penitent enough with it all
as it is, and I always turn philosophical at this hour of daylight. Just don’t
forget to close my eyes when I tumble over and die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the roll between moments, anywhere’s somewhere, a place
to push back, or in the permanent fixture of looking, in the standard rule of a
stuttered growl. Not as chancy as a bad catch. Getting ripped off right of no
left. And all the pawns are going hell. It’s a wink before you close my eyes
when I’ve just drifted off to death. And thank you. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The softer they go, the easier they rise, sometimes. I guess
it’s the walk-of-the-mill thoughts I’ve resumed having that’ve blurred formerly
sturdy outlines of who it is who wears my shoes, dons my glasses, opens my
mail, and ruins my suits. A collection of electricity and skin and scabs and bone
and hair and empathy and neurons and blood and nausea and moods and curled
pinky toes and lost sense and arteries and teeth and all this errata and
etcetera too. The brazier’s warming up to toast my constitution some. You’ve
seen one fireworks display, you’ve seen ‘em all. Eat flowers. Be afraid. Go
ahead. The rest is over being underrated. All I know is what I don’t read in
the papers. Yep. Wouldn’t you know it? Slipping the lariat over, still. Well,
shit. I guess it’s back to Oologah, Oklahoma again. This light’s gone out.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My whole life is just contrivance and pose. Putting up with
and being put up with, something marigold that goes. And the cheapest way to
survive on memories is being lazy about the present. The sappy gulch of
forgiveness gives up its ghosts and holy water, and somehow I keep playing
along, dog paddling in it, maybe, in exchange for spring’s new clothes. No more
reflection in what’s left to read on the surface. A slimmer warp of what time
can’t tell bent into the long pious scars left in a room’s space that a laugh
won’t hold. Just a weeping pepper tree to chop down and use for firewood in the
heartless hearth of what I’m stashing away. Looser than always. Grooved and strutted
and channeled and chipped to be always away. That’s what gives, and also what
doesn’t. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Joan wasn’t just another hoyden without a place to call
home. Not some pipedreaming broad stomping the floorboards with plenty of reasons
to not be just where she was. No. Joan was a mélange of spray-blown spots and stamped
return tickets and blighted sorrow that she kept hidden in her boots along with
a picture of a dog named Ralph. She was the daylight that doesn’t last, peeking
out from behind drawn curtains, slowly, with a hunch that life might be out
there somewhere, among barbarous thieves and God’s chosen. There, shook with a
tremble, Joan made winnowed prayers to an atavistic God who took no chances
with salvation’s trouble; and Joan made off with penurious motives to Strumpet
Hill, talking so courageously dull over the cackle of static grumbling in from
some long place, perhaps above, in the classier rills of morning’s fading glow.
It was a hold she didn’t have anymore. Didn’t want or need, too. The poorer
sort remain that way, still, no matter what Joan did or didn’t. She’d pay the
lord with land; get a view. Joan was prepared to be who she thought others saw
her to be, even if that was just a dumb hoax perpetrated by her in some far
country of, “…I am what I want others to want me to be.” Classier trades to
ply, sure; but Joan wasn’t having any of it: “Remember me when I was who you
loved, in the sensation of that threading through of light that only knows how
to go. I’ve changed my name so many times. Call me Nadine, now. Call me Trish.
Call me whatever you wish in that deceitful monotone of days leaving, tuckering
out, and then furrowing into the runnels of loss. I am always who I am not.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-75437920413286154642014-05-18T12:53:00.002-07:002014-05-19T11:03:46.415-07:00a squeezed-out tube of toothpaste & a broken saxophone<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I went down to Market and watched the F-Line trolleys go by
for a while. The clank and whirr and screech of those rattling ex-deathtraps
made me sullen, even more so than I’d been moved to as of late, and my tendency
to shrink from company and wallow alone and isolated in despondency rose with
the taste of bile in my throat; and so I just stood there on the crowded
rush-hour sidewalk, pulled a napkin I’d swiped from Sam’s Grill from my vest
pocket, and cried softly into it. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">She was tearing through my mind at a good clip, hat off,
hair wild, pants rolled, makeup smeared and runny. “Then there was the
high-jacked knack you had for the dramatic— falling, caught, or listing between
storms, while I duct-taped my shoes and ran red lights with a shrug. With a
grain of salt and a shovelful of earth, just the space between a hiccup and a
sigh. Shattered low. Incompatible. And then there are those ruinous hospitable
instincts to contend with. Shared hittable pitches like emotional moments in
the history of bad luck. Rusty and shot down. Looking astute in the hurrying
clod of hobbling gaits and hollowed-out reminiscences.” I had better thoughts
to think, sure, but I just couldn’t get myself to get around to thinking them.
Some mendacious scumbag in rags with a few broken teeth and a shattered
personality was begging self-serving alms from me in the guise of
spare-a-dime-for-the-old-guy logic, while the only thing he wanted was a cold beer
and a colder pickle, really. I fished around in my pockets but all that turned up
was a bent cigarette and a discount pass to The Garden Of Eden. I sheepishly
half-grimaced in his general direction and mumbled, “Sorry, kid. I’m the stuff
regret’s made on.” The cigarette was too busted up to smoke and the pass to the
strip joint was expired. I put them both back in my jacket pocket and walked east
on Market towards the Embarcadero.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Somebody’d homered down at AT&T, and you could hear the
fog horns blaring and a bit of the crowd going wild. It made me wince, and I
hunched and shuffled, and I felt bad all over, and then a tad worse. I was
getting touchy and morose as the years passed. I didn’t like it. Something soft
and cravenly sulking about in there too much, like some dead pigeon rotting and
festering in the ruffled places of my weary disposition’s crutch. I’d like to
think that with the passing of years one acquires wisdom and perspective and a
certain grace that comes with experience’s accrued knowledge, but unfortunately
I’ve only found myself growing more petty and stupid and witless with each year
tacked on to this life I lead. I wanted a hot dog. I wanted to take the ferry
to Angel Island. I wanted a nice place to sit and watch Yerba Buena and the
bridge and the boats go by on the bay, a dozen oysters and an ice-cold vodka
tonic, maybe a waitress with a few specks of leftover glitter from the night before
on her cheeks and a rum-laced smile. I wanted to live in an old piano
warehouse. But I was sick of asking for things. My buttonhole was spoken-for by
a rusted safety pin. Things could’ve been better, I suppose, but it wasn’t
something I was letting myself let on about. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The street vendors were out in full force all along the
Embarcadero. I ambled by them, glancing at their wares and attempting to
reconfigure my notion of what it meant to be alive. A stooped Italian in a
butcher’s white smock was yodeling on about onions and peppers and sausage: some
lurid testament to more guts-and-grit times. Everything smelled like cocoa
butter and lard with a hint of jasmine. Carefully disobeying the traffic signal,
I moseyed quite carelessly across the trolley tracks, knowing that it didn’t matter,
that I didn’t matter, and therefore anything that could possibly happen to me—
whether of my own volition or not— could not matter in the slightest. It was
quite freeing. The clock tower loomed up above me, and I looked at it, just as
millions of others had for over a century as it ticked away the remainder of
their lives and continued on with its own. I looked at it— that ancient
sentinel of strict and steady passionless structure; that block of cement and
wood, never worried, never in love, never in debt or wandering aimlessly
through listless ways of trying and not. I looked at that damn clock tower
casting a big shadow over all of these small creatures down here whimpering
around, getting on with our small lives, conversing with our small voices; and
I thought, ‘I don’t care. Run off to the circus. Put the boot in the door. I
just don’t care. I do not care, not at all.’ Then some crazed rollerblading
lunatic wearing short-shorts, a midriff-exposing tank top, and a pink bandana
came rifling at me, slaloming madly through the throngs, his headphones pumping
into his ears what was to him the only sound in the world. Luckily I tripped on
my own feet and stumbled out of his way as he blared past without even noticing
anything outside of his narrow cubicled strip of world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I steadied myself, leaned against the wall, wiped the dust
from my pants, and felt extremely joyous and grateful for being who I was for
the first time in a long, long while. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
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Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-52359254443278605572014-04-27T17:29:00.000-07:002014-04-28T11:58:01.186-07:00A Bad Gasket And A Broken Windshield<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Maybe this’ll be the night? <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Not so-so sure of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Another botched repaving job. Another notch not
marked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: We are the basics, the swilled indifference,
the hunger and the desolation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Then, well, somebody to tell it, that’s a need
that’s going unmet, still. Still, we’ve got isolation to be ourselves in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Ship-shaped, another doddle, a wealthier way
of strolling, and the booing just doesn’t do justice to what it represents.
Another semaphore gone unseen but never hidden.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: We get summed up by it, yes we surely do. The
limit’s set. Looking for a little splash of red in the breaks of all this boring blue.
That happens to me never.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: A surefire ticker that’s taped up, bandaged
with rose stems and caged radicals. Nothing’s bought at less, or what it takes
lying lifeless on the operating table to be somebody’s neighbor or idol or
soap-scum of a husband.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: We give a little more-or-less all the time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Wiser, heaved on the pyre just out of time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: This’ll give a little assistance to the flame. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Perhaps. But I never treated her right or
wrong enough. I keep throwing all of these genuine things away to make room for
the tousled sort of thoughts I keep getting, having, ignoring, or whatever’s
next left to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: “Her” is just some dim idea you had one blustery
concomitant afternoon when the train butchers were luring saps with five-dollar-bill
fingers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: That’s the slurp without the gulp. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: I’d rather the skies spell out what’s going to
come, harbingers snuck by clouds through sullen folds in the weave of my sentiments,
almost like a pretty girl or an untouched bottle of rye. Peruse my gray-white
specials all you want. The greasy spoon’s downstairs, Dick.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: The past tense is so passé. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Without’s just another way to stay closer than
faraway. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Grades, escalators of the more mindfully
mannered sort, steps or just rungs to snap off and fall through, stairs to
tumble around on. We give better names than we get every time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Yup. Like, “He’s a lawyer. He ain’t the one for
you.” The things in our past we just can’t give up on or get past.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: We all carry our own damn crosses. We all
bear some ailment of some piss-poor reason to keep going. I want my bus driver
to be a holy man.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Well, we all have a propensity for sentimentality
some of the time, correct?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Right on. More to it. Whatever bends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Huge hearts. Fucking gigantic fucking hearts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: The opposite of that?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Bathing at odd hours. Keeping a scorecard at a
day game. Operating on Mission Accomplished visions. Melting spoons into rings.
A gas, really, isn’t it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: A damn shame, for most. That’s the shit I
stepped in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Leonardo The Cat is where it’s at.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Sure. But who goes in for all the mushy I-wish-ewer-here
stuff?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: See this? That’s my hand shooting up to be
counted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: By the way, Francis Ford Coppola can suck a
toe, by the way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: I see.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: No. No you don’t. You see, we’re rafting
without the white water or the rapids, or even the river. The edge of it’s
here, though. Tough as aluminum. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Another dope duped by a plunge into necessity’s
kitchen. See this? This is me grimacing hardly at all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: A thimble of white wine for your cognition. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Pass the water. I’m over contagious habituation. Hold
on. See this? This is me under the table, all curled up with a bad book and an
awl. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Let’s get found.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. Sure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Start it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: And in the beginning there was an apple and two
idiots with the morals of a couch louse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: The slithering ways of the world waiting to
be discovered. Misery marks its territory with cocktail napkins. Look. I’m
scrawling my name on one right now. It’s a dissipated pleasure, at best, but
still I ain’t looking for a trade.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Live it off. Sleep it on. I’m deteriorating right
behind my eyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Later mornings lead to later nights. I haven’t
caught a worm in twenty years. Fuck it. I’m disregarding good judgment for the
rest of supper. My heart’s so swollen with self-absorption that I hunt hunched
and bent over after whatever’s leading me through it all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: The busses are crammed with hasslers of mailmen
and creeps of unjustified means.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Yet near’s my only far, still. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: And I still have some answered questions for you,
Huckleberry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: The things that April brings, sourer and
sorted sorts of things. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Gravitated towards some ill-fitting grace. Talking
ain’t the thing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Some guys can wear hats. I am not nor ever have
been one of them. It’s just the way it doesn’t go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Fuck it. I’m buying up all the lottery tickets in
town and calling my lawyer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: And there goes another petal, afloat just an
inch above the muck.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: I don’t go out for all that. A rheumatic temper
that just leads to more pointless temptation. I think I might be suffering from
an avalanche of delusion. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: I think there might be another voice in your
head to tell you of such occurrences. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Now that I’d be lief to believe. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Ah. Just another copout’s disaster in that
cranium of yours. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Calling no cars. Good morning, doctor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Ok. Get it out of reverse, Chief.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Cloudy tufts, pooled resources of lavender and
hand-washing’s linger. Roosevelt’s exit strategy. A plain man’s planned canal. Forget
the fruit; I just want the core— what remains, what’s left.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: You’re drunk.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Again. You forgot, “Again.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: That’s a given.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Take!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: The most slender of all apologies, Hula
Hooper. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Shed the happy act. I’m splitting town with a Korean
girl named Bo who knows five languages. Fuck all these melancholic asides and all
of these soppy-saturated bastards. I’m walking the show with a stripper named
Codeine. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: What?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: That’s right. That’s it. Go on. Go ahead. Give me
a tissue of déjàvu. I’m in need of some of reminiscence’s insistence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: The plight of the meekly insistent. To be
worn like bandanas on the neck. Overstate your case, please. I’m out of touch
with such misgivings. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: A simple balm for a burn. Rest more. Live a
little. I’m ordering the drinks from here on out, Hal. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Because is its own why.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Hey. I used to say that all the time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: And now?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Now? I just refuse whatever's offered to me. It’s
great fun. Give it a shot sometime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Speaking of which, I need something to toast
with.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: With or of? Or in? Or…fuck it. I’m moving to the
Outer Continental Shelf. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Is that even possible?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: I don’t know, and I don’t give a shit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Be kind.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Fuck George Saunders. That guy’s crap.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: True. But still…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Blown down by some dirty trade wind. Knocked
around by another palooka biding his time on the vine. I don’t get what I don’t
for a reason. Get it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">SPALDING GRAY: Getting carried away, again and again. That’s
what we’ve got. It is all there is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">DILLINGER: Left. Right. Left. Left. Motherfucking left. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<br />Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-3585305240973731602014-04-17T17:44:00.000-07:002014-05-22T10:44:54.460-07:00The Contemplative Tippler<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’ve been wearing the same clothes for too long now.
Something woebegone and comforting in it, I suppose. The usual stitched-up and
unkempt look, a willful obedience to the strangely commonplace errors of my
ways. A crazed mopping of the brow, perhaps? Likely. Just as my love letters
are all riddled with typos, I am a man of rumpled deliberateness. Unscathed by
the drudge of getting by, I do as I do, and what else batters me or stomps out
my will to wish the weather would hold but a sly rumination on the nature of
open-all-night neon signs or the tatterdemalion flush of topcoat inklings. I do
say. Or, perhaps I do not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There are worse ways one could be spending one’s Easter; I
am sure of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The consolation of ice cubes. The reconciled guilt of
another glass’s clink. Sunnier pastures to be out to, that is for certain; but
they are not for me to ever be on. There goes another waiter, on a smoke break,
off a crying jag or two. I’ll take mine with lime and zeal on a rowboat in the
rapids of my head. And I’m getting a bit one-dimensional in my attempts at
being free. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I knew a bum once; he could beg for change in eight
languages. Like some ump with a rectangle for a strike zone, everyone hated his
guts. I want cheaper truths to slide by on, the scruffy stuff of maudlin
afternoons. Busted in, crammed out. That low-and-outside changeup’s just not
going to cut it anymore. A rifle shot in the breeze. I am going to put up with a
lot less in the days to come: something to bet the over/under on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So, let’s see here. I am hard at work being lazy. I am
taking all chances, and putting aside some drinks for later. The waiters’ little
hop-step, harried stirs wake me from a reverie, and something is not right with
the way I am seeing things. Blue dots imploding and streaks of blurry rose too.
Peace is for the competent, not for those of us weepers whose poker faces have
gone south for all seasons. I couldn’t guess at what that barman knows over
there, with his bowtie and his shiny auburn vest. I want a bowl of fresh fruit.
I want a girl who needs all the things that I’ve got to give. Somewhere
there’s a plea cut with absinthe on the longest bar top in the world, and I
cannot wait for it to arrive anymore. I nod my head, order another, and make
the best of what I know.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Stand around. Make a little sense. Throw a couple of bucks
down for a tip. The bannisters are rough with it; the ladies across the bar snack
of anchovies and broiled pig hearts. I almost wink at one of them. I almost pretend
they’d care. There’ll be wet socks on the floor and a roadblock in the
headlights. Nobody to take home. Nobody to go home to. Some inside-the-park job
with nowhere left to run. Guess I’ll have that drink now. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Woe is not so me anymore. Jesus. I stop off and ask for a
rare steak, and I get eyed and roughed-up by looks. So I stare in the windows
some more, and the more I ask for the most I won’t get. The slender women slip
by and don’t smile much; they glare at the sidewalk or talk on their phones. I
move through the obstacle course of the masses and dream less vividly. There is
not a thing left for my sight to catch. The only thing around here that keeps
me going is the bottle’s promise of a not-so-terrible night. No Parking signs
dot the landscape with worse luck than most, “Or You Will Be Towed” like and epitaph
for my darkest hours, drifting with the out-crowd I go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sleep’s country is a place I never travel too far in. It is
always another wakeful yawn away. Strolling over some water, never enough to
drink, and the slake is all that’s left. And so I tremble myself awake again
and again. Rest is a place I’ll never know well enough. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Me? I’ll have another of the same.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I knocked over the lamp she gave me, and it cracked and broke
all over the floor, and I screamed, “Vida Blue! Smokey Joe Wood! Three-Finger
Brown! Kenesaw Mountain Landis!” I righted the thing the best I could. It had sharp
edges now. It was a fighter, gone down and back up again with the scars to show
for it. I missed her like nothing I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing enough
to miss before. Another 100-proof belt of a song I’ve never quite finished
knowing. I let go and hung on. I toppled over on the bed and lay there sobbing
like a dimwit. The moths swirled and buzzed. I made no move to counter. I sat
up, scoured the nightstand for a cigarette, found one, promptly lit it best I
could, and sat there on the bed smoking until I felt as close to alright as I could
get. It wasn’t the most noble of things to be partaking in, but it was all I
had, and I was okay with that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The tree’s leaves’ glint sunset colors in the way she sued
me for a wave and another last time. A cutter on the inside corner. A
train-station echo that hollers, “Honus and Ty on the back of a coin! Flip for
it!” I thought, ‘Asshole.’ Who am I to make such distinctions? It’ll all peter
on out anyway, even before I’m through. Every fathead who walks into this place
is just looking for excuses, ways not to have to deal with whatever it is they’re
dealing with. The louder they raise their pathetic voices the less they’ve got
to say. I get up and lean on the bar. I get the barman’s ear. “Hey, why don’t
you guys switch on the ball game? Give us all something to look at.” He winks
at me, “The leaves are all brown, sir. All of them, the ones that are left,
that is.” He turns the TV above the bar on the ball game. I go back to my seat
and get on with my staring at it. Everything is happening as it should.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The homeless lady who sings arias is in the window. Her mound
of blue-black hair’s filled with glitter and tickertape. I can see the places
she’s been in her widowed eyes. She’s really going for it, hitting notes so
high I worry about my highball glass. The rags she wears suit her: some tacky
spray-painted silver wedding dress torn in all the wrong places, a whalebone
necklace; high heels with broken heels. I don’t want her song to end. A few
joggers go by. A horde of tourists on a walking tour. A cop with bad sunglasses
and a worse mustache. Sometimes the world’s more wonderful than any of the
things in it. I sip and sip at my drink. The aria comes to a sad and beautiful end.
The homeless lady walks away with her chin tilted slightly up and her arms
akimbo, strutting and smiling a better smile than most could ever dream of. I
feel that I’ve been a part of something important. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The drinks will come. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The drinks will go. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The reasons to live? <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Maybe not so. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span> </div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Things get hectic and rush. I get removed from my seat. I
mumble, “Well…well…you know nobody brings anything…small…into…a bar.” Those who
lay their hands upon me do not mind what I say. Those who carry me off to a
slumberous place, or a gutter’s comfort. I wish them very well. I wish the
traffic, the lampposts, the mail boxes, the dogs being walked, the misanthropic
losers like me, the runners of errands, the mostly confused cabbies, the
out-of-work right fielders, the musterers of bad dreams, the harlots in drag, the
bad waiters, the out-of-town scoreboard watchers, the meek and hale, the whole tempered
bullshit ragoutof it all, I wish it all the best; and then I subtly, with great pomp and soigné, go to hell.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-22119149562403833142014-04-15T11:23:00.001-07:002014-04-15T11:36:30.518-07:00Bowling Shoes And Mismatched Socks<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I hope this drink is strong enough to bring me some much needed
peace. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Me, hustling and hobbling along Columbus with my burrito in
tow, as usual, slightly jumpy, a tad at ease, worn out and weary, rubbed with a
dab of hope. I do not make mistakes when it comes to cruelty. Sure, the
excesses of my nights carom off rubber walls of doubt with an unhinged yet
frivolous sense of self importance. Sure. But who the hell’s around to notice?
I get nervous around crickets and crows. And there you go. I have my doubts about
restriction. And— just a minor observation in the crux of all this— there are
more or less goopier parts of salvation to sop up before the long ride back
home’s all you’ve got to look forward to. I am less prepared to face it, too. A
real screamer hit right back up the middle for your trouble, I tell you. Then
again, it’s the stubble’s relatable sign of hazard that gets me all twisted up
inside over barely a thing. It’s a cut of clouds sleeping over the rooftops
again, and I’m off to other hassles. Trust me. I’m bigger than the grudges I
keep holding onto by the skin of my teeth. Getting over things is a dilapidated
proposition at best. Any poultry cook will tell you the same. The doom of dizzy
spells tilts the pinball game of my ways, and it’s not even morning out yet.
Still the same old bluesy terror stripped of context in the tawdry, sallow
light. I might not mean more than a mashed potato to most, and I’m not playing
the part of being me very well right now, but there’s still a streak of two of
misery left in me; I’m sure of it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Counting on being counted out, when the humbling hurl of
tragic instances gets me into bed for keeps in the morning. I am where I mostly
don’t want to be, most of the time. I’ve got more anchors dropped from me than any
boat on the waterfront. I’m doing the telling, and, kid, it’s not that bad.
Also of note: it’s not that good. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">You, rustic and stoic too. A bit absurd of mien and stance.
Ruffled habits bordering on preposterous, with ill-fitting strums of moods,
flagrant and obtuse, in or out of lesser-known meanings of try. Devastated with
will power. A wintering souvenir special reeking of castor oil and Crest. There
is no courtesy worth salting away for later in any of it. Keeping up the façade
of sour-faced deliverance. Nobody’s on hold. And the rain’s gone off the air.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Get this: my wind was gone for the night. A spiffy little
drag from you to me, some shiver-sender to inebriated spines. All the shop
being talked was this postulation-type stuff, and I didn’t care for it, to be
somewhat in the vicinity of honest about it. Then some middle-of-the-night idea
hits and I’m done for. This also: “Consciousness is not a countable thing.”
That’s about when I learned how to stop being a misogynist and became a feminist
instead. Mostly I was drudging up complaints too, something to do with the fact
that some smile-at-anything-in-pants lady was roaming the districts of my
discontent. And the sharps were busy with their baize games of looking cool.
Nothing seemed enough. A barrel of water to spray on the dirt. I began to take
my shots in the dark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Aunt Millie started out seeing jumpers in her sleep. The
high-wire act in her head was drooling and defunct by the end of it. Like a
collapsed intake valve of past: bridges she’s seen in some other where of her
spent time; or other spot-on marks of former achievements, the sight of which
could well up a working title of space without time to be in it. She sold illegal
fireworks to kids, the kind that’ll ruin a mailbox or catch fire to a barn. She
meddled in optional responsibility. Millie had opinions about the true nature
of Tardigrades, about how they’d outlast even our planet itself somehow, and
that, really, this world belonged to them; the rest of us were just rushing
about on it on a loan from the plants and bacteria, without whom we’d all be
toast. This thought pleased her immensely. “Get me a jug of dirty hard cider
and a rope,” she’d preach to the muskrats, “and I’ll never come on back this
way again.” Apparently one day she did just that. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Forget the plowing and the preacher-like tug of ecstasy that
comes from “knowing” a small truth for a small time to be smaller and smaller
even than you’d ever want to convince anybody of. In any two-cow town, scalping
the flowers, scraping nothing but the scratch-awled walls. My penitence is
never over. And the things I’ve said to absolute strangers would make even the scrawny
sandpipers go ape-shit over measly scraps. Here’s one: “That’s a Loggerhead
Shrike. Those bastards, they’ll even eat smaller birds from time to time, just
to keep things interesting out there in the big old ornithological world. They hang
their prey up on thorns and barbwire fences. They’ve got black-eye masks and
hooked bills, and you only really see them during winter. You really don’t want
to fuck with them, buddy.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Me, sullen and shirking all duty for another waylaid day.
Putting on another showboating act for no one. I believe in long, slow, lazy
afternoons with the promise of dusk tinging the horizon with juniper and hot
asphalt while I mildly sip cloudberry wine with the windows slung open, with my
feet dangling from the fire escape, or from the eaves— perhaps high-up above
town somewhere with only a pinup girl’s photo and a rusty way to say goodbye to
my name. I may be cruel, sure; but not wholly unkind. So. Come closer. There is
something almost too gorgeous to be beautiful here that I do wish to show you. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-65403831867677281912014-04-06T19:58:00.001-07:002014-04-06T20:08:06.132-07:00the glory of complacency <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s the one equation that’ll never be complete.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is the solution that’s anything but replete.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love will knock you by the wayside.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love will leave you wishing that you had a different suite.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is just a waltzing when all there is goes to the rhumba.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love kills more men than bombs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love cures all the ills that you never thought would ever be
wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s a curse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s a demand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s the freedom you’ll never expect to happen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s a squashed pear on a bookshelf.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love makes the world worse and better, and better and worse
all the time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love will die and it’ll live again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love will leave and come on back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s the slowest train you’ve ever known coming down the
track.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is pretzels when you’re thirsty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is the last song at the skate rink.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love cuts the reason from your only rhyme.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love slurps oysters over a dirty sink.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love will end you up in The Clink.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s a toast you can’t make.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is forever’s ending.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is stale tortilla chips dipped in rancid salsa.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is a half-dollar when all you need is a quarter to
start the washer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love doesn’t care what promises were meant for.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love gives up before it ever had a chance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is way slower than the sound of loneliness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s a tougher way to say goodbye.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love won’t just move on over for just anybody.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s a miserable proposition to some guy with food poisoning.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is Paris in a bottle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is being on the run.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love will sit heavy on your chest when you’ve fallen down,
again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s a place you’ve never been that keeps calling you
home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love will strain and ebb and dash and flow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love won’t remember your car when you go.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love will speak into the crook of your arm and spell your
name wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s got a shot of whisky in it sometimes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love has no idea what to say most of the time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love irks more umps than Earl Weaver ever did.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love makes plans just to break them all the time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s digging through the used-record bin while drinking a vanilla
coke and listening to a popcorn machine pop.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love won’t sashay with all those unnecessary plastic objects
that fill a purse.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love dances closer than that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s a longshot gone to the wild
horses. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love cries over TV shows.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love makes the nights worth the days.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is on sale all the time in some dingy five-and-dime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love will make you cringe and cry and feel ashamed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is hazel eyes and chestnut tears and all the dates you
never got to have.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s an escalator going sideways.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is just a Nanci Griffith song on the radio.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love rends and roars and reaps without a sow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love will leave you blind when all you want to do is look.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is Mississippi on the horizon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love gets cranky and ashamed when the weather won’t work out
right.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love doesn’t listen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love doesn’t always bend with the stems of flowers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love waits and waits and waits and waits and waits.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s some abandoned shack on the side of an old highway in
the Mojave.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love’s a high-school kid’s binder covered with felt-penned band
names. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love creases anything you’d ever dream to fold.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is a newborn crying through the wrinkles of youth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love cannot be just cause or effect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love will tell you when you’ve had enough.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love won’t listen to your excuses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is some Santa Cruz girl telling you that you’re just
tops.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is the bottle’s last drop.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is that last sip of bourbon from a best friend’s glass.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is what never dies when you do. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is a kiss blown across a room to some girl you barely
know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love cheats and conspires and marries for money too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is not true or kind or gentle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is its own end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love reminds and forgets.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love crowds a bar and thunders through another storm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is a heart you’ve never known wishing you farewell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is some little kid crying in their sleep.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love casts prayers out into the dark waters of time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love doesn’t always make amends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is cruel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is anywhere but here.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is everything and nothing and all that’s in between. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Love is sometimes all you’ve got.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-22180054531753543672014-03-16T16:26:00.003-07:002014-03-18T12:06:23.949-07:00testing testing<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’m a nibbler and a sipper. I am a tester of water. Yes. And
I will ask myself also, “What if there is no water? And what is water? How do I
know if it exists, or if I exist? For what reason or reasons am I testing it,
and for whom? And what results would qualify as passing for this test?” I get
lost far too easily in such matters. I cannot become staunch now about being a
passenger here. “A diamond for your thoughts,” they say. I say, “Loosely
ground,” to it. I won’t make myself special if it can be helped. Assuaged and
lip-read, I grouse without a sound. If the water’s warm I will jump. And be
settled to it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A discovery: “trisp” is not a word. Let the letters be
whatever color they want. Brash is the lunge I get after the spectacle of
acting my part is done with. Okay. Hurry up with a tad more on the revolutions
of the celestial spheres: Copernicus. His sunniest side didn’t work out in the
always heliocentric ego of what’d last and go on. “Proper,” you say? Well. I’d
give a look-see to it. The ease that comes without opulence: an inebriated pride
perhaps, a wheelbarrow’s fortifying grace. I know not the aluminum’s crash,
yet. We here— including myself, of course— are not neighbors. Shed. Sweep.
Level the surface. Joists turning under the whole rig’s weight. More things to
worry about. “Trisp,” I say to it. “Bogus.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Treat me for ringworm once in a while.” That’s the shipbuilder
in me talking. He continues, “Ahem. Yes. That about does it. Goodnight nurse.” I
guess it’s about time for some carpe dieming. I’ve been putting it off for so
long. “Get to it then.” That’s me growling back at the shipbuilder. Neither one
of us is becoming very comfortable with the other. And now some joker’s turning
off the hot water on us.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The water stays, tested or not. I prowl over it lightly with
bated breath and a few jab steps. Who would I be to glide safely through it? If
I must administer these tests, these showboating things with crabby mysteries
to unveil, who will be there to see the results? I am not the one who functions
well under the cool eyes of disbelief. I almost could get myself to swear to
that. I won’t though. I have to believe that all of this is necessary. I have
to believe that I am, if nothing else, this “me” who shudders at most vain attempts
at placing whatever it is that resides in these tests to the test. What test
would I use to get results like the ones I never am able to comprehend,
nonetheless get? Rich am I with empty gestures. I skim my lithe hands over the
choppy wave crests of what little I know, and I pretend to know things that I
wouldn’t give a glass of spinach milk for the knowing of. Shallow or deep, I am
at least proper in my estimates at what I can claim to be constraining myself
in with these acts of motionless awe. I am a too, also.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A man arrived just the other week. It was not another incompetent
one (man or week), but a trifling stipend of guff and grist for me to sift
through and over. And so I thought, ‘Let me just see here.’ The man was a
bright-tie guy, and he was balding and wore wire-rimmed spectacles and had on a
corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows, and his presence made me think of a
small house cat for some reason. “I do not have time for silliness. We all need
results.” This was his way of introducing himself. I would’ve shook his hand
and said, “Howdy. Put ‘er there,” if it had seemed likely to be reciprocated in
this by some fashion of his, but his perturbed scowl came to a hilt, and it
came to pass that he was solely perturbed with my diddling and trawling nature,
and his, “Let’s slice to the core of all this frank-and-beans,” was a necessary
course of events.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I sorry-ed my way through amateur-hour courses in
flamboyance over a topic which concerned me about as much as if I’d been slipped
a note reading: “I still think of you as a babe. Hotter than coals as ever.”
The man was ho-humming the whole affair, and I carefully washed his thoughts in
vinegar as we walked and tiptoed towards what one of us believed to be water.
Soon he was aghast at things I hadn’t mentioned. “Where are there squeaks like
these?” He asked. I told him, “I know not squeaks, madam.” A certain puckering
came to his visage. I quit our journey and stowed my luck away in a broken
radio. “I want rascals, not childish egos to deflate. Are either of us kidding
the other?” That’s the last thing he allowed me to hear.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There will be dump trucks and wagons here at seven in the
morning. I will be listening to the sound that planes make as they perform flybys
overhead. I do not preach sympathy or little smacks of deliverance. I test the
water. That is all. I am doing nothing but something, and I will continue
whether anything here really exists. Snip go the gardening shears. I can notice
them from where I belong. Dip a toe in? I distrust such obvious designs. If I
were somebody ordinary I might flay the expense from the trust I never had a
chance to retain. I am that man who was here the other week. He is not here
now. I am. Of these peculiar things I can be sure. Lips on a face. A wisp of
hair curling from a neck. Bright waters run still deeper with it, more than can
be supposed or tested. Water is just a guess. I was not made for it. Laugh so I
might not starve before the next test follows from the last, and all over
again, and, of course, never. Never is my final at-all. Test it out yourself. See
what you think. If you really are there and not here, or are you and I not the
same? The point of all the testing is that it doesn’t matter. The water’s not anyone’s
to test. One is not capable of the other. And the days will trickle by now, and
you will not know for whom you test and on whom or what, if the water’s still
there in the morning. Yes?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-34768166024577323712014-03-02T16:27:00.001-08:002014-03-02T16:32:08.341-08:00A Certain Peculiar Certainty<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Dearest Olive,<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">This patter I’ve caught myself in needs a way out. Charlie
Chaplin knew it. It’s in the drop of poison you never get. He threaded it all
night long through the slaughterhouse of his chagrin. Perhaps I’ll relate to
you what happened last night. Apparently I believe that you will care. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I wasn’t in the mood for getting-to-know-you chitchat. Inside
the bar it was too crowded to sit, so I went outside and tried to mingle with
the smokers. As recently as being a bit sloshed would allow, conversation
wasn’t making itself available, and I knew it, as I was dribbling on about
having a nap like it was early on in the evening in Spain or something. Who the
hell knows why I say all things that I say? It’s just a tight place to be
situated in. I noticed a little girl holding the string of a few balloons in a
doorway. The doorway was in a little alley, one that reminded me of all those
brick alleys in Lowell, or then again maybe it was just a rope to dangle a few
bad memories from until their necks all snapped. I pulled a smoke from my vest
pocket and handed it to a beautiful lady. I lit it for her. She smiled and told
me to go to hell. That made me feel more than just a tad delighted; it was the
best news I’d heard all day. I lit one for myself and stood there like a jerk,
coolly inhaling and exhaling— something I’m quite accustom to looking dashing
while doing. She was unimpressed. I admired her taste. “You’ve really got
something going there, lady. Stick with it. You’ll really go places.” She
called me an asshole and told me to leave her alone. I obliged. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Soon after I was strolling down Columbus, alone, deliriously
contented with myself, and in an odd way, morose. There were folks gathered in
smoking scrums outside of bars all the way down the wide boulevard as it cut
its diagonal path through town. I snaked my way through them and kept going
along until I came to the edge of Washington Square Park. It was nice out. It’d
been raining all day, and the streets were slick with it still, as the night
had cleared up and kicked the storm east. A sickle moon was slicing away at a
few ambushed stars, and the streetlights were making up stories about
pedestrians and dogs. I wanted a place to sit, and so sauntered on over to a
bench on the south side of the park. Miraculously it was dry. I sat there and
watched the trees and St. Peter and Paul’s all lit up across the way. I spotted
a rat scurrying around in the hedges. It noticed me noticing it, and quickly
darted up a tree. A certain train of thought rumbled its way through me, and I
decided that all I really wanted in life was somebody to goof off with— or
maybe goof around with too. It felt grand to finally have some purpose in my
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Hello again. My dreams are more vivid now.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I am not so mean anymore. I lean into things, like my nights
and backdoors. Reason stands proper by my side, even when I am not able to need
it. The windows see right through me, and I get tuckered out around noon,
shortly after waking from an unendurably deep sleep. The cats in my building’s
lobby scratch at my door. I never let them in, even when their petulant purring
turns me into a sobbing wreck. I want hotter coffee, damn it. I want golf balls
to throw at pigeons. Just a few things. Not so much to ask for, really. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">In hopes of not reaching you, this letter’s not made of
declarations or snide mischief. If it were to place itself—all these things and
some other stuff too— in the grubby mitts of some bail bondsman, if it were to
shabbily go where naught but jewelers and pie sellers were meant to go, well,
then I guess I’d throw a few more colons in for the sake of unbound ideas or
the sorted well-meaning jousts of towel-wringers and horseshoe loaners. By gut
instinct I renounce the pecuniary joy that is brought to most people on paydays.
There’s a light on in the parlor. I must attend to it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Formerly I woke to realize that a moth had died on my cheek.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">It was just table-setting to be engaged in, that worry in
the parlor, and the light showed me less of it. Swallowing gasps of gulped air,
I livened up to switches, to on-off clicks, to darker stretches for my roaming
to go about in, or through at least. I need others to blame, but only have
myself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The velvet settee is being delivered unto the lord. The music’s too
soft, and I’ve grown too old to hear it. Been up and out of here, too, in the
rash haste of my sort of ways. Tilling at dawn’s ploughed rows of rising, and
the matchwork is mismatched with me. And, also, who knows? I mean things and
then I don’t. Balance is not always such a stable thing. A picked-apart room.
Astonishing reasons for behaving just the same as always. Or can you find it in
me, maybe? (And if you have to ask what “it” is, well, that’s mostly your fault.)
What could’ve happened without you is not what the striptease theater barkers
are going on about. That? That’s something you are most likely just finding
out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Last night I threw my topcoat up a sycamore. It hung there
in the gnarled, leafless branches like a ghost between scaring bouts. It was
mesmerizing. I left it there to do as it would. I’m through with it now, whether
I like it or not, and it will not be returning to my closet. Perhaps I am
envious of it, dangling there in the wind and the rain, holding on through
spasms and quirks in the nature of things. It should think, ‘I wonder when the
leaves will come back?’ It doesn’t. Instead it relies on the notes of late winter
to toy with its meandering wonder. And if I never shall return? Only you’d ask
such a blundering question. So, I leave the answer to you as well. The finding
out is the easy part. Besides, fanatical attachments aside, I’m not such a bad
guy once you start to know me. My topcoat has set sail for uncharted regions of
foliage. I don’t mind the irreconcilable trust all of this must somehow involve.
What is there left to mind anyhow?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Also, before I forget to mention it, this lady, the other
day, she called me a “dorn forker” while I was riding the subway. I was
standing, holding the metal grab rail, and she comes up next to me and calls me
this name. Then she walked away, opened the door between cars, and fled the
scene. I detected a defect in her pitch, something I trust that you’re surely
aware of— acutely even. When I slow down my thoughts everything comes out
differently. This women was a token of the dismal traces people defend of what
their too fearful to believe is their former self. I hung on for the sake of
holding on, as is my wont. Being interrupted is all that happens now. You can
see that, can’t you?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I stand at my window and dream, outwardly, in your general
direction. A passive shrug, and then I’m done. There are only hate letters left
to compose, complacently as it were, in the catchall of any last silence I
might break. I forget what your breath smells like.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Whoever’s, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Harold Hamgravy</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span> </div>
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Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-54527391716298495502014-02-28T12:04:00.002-08:002014-02-28T12:11:16.048-08:00Rocky's Testament (Part 1)<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Things are looking rather
deplorable for this here Yours Truly lately. People refuse to read anything I
write, even if I pay them to do so. And the money’s running out on me too. Will
you burn this letter with the rest of my scribblings when I have finally passed
on to that great barroom in the sky? Perhaps people will come to read these
things after I’m dead, and the thought of them doing so just absolutely
devastates me.” –from Franz Kafka’s final letter to Max Brod.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The rain is here again. Back from a
well-deserved hiatus, a slumbering hibernation perhaps. And me? I never had
time to be young. I was born aged, weary, tired. There are no worlds left in me
to explore. A legacy of emptiness. A hell of a thing to be. Refueling’s
optional at the moment, so I go in for a few warmer whiskies: hair of the mule,
or something like it. There’s a purpose for all this. Don’t you worry. Light
some kindling and send a smoke signal to that great bartender in the sky. Tell
him, “Please stop.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Okay. I’m still here. Poured
another drop out of this here bottle into me. Should sate the demons for a bit,
at least. I want a mannequin in my likeness to be displayed on pluvial days in
Union Square. No plaster-of-Paris-souled son of a bitch is going to graffiti on
some statue of me— of that I’m damn sure. Let them tear the limbs from the
thing, if they must. I won’t mind the struggle. Besides, I’m a plagiarist at
best. Worn sop of a gun that I am, I believe all attention will eventually sway
towards the details, and then away, and then further than that. I’ve got my
particular type of calculus to deal with, alone with my bottle and a typer.
It’s futile to believe anything will be accomplished around here. I’m a bona
fide saint in some circles though. It’s not easy to believe, but I’m told by
those who are paid to know such things that it is true, so I believe it. What
else can one do?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So. Let’s roll around to the
peachier stuff of this life spent running the empties to the cellar trashcans. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Kids are singing on the street:
“Train, train, go away. Come again some other day and take me on away. But
today, train, train, go on away.” I agree with them in principle. It suits me
somehow, in this drizzly state I keep myself in. There are plenty of worse
things to hope for, roses and weeds and mud and all. I’m better for their
singing. Soon they trot on away, splashing in puddles, ruining the tenebrous
skies of my disposition with little tacks of sun. I’m glad when they’re out of
earshot. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">When it hails it kills. That’s what
an ancient postman once told me. It’s not something I’d let on about to
strangers or little kids, but perhaps there’s some listing of truth in there
somewhere. It’s bad enough for me. It trains my attention to what it needs to
focus on: spare tires in treewells, broken umbrellas turned inside out in the
gutter of some place called Brooklyn Alley, the rust on a fire hydrant’s chain,
a moving van’s shot hydraulics, a butterfly’s flutter to hold still in a gust,
wrinkles on an old woman’s brow, the patrolling eyes of a traffic cop, the
bluster of a card sharp, the noise of a garbage disposal, the mop and swing of
a grade schooler’s uninhibited laugh, all the napes of the necks of all the girls
I’ve loved before. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Just wasting time like the rest of
them, I guess. It’s always so though, isn’t it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The back of the room’s cleared. I
put all of my chips on red, but not white or blue. I want Luis Tiant’s windup
and Hammerin’ Hanks muscles. There goes my everything and my nothing, all at
once, heaving it all up or falling asleep in your arms. I’m just the same for
it, as always. Maybe R. Carver could’ve done something better, or O. Henry. But
I’m just another sucker off the mend again. Nobody’s worried about me though.
Nobody at all. Not even me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">A cab trolls by, skidding through
the rain-wet one-way. And I’m left up here getting older and resting less and
less easy. The typer skids too, smearing everything to all hell: some sort of
resuscitation for me, I guess. Wasting more time than I’ll ever let on about. It’s
still something. And something is still better than nothing, I find.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
places I go, they're not worth going on about. Situations run their course, and I
sometimes get what’s not mine, in some Pennies-From-Heaven scam. It’s a two-bit
smile that never comes through. An empty subway car after midnight’s gone for
good. Whatever’s not happening, that’s what gets me through it all. A barely
legible sketch in the scratchy record of who I was, I get by still. Begging
more pardons and getting less and less in return. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Trotting
out the worst of me, through thimbles of terror and canisters of ineptitude.
There’ll be more to go on about soon, perhaps, but I’ll be the worse for it.
Isn’t that the way these things seem to mostly go? I need trumpets and all I
get are these shoddy saxophones.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
rain is here again. My shoes are in the oven. The rain’s here to keep me here.
There are less likely suspects. The smokes are all gone from my hiding place. Get
me a brick and a lighter, some yarn and a rifle. Tell Beverly that I’m done
with that stuff, even though I never will be. The cat’s the only part of that
equation I cared for anyway. And maybe the couch.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Don’t
get me right, I’ve always held others responsible for my inconveniences, and
there are spelling errors still in my soup. The scent of umbrellas is all over
everything, and I can’t make tails out of all these heads bereft of any sense.
I’ve been making it on my own for just long enough now. It’ll all squander
itself out in the end. There are even moths that know more than the rest of us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
Chinatown parade’s shut down the street again. The kids are playing with
fireworks in Brooklyn Alley. Nobody’s my only one, now. Headlights as far
uphill as anyone could ever see. The slight hinge-squeak of brakes. A patter of
bass from a car stereo. The husky throttled stop-and-lunge voice of a bus. Only
stinkers on the horizon. I’d see past and back, and the retreat of bolder
voices less brassy slaloming down the sidewalk’s slope. With enemies like these
who needs enemies? A tin’s tap and a hand holding a sleeping head in such
bright yellow light. Idling motors and squeals of waiting through traffic’s
jam. Solely together. Maybe the clothes will change themselves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Perhaps all red turns to white and
back before we notice it’s not too late or it is, also. You care with the
swan-neck curve in the sodium yellow of it all, maybe? The parade’s just the
litter of firecrackers, leftover egg-drop soup containers, and the pigeons
snack on rice and discarded chow mein. The so-long is gone from the ago.
Parallel parkers be damned. The onions are shredded and my paperbacks are all
falling to the carpet. We have indecency to have while the bathtub grows more
scum rings. Walk or walk. Our names on the slips from fortune cookies. It’ll be
a jab at sweeps of the gutter, seeds and stuff, crumbled postcards, the ripped
pouch that once held your hairclips and safety pins. An acrobat in the coffee
pot. A honk’s shatter. A xylophone for your dreams? It bests the best I never
got to have. Made into a distant thought. Chinatown’s not for hikers or
parachuting bellboys. We know the hanging lamps, the bored fish in the window,
and we read backwards through the dying neon signs and the clothes dangling
like bait from the fire escapes, and we use chopsticks like swashbuckling
barbers might, or midshipmen on shore leave. There are more sinister things to
be. The swish of pedestrians pulled past the intersection through passed-over
tchotchkes and artificial sentiment, and never our names on those miniature plastic
license plates. There are huger deals, sure. But if one alit upon a razor’s
edge would there be less demand? Made beds and always unmade minds. Up is the
spiral lift of a softer place to lie.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The elevator to the rooms has been
out of service for as long as any codger can recall.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
supposition: I’m in the clutches of the devil, but he doesn’t want me. Somehow
he can’t just get himself to let go though. All my running around just doesn’t
do him any bad. Frustrated to all hell, as only He can be, He ruins what’s left
of my scurrying around with dead-ends and bad luck. It doesn’t work. I just
keep ruining right on along. Praise the lord. I’m whole again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So,
blisters notwithstanding, these hills get wrecked. The murky ruin that
substantiates any claim on doing better than this is bottled and sold to the
lowest scum any bottom-feeder could find. And yes, right now that’s me. All the
girls who won’t call back. The ones who think they’re above it all. Well, the
rain will make you just the same. Sitting here feeling bad with my sunglasses
on, wishing I were anywhere but home, with only a broken suitcase and an old
pair of shoes to my name. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What
I’m saying is, “Just leave me alone, kid. I’m in a bad mood.” But what I really
want is someone to come around and make me feel better about being me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Sentiments.
I’ve got ‘em. Sure. Hot Toddies be damned. I’m running low on life’s joys. And
when it comes to religion, well, it’s like the old Groucho Marx joke: I’d never
want to be a member of a church that would have me for a member. That being
said, from an early age I’ve always felt that I might be Southern Baptist
trapped inside the spirit of a Buddhist— or maybe just an American Anglican
flecked with a dash of Marxism and a dollop of agnostic leanings. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Maybe there aren’t any dots left to
connect?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The way birds won’t fly. Sops on
the street getting tired and getting nowhere. Sirens echo and the gravel
relates. Time to stop horseshoeing around so much. Got a worse job than the
last. If your sobs are filled with joy, then. If I’m up to nothing. Don’t
shoot. I’m only here asking after applications. Typing with my eyebrows.
Tantrums of lift that are never lucky. Don’t take root. The way birds fall in
love. It is in the arc light of buried eyes. Got a better out-of-work slogan.
Just a guy with some time. Into the architecture of concrete I dive. So little.
So.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Just this, something I haven’t told
anyone else yet: “I don’t care what your parents named you. I’m a sucker for a
girl in a raincoat. The drizzly parts of me surrender. And I am at the mercy of
your whims.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The evening’s all patched up with
bandages of fog. The cops are never coming. Late-night TV simmering on and off
through blundering cartels of after-work lassitude and wired agrypnotic
staring. A bedroll for the old guy. I’m sledding through the shame of it all. Where’d
the dial tone go?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">If the off colors are wedded to
repairmen, if the deleted words show up, and, “That’s no way to treat a
telephone,” is all that’s said— then I would want to know why you shouldn’t
like me, even a bit. But until then, forget it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When hearts like ours meet.
Nothing growing. Through all musts of devastation. Sad. Nobody home to answer
my knock: a last call for desperation. Where you been? How does it not go? Are
we really never going to speak like this again? Hell, even Dear Abby doesn’t
got any advice for me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Disjointed but never apart. Some
grade-school genius gone to pot. Perhaps if I were El Greco something could be
done. And then we could all sing, “The Lord, He thought He’d make a man. These
bones are going to rise again. Made him out of mud and a handful of sand. These
bones are going to rise again.” But no, I am just dripping right along with the
eaves. Wrong’s the rain, now, and so am I.</span></div>
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Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-15335132165231465402014-02-14T11:59:00.002-08:002014-02-14T12:01:15.306-08:00Our Life-Boat Men<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“The brave vests made from soapboxes keep the band in
arrears. A tress of rope swung lower than ever. This day of all days to meet
spent packs of matches in the park. Low is me. Rattail soup’s getting cold, and
there’ll be only Warty Angler pie for dessert. Sides are gone. Leaping’s made
for arms without hands, or churches. Nobody’s getting outmuscled by any of it.
That’s another “no more” to coincide with. Lowercase gratitude prevails. People’s
sympathy only extends so far and for so long. Everything’s a copout at some
point. Reveal and revel. Hush and be hurt. It will be a sum that’s less than
great, always. A rush on seaweed wreaths and holy saltwater. Dogs in the
detritus. Seagulls in the garbage bags. Nobody’s piling away silver in a
garret. A horse drunk on bilge water, drinking itself to death, or it’ll die
trying. Lullabies filled with cussing and cigar smoke. The hike of a blouse and
the ankles are bared for all to write off or take on back home. Never to be
carried over any threshold or given a ring made out of a spoon. There will be dead
pigeons in the swimming pool and cats in the alley scraping up a living like
the rest of us. You’ll miss all the same things once it’s all gone and changed
for good’s worse. Every then and again you’ll stick around, only to find that
the rain don’t come around as much as it should, and the streetlights are too
bright for kissing. Let’s pretend were mockingbirds and shoot marbles in the
gutter. Pass the prayers on over here. We could use a few more for the night.
Nothing to keep you warm in the big-old lonely disaster that you call being
alive. Nothing’s right. Nothing’s okay. The moon can’t outshine the TV’s light.
Growing disasters like weeds. There will be heart attacks in the basement and
new wallpaper along the stairway. Tonight’s shot. We need heroes and
hamburgers. Perhaps a bottle of later-evening to go with the afternoon’s dash
and dip. Feed the parakeets animal crackers and get a one-way ticket to next
year. So long. So bad. So absolutely ravaged to all hell and cranky and devastated
almost all the time. Jesus Christ, I can’t help myself. It’s just that time of
the season. God’s name in the microwave’s light. Another necktie gone. And we
need bravery like we need blue’s ruin and a carload of hitchhikers. Mover over
oblivion, I’m taking names just to give them all away. Rip the cord from the
parachute. Get yourself up a tree, Jack. A rained-out campfire. A lost cat. We
all marble the sky with our latest misery. But I never sob in town, and my
umbrella’s filled with holes. It’s all a Times Square billboard dropped on your
head. I give up. I’m finished, through. So, so long. I will be up on the roof
counting shingles and trying to stay put until further notice.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-17569750578828406662014-02-09T12:33:00.000-08:002014-02-10T13:43:07.990-08:00No Appointment Necessary <br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The foul rag and bone shop of the
heart has gone and lost its dogs. I’ve got enough trouble with my eyes as it
is. You see? She wasn’t the sort of girl you’d share an umbrella with or
anything, but she’d do. There’s so much damn neon in this neighborhood. It’s
slashing all through the streets, catching us doing our dying ahead of time, scrabbling
for an out, dear and deep we go, one bottle after another. Just enough time for
one last shave. A potion for arrhythmia. An elixir for groin pains. The night
fate stepped away for a smoke. Vaulted ceilings and detailed wainscoting, the
whole works. Likelier magic doesn’t do the trick. She learned her lessons at an
older age than most. The world wasn’t willing to fix it. A girl like that, she
ought to have her own floorshow, or maybe she ends up in the back of a prowl
car, hiking her skirt back down. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Everyone’s got at least a little
bit of decency in them; maybe mine’s beginning to show. All the nice things
have gone. And so she says to me, “I’m just hoping that you’ll come looking for
me one day. More than anything, I’m hoping for that.” It’s stuff like that that
makes you want to drive the nails in before you should. Rudely shattered
complacency is all I get left with lately. I’m corroded with it. My nights
replete with ungovernable terror. But my observations are shit. Besides, I’m
the gregarious type. Enough talk as it is, you know?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">My mom and I, we talk about Orson
Welles and Roald Dahl, old live Westinghouse commercials for home appliances,
tomato plants and bad weather. I ask her about the kids on her block. She tells
me that they’re always up to good.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Zombies from mars are invading the
breakfast nook. My necktie’s hanging looser and looser all the time. Sweating
through my undershirt. Chapped lips and a head made for longing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There’s a warm chill running
through it all, chemicals in the breeze, a dazed apprehension deliquescing to
morning’s dew. The announcer’s voice rings in another suppertime waltz. Bad
night and worse luck. We’re all here to be juvenile in our most simple and
mutinous thoughts. Overthrow our inhibition? It’s worth a shot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>(Note:
my dreams are hyperboloid structures. They’ve got teeth, rope, shovels, all
sorts of ordinary things that curve inward as they take shape and then lose it.)
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Based on all arcs of comprehension,
there are bastards like me all over, and they’re the same all over. A brittle,
coarse bevy of lunatics leering close to the fringes of it all. Man, what a
drag it’d be to be young again. Outer layers, growling down a fleer, hounding
the brash plaster of slingshot nickels, clawed from sheepskin sheets, a lower
feeling than down. Flip the bird to the rest of them. I’m out of coins and
ideas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Trekking down the middle of the
boulevard in the late-afternoon’s small bit of rain. She wore gold and yellow
boots with lions and blue stars on them. Talking around some coffee in a
midnight booth. Refuting’s for the trashcan poachers and the misguided doves. I’m
less hell-bent about it now. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You
had a big part in my dreams last night. A real starring role. Your name in
lights on the marquee of my imagination’s theatre. Where was I in yours?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Late
for breakfast.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“And if
we had tire swings? And? What if we made rope from wigs and led stray dogs
through the wilderness?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Time’s
a big waste with it all. Tuning frantically in the background. That’s you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“But
shouldn’t people be more impressed with me?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Maybe.
But I doubt it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The visitor-side bleachers were
dripping with sprinkler water. The wood seats soppy and warped, the aluminum
runnels below them shining silvery in the first bright spray of light from the
sun. Two slightly dumpy guys in their mid-thirties were wandering around near
the base, on the cement walkway in front of the first row. They were both
wearing long-sleeve shirts underneath short-sleeve T-shirts. One of them had an
LA Rams cap on. It was becoming balmy out: the first sweat of the day breaking
out on the two companions. Neither of them were concerned about nuclear weapons
or the disappearance of boat-tailed grackles. The moon had just gone down. That’s
all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“We’ve fallen out of favor with the
drum-machine crowd. Better put on your dust jacket. I’m working on my
pissed-off face.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Flowers to put some blight in your
day. Frankie and Shirley sitting on a tractor. Point right away from it, and
the rips of rain tear the bad lord’s echoes to tatters. Peel me a peach. I am
going to all the nowheres that I can.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Keeps me up early, this stuff.
Like us. Just like bastards like us.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Remain. Just. Remain.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“My cows are too lonely.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“That too. Yes. There is still
that, too. Yes.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Hum an ‘ahem’ for me, will you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“……………………………………………………….”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Thanks.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The press greets a benched catcher
who is not quite the spitting image of Mickey Cochrane with a smattering of
awkward applause. It makes him feel a few time zones behind. Just another way
to not catch up to rest of the pack. Nobody’s made for postgame interviews,
two-week marriages, and penny-arcade rings like an out-of-work pitching coach.
The way the shingles just fall on you sometimes. It’s winter’s hold on what’s
not crumby that lets the starters keep diving for seeing-eye grounders. Attention’s
a sham. They all roll over on sinkers sooner or later. Take off your hat. Stick
around for some of the while.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Cooler burnings. A sleeker shade
of tungsten. Last time I smirked it made my toes itch.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“This is the life that I’ve made
for myself. The same things, here, year after year, and I find myself all
tangled up in the end of it, or in the midst of it, or, perhaps, just at the
start of something. A bottle of vodka and me, alone in the dark with people
dying all around. It’s the way I’ve mapped it out all along: to be here, like
this. Breaking dishes and moving by habit. A roar that’s whimpered out. Learned
it all so well. And it’s all the same. It’s the same. Days after nights after
more of the same. The life I’ve made for myself out of empty bottles and lost
phone numbers. I might as well give up and get on with it, or without it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“You don’t got it. Not any of it. Not
at all.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“My hate goes with me everywhere,
but where o’ where does my love go?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Flushed and weary, down, down,
down.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Trucked away we go with ears
pinched instead of cheeks, tongue tucked in them too, and we gust but not like
the wind at all. It’s more of a guess, I guess.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Never or nor, a bad like this gets
to be being better, nearly, something unhealed and worth lost money.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Careful. Language can be a tricky
thing. Watch it. But you’ll never really see a thing. So, forget it— for now
and for later.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Drooled me down to this, didn’t
you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Beats me. My love is defunct, and
I’ve come down with a touch of nothing. And— another ‘and’ too— with this
derangement come lately there are certain bills to pay.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“The go is with it. I’d suspect at
least that the barmen in purgatory are worth the while, at least. So, how about
a kiss for the dying, Carmelita?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“She’s just mariachi static on the
radio. That’s all. On the outskirts of hell’s give-and-take that rooms with
every retired boxer in town. Romp and roam and die alone. That’s all there is
to it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“I’m all strung out on being
solitary. There’s no way to hold on any tighter. Everything’s just some
black-and-white comic strip that I’m trying to crayon-in the spaces of.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Schmucks like us can’t color in,
or even around, any of it. Both of us would be better off scaring up some
lentil soup from the cupboard, just sitting around with our socks on, knocking
back shots of almond milk, resting uncomfortably on perfectly unbalanced
chairs. I’ve got it. I really do. It’s all just carrying around a suitcase
filled with scotch and water. Emergency exit only, you know?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Perhaps this’ll be the time of our
lives when we start chanting about it—the Gregorian monks in us having their
night in the moon.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Rock with me. These chairs were
meant for it. That’s all it takes, and, maybe, that’s all we need.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Sweet.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-83939937553253841232014-02-06T12:11:00.001-08:002014-02-06T12:11:27.703-08:00So Long, And Sorry For All The Typos
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Are you lonesome tonight? Well,
that’s being crabby. Don’t go in for it. Raised into this, you can help it,
still. Rile the curtains closed with drawled verses. The chorus will cling to
you. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I learned somewhere along the line
to ditch people who were too normal, too tied to the hooks of society’s tune. I
make hay with the poorest and looniest of folks, those who don’t need a
computer to know it’s raining outside. Running with the absurdist of
characters, tracing faces in the windshield of a junked car. Almost not there.
Can you not hear it yet?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Palms out, up, and not ready still.
Counting away the ways you won’t have any of it. Spurn the best of me for the
worst I’ll never let on about to sudden strangers. Suddenly not so familiar at
all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">(ad for drug to relieve Jerk
Syndrome)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There are capsules of gelatin and
silver that’ll make your heart go crazy with togetherness. The bruised,
slighted sighs of just getting by will leave. You will for the first time feel
as if you are not a mistake, that your life is being lived with purpose, for a
reason, and that reason will be pellucid to you through all the drudgery of
your past. You will feel empathy and compassion for others, and you will come
to see that other people are there to help each other, and that this includes
you— being helped and aiding as well. A marching band of hope will encompass you.
A slight trickle of joy tinged with euphoria will sop up your worries. You will
no longer seek the appreciation of others but instead will come to find a new appreciation
for them. Appearing desperate or sad will no longer matter to you. You will be
genuine at all times. This effect will last 4-6 hours. Afterwards you will go
back to being ordinary, but with a vague notion that at some point you experienced
something worthwhile, though not sure of exactly what that something was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Still, after it started and
stopped, all this on-again/off-again hassling around held truer. The take it
took: people walking pigs around instead of dogs, half around the corner to
here. The names it takes give off more than a pulling would. Take one. Take
another. Rise with the slope, shabby or not, until the dirt chokes and the
mandrake’s pulled. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Find an older way to drink. A way
to put yourself to sleep. A way to slowly waste away. A way to rove more
aimlessly and sincere. A way to put it all away. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Horses believe the year. Another
not is put away for a to’s have. A spit of rain brings back the susurrations of years
bought off too soon now. Places that tell, “Dying is nothing compared to all
that life you get to live before it.” A rapt rejoinder to what commandeered a
smile left boiling points undeniably and invariably unwilling to get known. We
played with snails and salt. The diving board broke a few noses and then the
moon came up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Yes. The winter steered through
coffee shops to machine shops to robot factories to relapses in fundamental
flaws through bone-density scans and empty sugar packets. We filmed each other
in the red and gold light, mouthing through some stuff’s rough, and there were
no locks on the darkroom doors. To put it smashingly, “Perhaps you will come to
know what to like about me, or what it is about me that is there to be liked at
least, in the barbershop weather or stiletto light of shaping down what’s not
there to be liked, or in the taillights of passing you’ll find me shooing cigar
lighters away to ululating why-nots. But if we’d both stoop up— better yet,
side-to-side—maybe the days will crash on us instead of crush us.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">No. It is something like, “If I
could count the ways I miss you, babe, I’d never count again. If the wind’s
will were mine to keep, I‘d lose my hat and grin. If we were poor with syrup,
babe, it’d be all we need. If you’d come around still and darn my dreams, because
they’re weak at the seams, babe. We could stay up late and eat chow mein, watch
the latest shows they’ve got, and still miss each other the whole while.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“If I could rant without a rave
about the busses. If you’d say, ‘They always all go the other way.’ If this were
just something to sing, babe. We’d sing it all up into no ever’s down.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“If we had whistles to blow at
cops, if we used old t-shirts for mops, if we had none of tip and a bit of tap,
if we mooned Texas, if even just on a map.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“But hell, I’m getting so tired of
this dead-end life. Why don’t we go to Reno, babe, and I’ll make you my wife.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">There are tenants who live below street
level. A walk-down place with a sentimental fugue leaking from the window frames.
Relapse into boredom. Really, there’s no better sake than for the devil. And we’re
slaked with it, of course— in a place where the commercials know you better
than you know yourself. There was another “Ha” there for us. Probably a stupid
scheme to rhyme luck with something, but the shares of us were sold too low. I
last only to lie around and think about that girl two flights below, the one
who stole my mail. I slip a note beneath her door: “I’m taking my ‘like’ back.
You don’t deserve it. Trip over a railroad tie. Call the wolves back from
dessert. Don’t rise down too slow. Irrelevant truth aside. Take my leave,
please. Take two of these and text me in the morning. Rule it all in. We are
mistakes in the slide. A smoother grade to slip down. I’ve long been of the
belief that there are more details between the details than in them. And, also,
by the way, I think maybe it’s not too good to give too much of oneself away at
once. Anyway, I think there is plenty enough there to know plenty enough about
me without knowing me at all yet as it is. Later. And later still.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5850984042662487882.post-74204585993692129542014-01-30T12:07:00.000-08:002014-01-30T12:17:01.820-08:00Here Without The Wind<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">On Bottle Alley in Mulberry Bend. A
playground in Poverty Cap around the corner from the Dens Of Death. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Some Gotham Court girls twirling by.
A coal heaver smoking away his break. And Old Barney’s in Cat Alley again with
his giant steel loop of keys. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Were it not for Some Five Points
ruffians, nobody’d have their say back. Slaughter Street went to the geese
after that, and we’d tell it to go to hell through the rickety stairs if we had
our druthers. Nothing but dead rabbits and methane steaming from the grills. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And there’s Gopher Ron staring through
a machine’s skeleton at another runny-nose afternoon. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I wish I could drink the weather
back to the way it was then. Murders and weddings and rocks. A log adrift in
the shore’s tumult. Electricity gone. Burnt pancakes in the dark. No phones. No
shoes. A race through gravel to a wheelwright’s grave. The break of waves into
a heart’s shards. Desolate and around for the giving. A killing of cigarettes
upon the sea’s worn eyes. A maul of sea foam. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">What she told was rife with
wonderful things.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“You remind me of someone I used to
dream about.”</span><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And then shuffling by, on some
rainy gray afternoon, a sushi joint with a big-glasses chef in the window. We
were tired with days and nights. I won bread from the chatelaine vendors. I’d
been low-tailing it, chancing a, “maybe,” for most of what I couldn’t hold my
tongue about. The iceman was getting the wrong idea—slowly, of course. But who wants
to pick up after somebody else? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Ask me
nothing. The forefront of youth skips around Union Square, holding hands with
aging. Up go the elevators, fast as bullets, and nobody cheers from the bomb
shelters. We’ve got swindles in the palm trees, mules on planks, and the refuse
of what we were hides plainer and plainer still, in the histrionics of a cop
directing traffic, in dressing up what’s always been just down, or, really, in the
salads of digression or the astronomical transit of whom we’ve lost along the
way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Think of me while you are not. You
are my scarecrow, my rangy scarecrow. You make me happy when crows fly away.
You’ll never know dear, how much I love you. Please don’t take my scarecrow
away.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Then
there were slides across the slick floor in socks. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Oh, the toast is on fire.” <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You were pasting newspaper
clippings of food on a cardboard redbrick background. We had the radio on to Talk.
Reviews of butter sellers, chunks of staying the same, and then there was the
kettle’s screech: a selective tone of wheezed ire. You’d slant your smile over
to me. There were things, always, to not say. After I get up. After I don’t ever
come home. After I move the car from one side of the street to the next. After
all that, we can have bluer berries than any pancake’s ever seen. Jumper cables,
roller skates, and a two-by-four in the trunk. We can sort it all out later.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Four-ways
in Five Points always flashing yellow. A click’s disarming moment, what we
strolled through the mud to get. Shuttered and gone, painted over, sold at an
auction to some nickel-pinching real estate investor. “Boy, that’s no trouble
at all. We’ll just flip the damn thing and be out of here before they catch a
whiff of us. That’s right. Make your mullah and get.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A
meager light has gone out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“They
won’t catch us. They’ll never know what they won’t let themselves see. And what’s
to get? The after-draft of us scents heavy the morning’s mist with a piney lavender,
some smoke-curled roasted-acorn aroma dripping with dew and meadow grass, and
maybe some maple and crushed velvet. I do not own a sewing needle but the
thread’s in a shoebox inside a suitcase—the one where I’ve carved my initials
next to yours in the handle. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Let’s pretend we’re on a tour of
our house. You go first. Show me where you watch birds from.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The jobs we had. The tax forms. The
receipts from hotels and restaurants. Movie ticket stubs. Love notes on
underwear packaging. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’m grinding your favorite coffee
again. It’s been so long since I’ve been to the beach. Tell the rain it is
missed, especially its hands.</span><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The right-of-way on the roundabout
of us was always vague and inchoate. Just starting to swerve a bit, to glance
over the shoulder, to go blind with a momentary lapse in good judgment, and to
see backwards and ahead at once. And for all our reckless faith we got snubbed
by jaded ghosts who’d rather be scared than scare. Rooms Available. Hot tub. Free
Cable. Continental Breakfast. “And all!” you’d exclaim. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">And that was, and always will be,
that.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Gertrude’s in the kitchen frying squirrel
and spilling milk. I’ve got my lucky centipede bracelet on. Manny’s got a new
tan, and Fabriano’s got his yak stole wrapped around him like a best friend. I’ve
given up questioning the Readers of Rights around here. It doesn’t help the
bandits get any better at hanging out of windows and leaping from rooftop to
rooftop. “Be humble,” I tell them, and myself. “There are other years than just
these to have and, maybe, to hold onto too. You just never can tell, now can
you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Everyone goes on nodding and being only
who they are. The wind stinks of blood sausage and raisins. I tell hints of
bourbon from spots of rye. A sign in the yard: “Do not mow the top from my
mornings.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Perhaps I am still there. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Perhaps I never left.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Davy Carrenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16056072494186026277noreply@blogger.com