wake up, heart yanked out
It’s the shareholders. Those are the people whom I do not trust. Try giving something of yourself. That should do the trick. Slowly add food back into your diet. Alright. Now. Here we are back with you. And nobody is blowing his nose here. We are on our best behavior. Slumbering while going through drawn-out periods of suffering is not the same as hibernating or closing the refrigerator door. It’s just a sore neck from TV watching. It’ll pass. Live sporting events will keep happening. I’m just using selfishness as a defense mechanism against being hurt by others. It’s the taste, not the meal, that’s important. Ever since I left Montana there has been a lamentation curled about my thoughts. Rummaging for better offers curtailed the investors’ interest in being themselves, then we all had a jorum of liveliness, and then we crashed on many couches. A bum was howling about the Bourgeois Revolution, but he had a bad lisp and was hard to make sense of, and he had crumbs of concrete in his hair so it was hard to take him seriously. What stems from a predilection for wanting to make others jealous? Fake names and margaritas with no salt. I have not read any Tolstoy for 14 years, but that doesn’t keep me quiet, and it doesn’t make me insecure—though I am. Plus, I am not a rascal. Then again, if one cannot even buy a new shirt on a boring day of sun and the loping off of tree branches, then it is unnecessary to finagle one’s way into the measured situations of ego inflation. It’s the buyers who make the sellers nervous. It’s the unplanned ritual of necessity that mars the cinnabar dust with the hacks of a new generation. We purchased the leased land from parking lot attendants, after we’d mustered the funds from playing all-night poker games. We’re all knotted up at 64 with 7:12 left to go in the 3rd. Untying knots had become somebody else’s business; caring was my own. Wanton was the fire chief, but not crude, only kind. I wonder if it is possible to suffer from Florence Nightingale syndrome while nursing myself back to health. Food enters the equation, but is subtracted out of the picture. We are piddling creatures who do more harm than good while driving golf carts through equestrian courses. Shake the ugly branch and a pulchritude of sorrow will sail towards a bowed head. Fawning over those artists who were creating faun statuettes was getting boring, so we stopped and instead played Monopoly for four days straight. We’ll be right back after this message from our sponsor. It’s the crop growers. They have a stake in this too, you know? The street was humped there, like it was warped, I guess so the rainwater would flee to the gutters. Trombones kissed pearly by flattened needs are inseparable, untouched and disregarded. Emptying my pockets was the hustler’s only concern. Let’s not get in until the water’s warm. Tickets go on sale for underwater window watching at 4pm Tuesday. Every time my head rolls, every time all my nickels disappear, every time the graduate students go on sale I clip coupons from the dictionary. Eskimos drench their sorrows in snow-laced brandy. Capturing spiders under a paper cup was enough fun for the kids during recess. It’s the dance makers who fall through the sky like blueberries. Have at it. It’s the toad catchers who make up most of the retired men living at the transient hotel near Broadway. Don’t forget to count to eleven before resetting the controls on the toaster oven. It was the motel owners who fought hard and lobbied against the fracturing of the freeway. The televisions all blared in unison from every room. We had potatoes. We had copper-plated fights, on and off. We wished for each other’s demise, at times. Triumphs kept tailing off, and most of the dread we kept too—to ourselves. The lizard could play fetch as well as any dog, but got tired of it quicker. Estimating the fortuneteller’s time of departure from this world was becoming easier every day, but the testing out of the world’s timing was often done in an ill-conceived manner. I was done renting out my dreams for rent money. From here on out it’s going to be they versus them, unless an opponent is vomited on mid-fight. Redirecting the bristling residue of hatred for bite-size snacks was necessary for the elimination of doubts regarding the world being ruled heavy-handed by an omnipotent god. Let us be thankful for the flavors of fruit roll-ups. The Red Bull canners were busy applying a thin coat of worry, with jerky dabs of forgiveness, to the spit-stained walls of their boss’s still-to-come promises. Ever the forthright lunatic and always fat of head, the glib bank executive put the Pizza Hut employee on speaker phone, whistling When Johnny Comes Marching Home the whole while, until he’d gathered his straying thoughts as to what toppings he’d prefer on his Build Your Own Pizza order. Some said his head was cresting, but to me it never seemed quite so severe as fasciation, and I attributed the cragginess of his scalp more to his hatred for shampoo, but he was my kid, and you know what they say about that. It’s the wine merchants we’ve got to watch out for. I was keeping time back then by tapping a #2 pencil on the chair of the girl sitting in front of me. Don’t recall who made this mess, but the chances of me cleaning it up fall under the snowball’s-chances-in-hell category. Pass the time. They don’t make mountaintops like that no more—they don’t keep.
a list
(a) It’s all a matter of being neglectful of the things in your life that need doing.
(b) It’s like the mystical character of commodities, or a Veblen good. A direness attached to possessing something. Of course, there’s the whole conspicuous consumption aspect to it as well.
(c) But even if love does believe all things, I’m still not so sure that it is never deceieved.
(d) With a glum and serious demeanor my secretary said to me, “You’re nothing but a willowy chirr, galloping half-assed with gummed-up leggy flutterings, an asinine blow of erumpent hollowness from the feckless embouchure of amateur lips. Everything about you is jerry-built and false.”
(e) It comes down to basing our understanding, breached confidences and the like, or even the worth we attach to things, on other’s critique of its essential “worthiness.” Are the ochre leavings of sunset something to become teary over? Should a well-blurbed book sell better than a well-written one? The topography of our lives might be bulldozed by desires and ambitions, fraught with boulders of grief and greed, but our path need not be littered with store-bought obstacles.
(f) Can one to thine own self be true, or does one become too dependent on the lying to get by?
(g) Our proximity to things, our real-time closeness with the hot-dog-lamp intensity of purpose, these are things we could come to depend on, could we not?
(h) Lower the porticullis of forgiveness, and we shall rein in the meek.
(i) E+M-C=LMNO/P (squared thrice overly underhanded)
(j) Much of life is merely hyperventilation and hoopla.
(k) Thwarting my allusive advances on the subject in question will not stop nor hinder my motivation.
(l) Keep your nose clean.
(m) There is a breadbox bigger than a breadbox somewhere in the knotty and cumbersome folds of a New Hampshire subdivision.
(n) A species of moment will survive after the spendthrifts blow on through.
(o) Grant the sprayers of pesticide a pardon.
(p) Let the hair-sprayed stay resilient.
(q) Panic and calm will come to everything in due time.
(r) Sometimes yes means maybe so.
(s) Equations contradict indications for business use only if and only if seeking is a redistribution of poorness.
(t) A shortcut from nothing to nothing. Roads, ancillary to nothing, apprehend the getaway schematics, wisely.
(u) Laundry.
(v) Aleatory music tosses coins at pitches towards perfection before an empty auditorium. Gaps are filled on purpose by implied persons who do not really exist except in the way of indeterminacy.
(w) Nothing.
(x,y,z) Add, subtract, multiply, fruitfully divide.
guessed
So I’m there on the street corner—well on the sidewalk really—wishing that what I should do would turn into what I want to do. And I’ve got a Subway sandwich in one of their clear plastic bags doing some dangling from my right hand, swaying like a metronome back and forth, you know, and I’m leaning there with my left arm outstretched into a telephone pole. My head’s down. I must’ve looked like an exhausted marathon runner. I wasn’t out of breath. I was just tired and hungover and dizzy and confused. Just taking a little breather there, you know. So, there’s this scantily clad woman, and she’s walking towards me, and she’s got good wares and she’s flaunting them to beat the band, and I’m kind of checking her out, you know, giving her a little eye here and there. It was hard to look at her though, even being as surreptitious as I was being there. Something about her was curious. It was a functional thing, like a hammertoe or Xerox machine or something. I don’t know. For some dumb reason I wanted to keep tabs on her, keep her at a safe distance. So I keep hanging around, dangling the damn sandwich, helping the telephone pole stand up. And she’s getting closer and closer to me, and like I said, she’s not covered up with much clothing. Short is too long to describe the jean shorts she had on. I must’ve been gawking. Her legs were nice, and I’ve always been a bit of a legs man. The shirt she was wearing ended soon after it got started. There wasn’t much on her that didn’t look damn inviting. I started thinking about that Dionne Warwick song Walk On By. Then it got stuck in my head. And this girl went walking on by. And I’m kind of humming that song, or mumbling it under my breath at least. It was all I could think about for a while there, leaning like I was, gripping that clear plastic Subway bag with my sandwich in it, ogling that girl like that. And the sun was getting in my eyes. And my head was mush. And the light turned. And the traffic roared. And I didn’t care about anything.
heartlike ears
suspicions gloom about with hadenough cares
gurneyed to indecision
doom crushes me under its munchkinsoul
the sheriff curses my name
my escape is never made
gladabout is not a guess
I don’t know where I am
sadabout is just a poor substitute
for you
shake this hand until it’s gone
shouldwouldcould is just a left
maybenotlooking
artfully westofhere
but at least
not indifferent
“…we are all in the end creatures of appalling fragility and vulnerability. Out of the millions of people we live among, most of whom we habitually ignore and are ignored by in turn, there are always a few who hold hostage our capacity for happiness, whom we could recognize by their smell alone and without whom we would rather die.” –Alain de Botton
another futile attempt at the flexible first-person narrative
a: I’d like to draw a parallel there.
b: Why don’t you draw a perpindicular instead?
a: Sure. Then. That’d be like. Well. So. This guy always succumbs.
b: He’s quite addicted to overcompensating, isn’t he?
a: Well. It’s his insecurities that dominate what he does, who he is. He let’s them stalk him like a sniper, lurking incognito about the precincts of his moods.
b: But so yes and then of course well…
a: …he gets to the point where all of this concealement just becomes too much, and he’s faking everything…
b: Aren’t we all?
a: Of course. It’s all we do. We wear costumes to hide ourselves. We make up the substance of our lives with poses and tiny lies. Like Gatsby’s old sport says: personality is just an unbroken series of successful, or unsuccessful, gestures.
b: But this guy, he doesn’t realize what he’s doing.
a: Yep. Sees himself as an egomaniac, and doesn’t want others to see him like this, so he goes like way overboard to show them that he is a kind and caring and magnanimous individual.
b: This is all an act though, right?
a: I don’t think it’s that simple.
b: Nothing ever is.
a: He’s doing things, even if his heart is so to speak not in it, he’s doing kind and caring things for others. Even if it’s all a hoax, he’s still doing good, right?
b: I’m not so sure that what he’s partaking in can be considered good or bad. It’s definitely not good for him, for his mental health.
a: Isn’t that the name of a Quiet Riot album?
b: No. That’s Metal Health.
a: Oh yeah. You’re right.
b: I often am. So this guy is probably suffering a bunch on the inside.
a: On the inside.
b: And he’s doing himself a good deal of harm.
a: On the inside.
b: He’s got like a porcupine quill of worries sticking into him, keeping him up nights, the constant chatter of a little voice in his head repeating, “You’re no good. You’re no good.”
a: And he keeps trying to quell all of that noise with these brave attempts at being…good.
b: Right. He feels so miserable for being such a lackluster and neglectful human being that he tries to right the ship of his woe with these masquerading forays of munificence.
a: That’s an odd way to put it.
b: He’s constantly screaming at himself, sometimes not so under his breath, “You’re an idiot!”
a: So there is like this self confidence that he lacks, and he feigns vanity and cockiness to make up for it, to not let other people see what he lacks, what he feels he really is. All this disaffection, this loneliness and craven longing, it’s all stuff he wants to hide away, stuff about himself that he’s ashamed of. He doesn’t want to let others…
b: On the inside.
a: Yes. He doesn’t want them to eye this ugliness he feels is besmirching his soul.
b: Besmirching?
a: He makes jokes to get by. He lies about everything. He wants badly to be liked, but feels unworthy of it.
b: This guy must have a real excess of guilt.
a: He butters his toast with it. He mixes it with tap water. He uses it to wash his eyebrows like the rain would.
b: What?
a: I don’t know. He’s got a lot of fouled-up sensibilities. A lot of quirks, if you will.
b: Causes. Should we get down to causes?
a: Cases and causes.
b: Okay.
a: He becomes addicted to his over-compensating life style. His social skills bloom, as do his passions for drugs, for things that make him feel better about himself and who he is. He begs for other’s approval. Alcohol consumes him, holds him hostage for days, only to leave him empty-headed and in ruins. There is no tide to come sweep him away from the shores of his despondency. The sky is tattered with dental floss. People want to be around him. They find some kind of respite from boredom in his faked joviality. There is a certain magnatism and charisma to his ways. Charm effuses the air about him. He goes over the top and then takes a few more leaps up.
b: So on the outside it seems he’s this great gregarious guy…
a: Ugh. Can you rephrase that? Alliteration makes me want to tear my fingernails off with pliers.
b: Quit being such a pansy.
a: I’m not making any promises on that front.
b: Figures. Anyway. This guy appears to be something that he is not. And not only that, but in reality he’s actually the exact opposite of what he’s fronting. He’s a complete phony.
a: Yet he’s only partially in denial about it. He knows what he’s doing, and at the nadir of his exisiting is this base-shallowness that keeps time with the mordant and derelict parts of the ticking time bomb of his heart.
b: Shallowness. That’s one way to put it. But there is a deepness there too. He wants to be better than he is. He’s just bad at making himself believe that he’s capable of it, and that he’s even worth it. Yeah. Maybe he is really lacking in self worth.
a: Of course dipshit. That goes without saying. He’s lacking in all kinds of things.
b: But you were speaking of forgiveness earlier, right?
a: Possibly. That would make sense. He might have a hole in his conception that needs to be filled by having mercy on somebody who has done him wrong. Probably needs to get over something, and part of him just wants to hold on and keep grinding out that grudge.
b: Peope often times don’t want to let go of what it is that’s doing them harm. They get too used to it, and it becomes an important part of who they are. Crying in the rain and all that. Sometimes it feels good to be wallowing in misery.
a: We come to love the things about ourselves that are keeping us from leading the life we want to be living, and we hate ourselves for it, for this kindling of our bad habits.
b: The guy needs his neuroses to get by, or at least thinks he does. They become part of his personality, and he doesn’t want to let them go. It’s like he’s holding onto them out of fear, fear of change, or whatever it is.
a: So everything gets all bottled up. He holds it all in.
b: Yep. And then it’s, blam! It all gets vomited up at once, and he acts out and goes on binges and does insane things he knows are not wise for his well being. He makes friends with the criminal element. He forms false bonds of friendship. Maybe he spends some time in jail.
a: Close enough.
b: Everything gets dissipated. He’s sleepless and always on the brink of going insane. Nothing makes sense. His laziness is overwhelming, and his summer days go tumbling down winter’s stairs.
a: Let’s rein him in.
b: Okay. So he keeps, regretfully, going off the deep end, and there is no bottom for him to hit. He just keeps falling. And the more he falls the less he cares about ever stopping, of ever planting his feet on freshly carved marble and starting the climb back up.
a: He won’t give himself a break. He doesn’t even feel sorry for himself. He just keeps rearranging the furniture in his head, but it’s the same stuff. He’s just fooling himself, changing for the same.
b: Right. And we don’t make exceptions.
a: No. We’d never do that.
b: Never.
a: It takes a special something…
b: …and you never know it…
a: …until you see it.
b: Right.
a: But let’s move on to what this guy tried to fill up all that emptiness inside of him with.
b: Was it emptiness?
a: Of course. It’s all emptiness.
b: So he filled it up with an other.
a: Right. Somebody else.
b: Somebody outside.
a: Is this the entity that we often times refer to as The Object Of Desire?
b: Pretty much. Same difference. For our purposes here.
a: Let’s just assume…
b:…for our purposes here.
a: Yes. Let’s just go ahead and plant that cognomen on her.
b: Her?
a: Sure. Why not? This guy, well, this guy he’s got it bad. Stuck on some girl. Lost in the throes of passion, desire, love…those kinds of things.
b: Okay. He’s rickety in his insecurity and he needs something to hold him up, to get him to believe, or maybe dupe him into believing, that he’s worth caring about, and that he in turn can then care about somebody else too.
a: So this OOD…
b: Oh good. I love acronyms.
a: She comes to symbolize for him all these wonderful things that he wishes people thought about him but instead he just throws them all in a clumpy mass onto her and he pedestals her and he comes to believe that there is nothing else in the world he’d rather do than just spend time with her and gets addicted now to this, to this spending time with her, the OOD, to being with her and talking to her and…
b: Jesus. Slow down man. You’re driving me batty.
a: He’s got these beautiful illusions and he doesn’t want to know if they’re crushable. But he bubblewraps them anyway with sweet nothings and roses and all the likes.
b: So this OOD was not really, um…
a: It was just that he became so focused on his Object Of Desire, whatever current phenomena or creased pronouncement of the present screaming, “I am here! This is I!” that that entailed, that he became somehow demented, though not in a way that was completely lacking in reality. It just wasn’t the real way he should have been seeing things in. His focus was gobbled up by this narcotic energy, which was only energy in a nominally vague sense, as it depleted him of any willpower to do anything but concentrate on his OOD, said OOD consisting of substance fantastic and delirious and also real too, somewhat, though just how much he never really let himself know. Keeping the OOD almost entirely in the realm of make believe was of the utmost importance. If the OOD somehow became corporeal and trod upon his life with actualness it became too much for him…
b: Okay. Let’s scram away from this fantastic bullshit.
a: Fine. I sense you’ve got an ulterior motive here somewhere. A question perhaps?
b: It has something to do with palm trees.
a: The ones outside the yellow-orange brick building?
b: I think so.
a: Well, he was walking by them one day, the palm trees, and his memory was jarred. It was something almost pre-verbal, something exhumed from the subterranean vault containing his earliest brushes with life. There was almost a scent to it, but not quite. It was nothing he could explain, just a feeling he got, that crept up on him, and it seemed very familiar yet far away at the same time. He thought of San Diego for some reason, and his grandmother. He figured he must’ve gone there with her at some point when he was very young. There was something windy about it, something warm and strange and comforting. And there was that building with the sienna and beige bricks…
b: Sienna and beige?
a: Yep. And he’s walking on by and he’s taking this all in, and you know what? He starts crying. It comes on in a wave, like the raging panic of hysteria after the unleashing of bottled-up dread. He can’t explain it. And he feels embarrassed and stupid. And he walks over to the building…
b: Really?
a: Yes sir. And he gets this shivering sense that he’s been there before. Not like déjà vu. Not like that at all. It’s more like this hunch, this glimmer of misty misgiving that you’ve got some tangled up emotions tied up or invested in a something that is way beyond your powers of imagination.
b: I’m not sure that makes sense.
a: Don’t worry. It does. So, this building’s got these outdoor horseshoe-arch hallways, like something you’d see in Rome or something, and there’s a lot of plant life, and a garden, and the whole feeling he gets from it is, well, the only way can describe it, because it’s rather nebulous and ineffable, is to think about it as being soft, like butter melted on toast, and there is nothing about it he can put his finger on. It’s like something is lifting from him, something airy and light, and he’s almost sleepy with it.
b: Sounds like bad news for a guy out in public walking around.
a: Well. It doesn’t turn out that way though. There aren’t many people around. Things are kind of slow. It’s mid-afternoon. Too early for most folks to be off work, too late for the lunch crowds, and he’s just ambling aimlessly, not really expecting anything, and suddenly he’s crying for no reason that he can think of.
b: Strange to say the least.
a: Certainly. He starts pondering things going on in his life. He sits down on the stairs in front of the building. He glares up at the windows, the patterns the bricks make in the walls, the fronds of the palm trees flapping like elephant ears in the breeze. A slight plangency whistles through him, and he clammers for some whiff of hope to restrain him from plunging deeper into the lachrymosity he’s dipped his toes in the waters of.
b: What?
a: He’s balking. He’s trying to keep a lid on things that are spilling out. He’s hedging, putting things off, not dealing with…
b: Okay. Enough. It’s inanition central. I get it.
a: But I’m talking just like iceberg-tip type stuff here. There’s more to this than simple…
b: Okay. I get it. There’s more complexities abounding than in heaven and in earth, etcetra. Yeah. That’s one of those suffice-it-to-say kind of things, right? Tacit, is it not?
a: Fuck a motherfucking duck.
b: I’ve often admired the assonance and rhyme of that phrase.
a: So this guy is withering, caught up in old F. Scott’s, “sheer nervous dread of the moment.” He starts to maybe curl up into the fetal position, maybe something even more feral and all-consuming. I don’t know. Something with nothing-left-to-lose about it. You know, the scariest part of really dealing with something that like hits you close, longing-wise or whatever, to what it is that’s hiding locked somewhere buried inside, is that it’s going to significantly change your perception of who it is that you are. For once in his life he actually feels like he’s not just going through the motions. What he feels is real, and he’s acting on it. But it’s worrisome in the worst way. He’s miffed and weary…
b: Wary.
a: Yep. That too. He’s starting to realize things about himself, about why it is he does the things he keeps doing, digging the same holes he knows he won’t want to climb out of in the morning. And this is disturbing to his fragile and tempermental psyche.
b: Poor sap. Give him another girl.
a: Nope. He’s tried that. That will simply not do. There is some paucity inside of him, some hole that he’s trying to fill, some ingrained defect he has come to believe has sullied his whole demeanor, his whole attitude towards life. And when it comes down to it, life is nothing more than your attitude, your response to it, how you see the world that is presented to you.
b: We are what we come to believe we see ourselves to be, and the things we see are just our ideas about them, about what we want them to be to us, and then it’s like, well, you start to think that the world is spinning for only you alone.
a: That particular something that stirs the waters of our perception’s unique well. It’s hard to define, or even pinpoint the substance of.
b: No more. No more auction block for me. No more. No more.
a: Fuck that. That’s not what I’m talking about. Fuck that noise. Fuck all that.
b: Hey, easy. It’s just a song.
a: Nothing’s just something. Of course it’s not just a song. No more driver’s lash for me. No more. No more. 80,000 gone. That’s not just a song.
b: Okay buddy. I plead the fifth.
a: Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, this guy. He’s got it bad.
b: Or maybe he’s got it good, but he just doesn’t realize it. He doesn’t know that in reality, if he could get himself to reconsider the maladjusted way he’s perceiving things, he’s got it made.
a: I shall not be moved.
b: I heard that.
intermissionesque
So this cow’s hitched to a fencepost. There is this cow. It has black spots, like lagoons, but is mostly white. This cow is lonely. There is nothing for this cow to do except wait to be killed. The cow eats grass. The cow moos. The cow has crushes on other cows. The cow shits and pisses and gets sad sometimes too. But mostly this cow’s got it pretty easy. This cow sleeps standing up. This cow wonders about cars going by on the freeway, and what they are, and where they’re all constantly going, and about where there is to go. The cow goes as far as a barb-wire fence. The cows gets a lot of time to just be alone and chew its cud. The cow never goes hungry. Early in the mornings, when not much is stirring, and the dew licks at the grass, the way the sunlight shines almost like a golden crown on the hills makes the cow happy.
I don’t have time to explain. The show’s almost back on.
There was a cow. It had spots. It got sad sometimes, and was happy other times, and it did all the stuff a cow does before it gets its neck sliced, and is chopped up for hamburger meat.
Hit the mute button. Be at peace. Lock up your hunger. Hit the streets. Go out to pasture. The balls of your feet will survive.
So. There is this cow. So. This cow is well fed. This cow’s whole life is a lunch break. This cow has a reason for existing. So. This cow has a very meaningful life. There is a point to this cow’s living. So. This cow is alive to become food for humans. So. Flies land on and hover around the cow. This cow’s ears hang low. So. So. So.
Change the station. Make amends. Promise to be wise. Dance to the music. Just do it.
A cow’s life. A cow eats grass. A cow doesn’t need to worry so much about bladder control issues. A cow doesn’t dance or laugh. A cow never goes swimming.
My mind wanders. I misplace things. Static reigns in my head. I hit the Mute button on my remote control.
A cow clicks its heels together but it’s already home.
bluecoollimitofthesky
it’s this time of day when the light sifts and golds through the daffodil tops flurrying the sky
it’s mostly this time
this time of the day
when the cops are all on a break
and the Laundromat is empty
and parked cars stop their ticket-free daydreams
and rest on their rubber laurels over leaf-filled gutters
it’s this time that comes to the day
this passive streak in the way the sun wanes
curdling the sidewalks’ bright that’s blessed with pigeon shit and gum-residue splotches and cigarette butts
and there is hastening that melts
there are petals scattered and tossed and run ragged by the wind’s fickle affection
there are cracked neon signs spluttering and flickering diffidently to life
there is a saxophone echoing with a tender flush the scramming holdouts in alleys and trashcans
it’s this time that the day brings out
when the street signs all glimmer green and strike a platform pose
when the buses seem to meander and wheeze a little more
when the last limping lees of lamppost shadows draw themselves out a little longer and gasp
when the dogs quit their jabbering barks and curl on front porches to nap
it’s this daily wash in soft sleepy hues
this masking of weariness and stuffy inanition
this muffeling of a fire-engine’s shrill blare
this pillowy lightness that is almost bearable
almost
it’s this hum vaguing to hunches of bliss
it’s a little kid giddy hop-running after a peach skidding away down the hill
it’s the way this time of day won’t last
this temporary glitch in the course of things
this time of the day that gives more than it takes
that squawks sweet and skiffs by in a lazy blur
that peddles and pawns in a drowse of airplane motors
scuffling from an above that is neither far nor close
it’s this away that is not a now
that is near to here but not
there
is nothing about it murmuring on
that gets taken
except for granted
maybe in shades sunny
or windswept
malingering careless and breezy
on the clipped curl of afternoon’s lip
it’s this time of the day that kills out-of-work skydivers
it’s this time of the day that puts my better half up a tree
it’s this time of the day that pushes people out of windows
it’s this time of the day that makes a mess of heartache and swims alone
it’s this time of the day that makes cats yawn
it’s just this time of the day again
and it’ll be over
soon enough
peecheefolders
partying with greg smith was a bummer. if you partied with greg smith you got wasted in his condo. greg smith was basically an asshole. he was older. he’d buy cigarettes and beer and wine coolers for us. he’d go to strip clubs and bars and hang out around liquor stores and those type of places. you know. those things like that. i tried not to party with greg smith but sometimes you couldn’t help it. you’d just end up at his condo, and he’d have all these bottles of alcohols and a beer keg and a pool table. we smoked camel light cigarettes on his balcony. it was a nice view. you could see the ocean and you could smell the ocean too, and you could hear the waves out there like rumbling and crashing or whatever, kind of like freeway noise or something. greg smith had my phone number. he’d call me up and we’d hang out. he’d always talk about girls he’d done it with. he called them names. he said they were trashy. I never met any of those girls. except once i met this girl cookie. she had a man’s face but a woman’s body and a deep voice too. her legs were very muscular. she told me i could make it with her for twenty. i wasn’t that sure what we were going to make, but i only had 16, and i wanted to eat at mcdonald’s later too, so i told her i couldn’t make anything with her right then. she laughed and had all these teeth missing. there was a tattoo on her stomach i just saw barely under her baby tee. it was in this fancy handwriting, and was in a curve over her belly button, like the top of one of mcdonald’s gold arches, and it said, hos b4 bros. it didn’t make sense to me, but i’m usually a few fries short of a happy meal when it comes to most stuff. greg smith sometimes would slap at the back of my head when i said stupid stuff, and tell me that i didn’t even know shit from shinola. sometimes i’d try on purpose not to see greg smith. like sometimes i’d try to get detention at school by doing something like drawing a picture of my language arts teacher miss fetters masturbating with a ruler under her podium while she was lecturing us about some dumb book, and then passing it around class until she saw, and then she’d ask who did it, and some rat teacher’s pet would always point me out. they knew my work, those dorks. so i’d sit in detention, and greg smith would get tired of waiting for me outside the school, and he’d leave and cuss and yell my name. sometimes the principal would see him out there smoking cigarettes, and the principal would go out there and scream at him to get away, and sometimes that’d work too. but i’d go to those parties at greg smith’s condo sometimes. you’d hear all kinds of shit at greg smith’s parties. people would talk about newscasters and sports and sex and would try to make jokes to be funny, and there was always a lot of laughing and screaming and stuff. people would dance, and also people would smoke pot in greg smith’s bedroom. pot smoke made me feel sick in my stomach, like that time i ate that leftover meatloaf greg smith had in his fridge that he said was okay, but it wasn’t, and i puked all over his shag carpet. greg smith laughed about that, but he got mad at me too. so i never puffed on any pipes at greg smith’s condo. one time some guy was taking a big hit from a water bong right by greg smith’s bed, and somebody made the guy laugh while he was inhaling the smoke, and the guy spit bong water all over greg smith’s bed. it splattered all over his bed sheets, and looked kind of like shit stains. greg smith was super p.o.’d about that. another time somebody threw a whole pineapple through one of the condo’s windows. that was not good for greg smith. he got all mad and made a big scene. he never found out who did it. he kicked everyone out and was screaming at them that they were all a bunch of fucking dicks and cock suckers and shit like that. something about those parties would always leave you feeling bad. even if you were drunk, you’d still feel bad. just something about that place. something about greg smith. all those bright lights on in there. all those windows. the dirty plastic cups all over the floor like drooling jack and coke on the carpet. that bad furniture that looked like shit you’d find in somebody’s parent’s house. i heard greg smith stole jewelry from people’s moms. he’d go into your house with you after school got out, and you’d like sit there and watch tv with him and eat doritos, and he’d go on about how he was like the cif champion quarterback in his day or all-county or whatever, and about how he got cheerleaders to give him head underneath the bleachers after the games, and then he’d say he needed to take a piss or a dump, and he’d go off sneaking into your parent’s room. he’d steal all kinds of shit, but mostly it was jewelry. then he’d come back and make up some excuse like he had to go see about some girl or make his rounds or get a quick handjob or some other stupid thing he’d always say. greg smith was always saying stupid things like that. one time i saw him in the back of a cop car. he had his hands all cuffed behind his back and was balling his eyes out. it was real depressing seeing him like that. i heard later that he tried to pay a chick cop to have sex with him and that’s why they handcuffed him and took him away in the cop car like that. i never saw him much after that. he called a few times, but I told my mom to tell him that i wasn’t home.
run, run, run
A: Just like a feigned innocence or something un-booked about her powers of persuasion. It’s a push that comes without shoving. And it gets you all confused, and there’s nothing you can do but just wait it out, and then…and then, you end up apologizing. Shit. It’s really a damn mess that she makes of you. Your brains get all scattered around. Things lift and get set back down without anybody noticing that they’ve ever moved. And it’s like you got shanked. It’s trouble brewing in dimness. But you’re a sucker for it anyway. But you stick around and put up with it. And you’re not alone. And this is something that seems like it might matter.
B: Botched trying.
A: Okay. So take this one. There is this song on. It’s a Velvet Underground song. I’m not saying which one.
B: I think I know.
A: Well then venture your fucking guess.
B: I’d say…well…either Femme Fatal or Pale Blue Eyes.
A: Okay. So, this song’s on, and we were playing darts at the time.
B: Darts?
A: Yeah. She had a dartboard. Is that so unusual?
B: Kind of.
A: No it’s not. People have dartboards.
B: I’m just saying that it’s maybe not absolutely that “un-strange.” I mean I’d be willing to put money on the fact that there are way more people in this world who do not own dartboards than there are those who do. It’s got to be like 80 or 90 percent who don’t.
A: Whatever. It’s not important. Stop bothering me with this petty shit.
B:
A: So we’re throwing darts, and I’m making a bunch of holes in the wall. My aim is not what you’d call very good. I am not a proficient thrower of darts.
B: What are dartboards made of? Cork?
A: I wish somebody’d put a cork in it right now.
B:
A: Sisal fibers.
B: What?
A: That’s what they’re made of. Sisal. It’s an agave plant. They make rope and twine out of it too. And carpets.
B: Oh.
A: So we’re tossing the darts. And like I said, I’m losing big time. She’s kicking my ass.
B: Figures.
A: I’m no expert dartist.
B: There’s no way that’s a word.
A: Why not? A piano player is a pianist. Somebody who plays a flute for a living is a flautist.
B: I like saying that: “flautist.” It’s fun.
A: Yeah. I like long vowel sounds too. You should hear me pronounce people’s names. It’s like I’m speaking with a really bad German accent.
B: I’ve heard you. It’s really annoying.
A: Whatever. So, I’m getting my ass handed to me on the dartboard. And she’s talking about how there’s no way in the world that she’d ever have sex with me.
B: What?
A: Yeah. She’s going on about how it’s just something that is never going to happen.
B: How, may I ask, did this subject arise?
A: She brought it up. Yeah. I know. Fucking weird. We’re just talking and playing darts, and all of a sudden it’s like, hey, hands off the merchandise mister.
B: Had you tried to…?
A: No fucking way. Absolutely not. As far as I knew everything was absolutely platonic between us. I hadn’t even done any close whispering with her or tried any touching that in any way would give rise to this exchange.
B: No subtle brushing touch of your fingers to her arm. Not one half-try at holding hands. No brushing of her hair back off of…
A: Nothing. I think we’d shaken hands a few times.
B: You weren’t even on a hugging level yet?
A: Well. I guess we’d hugged upon seeing each other a few times, but it was always lazy and noncommittal on both of our sides. Just a loose-armed kind of hunch. No pulling close. No head-on-the-shoulder stuff.
B: Okay. So it’s just your usual friendship getting-to-know-you type of situational…um, no testing of the waters, so to speak, of whatever it was you had between you. Because there’s always something. Even if it’s mite-sized. There’s always something.
A: Down for you is up.
B: What?
A: That was the part in the song when she started going on about this no-sex-for-you-buddy hooey.
B: Am I supposed to make sense out of that?
A: I don’t know. I can’t figure it out. It was just so fucking weird.
B: No. It was just weird. No fucking.
A: Fuck……you.
B: Ouch. Little touchy. Maybe you did want to…
A: Anyone who ever had a heart…
B: Okay. Now you’re losing me.
A: Oh. I don’t know. It was this whole Velvet-Underground thing going on. The album was playing. And the songs kept coming. The line stuck out to me for some reason. Like it came on right in a gap in our conversation.
B: So what was this conversation like? I’m figuring there’s more to this.
A: Yeah. So. She’s giving me all this shit about not wanting to fuck me. Ever. Like under no circumstances would this ever be even a possibility. Like even if I were the last guy left on earth…
B: Okay. I get it.
A: Yeah. So…and let me remind you that this is all apropos of nothing...it’s like a complete non sequitur…
B: I’ve grasped this.
A: So you have. Let me get you a medal. Or would you prefer a trophy? Some laurel leaves perhaps?
B:
A: So I’m just kind of freaking out. Wondering where the hell all this is coming from. You know. Have I been sending out some kind of pheromones or something? Or…I don’t know. I’m just wracking my brain for answers, and I’m throwing darts all over the place, and sweating, and probably fidgeting a lot, and these damn Velvet Underground songs keep playing.
B: Good soundtrack for this, I think.
A: That was the crazy thing about it. The music seemed like it was playing just for us, like it was what was making all of this happen. Like Lou Reed was controlling everything that happened in that room.
B: Jesus. I just realized something. Her name.
A: I know. Jane. You see what I mean? It’s more than just a coincidence…at least that’s what I’ve come to believe.
B: I take it there’s more to this.
A: But of course. I wouldn’t be jawing your ear off for nothing.
B:
A: Well. Not this time. She was really convinced that I was out to get laid. And all I really wanted was just to hang out and play darts.
B: Really?
A: Yes. I swear. There were no ulterior motives, from pole to pole in the sphere of my mind. None at all.
B: You’re so damn innocent. Just out to play some darts. Some good clean fun. Shake hands and drink coca-cola and play board games, right? You’re so full of shit.
A: Not even going to dignify that with a…
B: Oh shit. Wait a sec. Is this going to involve…oh shit…did Heroin come on?
A: Ha. You’ve sussed it out.
B: Wow. Now I see what you’re talking about.
A: Yeah. Totally fucking crazy…right?
B: Shit. I can’t believe it. You son of a bitch.
A: Whatever. You’re one to talk.
B: True. But at least I…
A:
B: Okay. You’ve earned that smile, buddy. I’ll let you enjoy it.
end of upside-down anvil, side view
children aping saturday morning cartoons
it is not for just the trash trucks to lose
kids color the sky alive with crayolas
somewhat clumpy and disheveled
tide-less in the dirt of yesterday
bound for the t-shirted shore
happy as a january night
giddy and indispensable
fleas going out for a bite
a burst of trouble scouting for more
snagged on a live wire of practical matters
staffing the needs of happiness with xeroxed courage
flipping through sticky pages of fruit roll-ups in a candy magazine
underneath the poolwater checking out legs through a mask filled with air bubbles
“The heart wants what it wants. There's no logic to those things. You meet someone and you fall in love and that's that.”
–Woody Allen
skipburstgoingbustlikegettingoutofbedonareallyreallycoldmorning
the anonymity of Subway is a valuable commodity during these days of dread
the streets clamor with attentive perks and jolts
formerly empty laughter now raised to a crummy pitch
a bum gives thanks for a found day in the almost dark
a crenellation in the masking of night’s timidity
the permission a waiter asks to clear the plates is the fondness of ducks for still water
the worn bus stop marking scales off the pocked curb with a skidded muster of yellow
the well-sink of sewer drains take the rain’s business away
the had of here is the where of now
as young apples sing worms to sleep
as marriages dissolve like mints on a stranger’s tongue
as lips miss and hit and loosly lick lost and stuck together too
the bluster of neons cracking lonely across skipped bottlecaps gives the street’s curve another contusion
there are cellophane dreams and cell-phone nightmares and the beating whir of insect wings
there are those less-skilled in the dramatic art of taking out the trashcans
there are legends made out of silly putty and pistachios
dilatory taxicabs clog drains of traffic with desperate bleats for attention
earthquakes come and go
rational flirts with commoplace crushes banking on fog to deliver hope like a furnace would
crickets to stay up all night with
twos and threes of change drift volleying over whatever will be forgotten in the morning
Starbucks stays lit through the storm
a jungle sprawls across the 7-11 parking lot
tailors trade in their wares for tips
a mothball crawls from a coat pocket and sings a new life into old words
electric guitars
History was busy rewriting itself. Fred had an apple and ham sandwich. He ate the sandwich which was sliced (green green green) apples sprinkled salt and pepper and sliced ham in there too. Fred didn’t put mayonaisse on his dark rye bread. He liked the way the apples squished when he bit into them and the ham was nice on his tongue too kind of cold.
Cold crept up on the herons catching them unaware. Baths were happening. Clare understood the weather report she just didn’t believe it.
Hard-pressed for assassination stories and cold without bagels was how the officers from the rumor division felt. Though when it came to the question of if the nascent resilience of the rag-tag fiduciary fellows from The Anteitam Re-enacters Guild would develop into all-out war they decided it was a matter of taste.
Clever enough was how Giovanni thought of himself. Never went in for all that melodramatic jazz that came around with the rain. Besides he still had that other girl on his mind all the time. He decided nobody was worth all that grief. He mowed the lawn while smoking a cigarette. This made him feel very much better.
A middling tweak of discourse (lithe) chimed like a (shake shake shake) spray paint can in Bessie’s (bruised) ear. Bundled with a sense of snapping (snores) while the getting away (ways) were just stolen cars with no tires. Bessie blew her nose (snot) a lot (green green green) and then some with the toilet running too (not at all like the rain not like that at all).
Clouds were arriving (quite regally) on time those whispering days of marionettes going around naked (all puff and no stuff) though there were fewer holes in the disasters of normal things when (limps coming back in style) we had clocks to hide away in (lesser than now) not like now (not a bit) just a blimp hustling the sky out of its clothes.
Curtis laughed at mayhem chopped bacon bits and hurling now his mistakenly worried smile at flour-sacked men who just didn’t understand he managed to recreate a poignant moment in the unwashed soup bowl of his life.
If pondering and dwelling were paid activities the general would’ve been a millionare. And if while listening to the Shirelles’ Baby It’s You he sometimes made the mistake of spilling his gin and tonic on the carpet well then (what can I do when it’s true?) that was okay but it didn’t make him any money either (over you what can I do?) like doing crossword puzzles or laughing loudly in parking lots or making lists of all the knots he knew how to tie and untie too.
Friendlier than most French Fries was how the ketchup described the pickles to the hamburger patty. Whence came the bun? (later later always later) It was the fugacious nature of horseradish that worried most of the staff but we had parties anyway and besides there was music clinging to the most horse-heavy among us.
Troupes of foreign trombone-trained troops altered the stance of the burgeoning guild of crane operators when it came down to cases of delirium and tympanum trauma. Not to be outdone by happenstance the mission docents abandoned their posts and learned how to install shower doors. Books were freezing. Lines mistook circles for second cousins. Whittled from elm stumps were the wooden donkeys on the mayor’s front lawn. The mayor made a short speech in which he said let’s look into the heatlamplight or the candlelight or the microwavelight or the trafficlight or the TVlight or the brakelight or the porchlight or the nightlight or the flashlight or the computermonitorlight or the firelight or the windowlight or the digitalclocklight or the starlight or the movieprojectorlight or the flourescentlight or the sunlight until we go blind.
Worry stalked the butcher in broad daylight (brighter than what was previously believed to have been possible) as he wallowed around in his yellow jumpsuit and took in the freshly emptied garbage cans. For what it was worth he never much cared for the taste of Frangelico. The butcher had a dream one night that he was being followed by the sun. It was always at his back shining down on him and there was no where he could run to escape it. (run run run runrunrunrunrun)
Yeast rose to defend its toasty misgivings about rummaging through the breadcrumbs of disaster that it had fallen among. The escarpment of the oven’s door scraped the baking sheets while envigorating flawlessly executed persuasion over cooking time.
Dippy moaning from wheelchair salesmen put the weening of purblind aesthetes off of Raisinetes on hold. Nothing could be done about the rest home resident’s malcontent over snack time being pushed back to 10:30 instead of the customary 10:15 because there were certain discrepancies among the vendors as to when they could actually make their deliveries in the morning.
Quintesential wingmen were hard to come by that summer. Eyebars were rotting on all the truss bridges and it was a cinch to grab weaker souls by the gullet and make like wine. Ranch hands had to hold off on chewing the fat (baconless) because we were not on time to the rodeo but the clowns let us in the service entrance. Leading was a pace Lenny could always hold (grabbed) off on.
Hats(headsdrowned)keptdissapearing(lastly)whenyou’d(leastly)expectit(pattering)past(the)pointsofno(thing)
Clambering down the stairs (anvils of feetpounds) hasty and protesting (shoutless) in a dense fabric against letting go.
Sid says sometimes a yes means maybe so. There is a definite end to the no if it jiffies its way in a jiffy to drink the milk of speech. The warranty is not covered says Sid in the warranty. Shrink and shell the goggled men and women of the 484th calvary in the Peanut Butter Revolutionary Skirmish. This face is not my face is not on fire is not melted off my face this is my face not just my face but something unusually attached and normal too no longer in front of my face but still behind my eyes so says Sid.
Fractitious characters appeared all the time in the days of free-wheeling deep-sea divers scrounging around for loose change among the detritus of their ocean-bottom lives.
(an afterthough to the cheery plain-as-day old-time-religion kind of rhythmic plunking that happens on occasion)
julia
there lives a cat in the lobby of my building
i imagine it a lady made of porcelain and tears
she grimaces at me as i go by unsteady and limping
holding me accountable with whiskers and meows
hastening to my side when the walls rumble
under the thunder of trashtrucks and drunks
she sometimes suns on a ledge below the front door’s window
i lift her up when i come in
scratch her head and stroke her back while she purrs
and set her down gently
as i would a glass figurine
on the stairs
one night i found her hunched hidden underneath a car
parked outside
in the rain
all frazzled and skittish
and woebegone too
I picked her up
brought her in with me
dried off her maroon and mustard-yellow fur
and kissed her nose before letting her scramble off
her escape thwarted
her life forever changed
i dream that she’s not lonely at all
and that somewhere
between a ball of yarn and some fancy feast
she’s fallen in love too
when i key my way inside my place
prying the stuck door open with a tender tug
that cat runs to me
like the crazed woman she most likely is
trying to stop me
or get me back
into her life
or drive me as insane as she
and I hurry in
bolting the door closed
thankful that
for now
I have
at least
this little peace
while she moans and whimpers outside my door
until somebody else comes along
to sweep her on away
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