Casati On The Make

Pour, a gimmick’s chandelier cure, cascaded in dangles to the floor, a waterfall of diamonds, drips of pearls, and outstretched arms draped with lazy lobster eyes, a look meant for two, or ladles perhaps scooping buried treasure, wedding-caked up over head-high dreams, necklaces spun slowly on a show rack, in cagey haunts of spear-sharp opal eyes, it’s a Do Not Dance sign on a barn door, a song stuck in your head that you don’t know the words to, and it bends duller shapes into scintillating specks, and the terrazzo glints with it, bowed in or above being out of ducks, spangled slices of curtain ripple and sway, a stare’s contrarian appeal sparks, untouched and glimmering, you’ll crack odd at an appeased curtsey while the shoots curl and spell another’s twirl-and-skip campaign, to be looked over, to blend in with walls, and the trouble with being seen is a jewel thief’s blessing, to snare a swirl of jasper and leak lapis lazuli onto the tiles, the ballroom’s gone dark and everything’s out of style, and these eyes are thinner than you’d think, to be trapped in incessancy, a victim of shimmying’s shake, to keep yourself so alone and locked up to advances, dumpster diving for feathers to decorate your hair, just spit and be fancy, eyes trained from platform to perch, and seek cut-glass smiles in a luminescent flash of this or that, what’s wearing thick and gathered as you slip expertly on the sanded-smooth hardwood floors of the past, blinded by a tinny glare of who you were, then, in the draped adlib of donning personalities like wigs, scudding low and gaudy, a coughed puff of regret that sneaks sideways, poolside perhaps, like a lost earring in a deserted coffee shop, silent, as fountains of gleaming beads bubble over the lip of it all, take a shine to fame’s chancy brush, and be built to tilt, in the knees, swiped out of town, tip and sway, and never let on that this is more or less serious than it is.   

              

clowny skies

 “I’m not talking some march-of-dimes crap. I’m not talking taking insults from a certain south-seas woman. Don’t have the slightest degree of ratio-making working on my side. Golly, golly gosh and I’m ain’t running so free, see? Well, if you do, I don’t. And then we can detest some other piece of steak who thinks he’s the most magnificent creation in the whole sapphire-bled world. Well, I say harrumph to all that. I really don’t mind if I don’t and say I did. Not out catching cats in nap weather either. Nope. Not a nitwit such as I. Grubbed to a meal ticket’s last barnstorm through town. Notwithstanding. No. It is grapes or smash the window for me, as it should be, the way I figure. And figuring’s about all I do, or let myself do, or let on that I might be doing to others, and do unto myself, too, and all that, and all that as well. Guess some folks are just born to be dumb. Guess some grass is better left untended. Mine goes to weeds all the time. And I’m still considered lucky by some, to be spewing off what I do. But I want palm trees on the wall too. Just like any other tamer-of-pride sulking sack who winces his way into this place. It’s just too damn bright out sometimes. Darling. Darling. I just can’t beg enough pardons in this town. In this town, I’m a long-gone ripple gone out to sea. Partake of the sky with me. I just can’t dine on dust and sooty dreams anymore. The reflection’s all that’s left. My deep end’s gone shallow. And all my ties are running away from me. Slender efforts. Don’t try? Sure. Sure. It’s all a big now-don’t-you-cry sham. Nothing knocks true anymore. Just get me out of that damn sun already. It’s murder on my precious constitution. All whittled down to this hunkered thing that plops down here and stares through loveliness to get to the drab and the holy. I sweat through light to achieve a little darkness. Thinking about the stupid things people say after movies. These tattered strangers who play crooked violins. Where’d my wherewithal go? All that makes us different is what we choose to ignore. I’m not speaking of that salvation-army brand of courage that comes around with the sound of garbage trucks and funeral processions. What I’m going on about here is the places it takes to remove you from all that’s going on around you. Places you’ve got to get to before they get to you. Ran out of here. Walked into there. And the way the shadows fall on Montgomery Avenue just makes me ornery now. We are trained to be like this, sent in, whisked away, all smiles when necessary, punctually off kilter at times. Dressing-room sadness and a comb filled with blue hair. I need a pasty to cover my splintered heart. Lunge on ahead, buddy. I won’t be keeping up any longer. You see, these shoes are getting too small, and I don’t have any takers for my slapstick brand of living anymore. Get me a rifle and a pitcher of water. I’m going out to pasture. Call me Herodotus The Third or Barnum’s Finest. It doesn’t matter more than a draft from a cracked window. This one’s for the canvasmen, the ushers, and the sideshow workers. The rings have gone from three to none. The menageries, caravans, and hippodromes have been retired. All of my Ringlings have been Baileyed. My face paint’s gone; my hat’s gone out of style; and I'm all out of shrugs. Don’t you know tickertape doesn’t last? Nothing stays; and I’m dressed to go. The foghorn blows and blows, but not for me. But not for me. Would you listen to this if someone famous were saying it? Blah. Blam. Damn. I could use a shave.” 



  

the peasant’s moan

A silent theatre makes a talkie sad. Dropped dead into a hurricane’s roar. Bled to life around a cotton spool. A hundred dollars in my shoe soles. I’ve been chatting with a cocktail glass. Getting edgy about a butter knife. Lent and splattered on the kitchen floor. I can’t wish myself back to yesterday’s lies. There are no more roaches in the cereal. Billed for it at a later date. Giving away what’s not left of my cares. The cardboard bums of summer stuck in Saturday’s blues. Keeping the room less than clean. Two for seven and a couple more for a dozen. I’m reeling into whatever’ll come on along. Blessing myself every time I sneeze. It takes none to know none. Hard as a candy apple. A pouting doll makes a cop run. Lashed awake into a rifled tune. Burnt to a rusty finish. A couple smooth dimes up my sleeve. I’ve been ruminating with a beer stein. Growing old over a few worse memories. Chopped and spilled all over the linoleum again. The hacks of autumn are running out of ideas. Redoing it all for a song. Get without it, already. Plastic’s the reason we go along so greedy and lunging. Borrowed a pie pan from a hard-up nun. Been keeping company with no-parking signs and smashed microwaves. Whatever streets seem less paved for it. Bolstering and hoisting up what I’ve got for the seeing-eye dogs to bark at. I am not making it. Ticket takers scream, “Of course!” for me. What jewels hang ruby red from the trees for me? Or not, for me, at all. Rip open the drapes and call the racketeers. It’s all over and it’s just begun. Mend the paper cuts out of Tuesday’s worst. We all feel like rain here. We all take on the dives of others. We’re all lonelier than we’ll ever let on. Trying moods on for size. Constellations of cities lit between the black patches. Some sorry-looking sucker with his hair slicked back and gooped together with rose oil and Vaseline. A rascal from his arches to his eyebrows. It was the sound of helicopters that finally did it. Runny egg yolk and a stillborn rat. They take your money and then forget to check your pulse. Now it’s all termite territory. I’m left backing out of strange driveways, eyes peeled for deserters, the gradient of my mettle steeper than ever. Not on board for the ride. The traveling signals of modality get strange, with colder coats than this, with occult densities gone, with brains substituted for looks. Just sitting around feeling bad. Wilting into it. It is a day that passes, a cutout mood, and a preened temper gone afoul. Sword in need of a polish, but still sharper than a hangnail. Don’t make this missing places too hard to replace. Darn is the new damn. I’m Calico-bound. Don’t wish me well. Don’t be a card carrier who’s always in the midst of doing marvelous things. Nobody’s on the case now. It’s possible I’ll steal a run. Or maybe I’ll mistake free hands for a dance. Get me a belt buckle with a picture of Hank Williams on it. Get me lost. There are no more rainy days left to save for. There’s not a lot of stances left to happen up by the Wisconsin border. Sleep’s gained and thrown away all the time. Drunk again. You’ve got the pleasant things and the plain and horrible and deranged. My best friends whom I hardly know at all. It’s pressure’s lump sum sped to haste in a snap. Nothing ever happens. It must not ever be love, then. It must be. Sing be back away. Dearly dumped and taken. It knows one to take one. Unprepared for gospel means. The hamburger stand’s holding me up, like always. Calling the iron’s brand, slashed and with lazy sevens, hanging rafters, flying serifs and all. I’ve got a rock pick in my back pocket. My face has gone out of style. Blast it. Douse the lights. On first thought, give me a second. I’ve gone kaput. 

  

How States Marvell Fell In and Out Of Love With A Lusty Lady Dancer

All of my dillies are dallied. Take it difficult. Most of my time’s spent. Tell me what not to do and I’ll most likely already have crossed it off my To-Do list.  

This is the thing. I didn’t have much spending money at the time. See? At the time, hell, I was broke for most of it. My time, that is. And what I didn’t spend on spinach and...and…and what I did? Causes. Always looking for causes. The boys down by Washington Square Park’d tell you that much. Never a slow-asleep carcass-looking guy on a bench covered with pigeon shit. You get distracted. In somebody else’s words you get made and then tumble over into that somebody’s car door. I was shooting for noon most days, to get myself hobblingly aware of whatever rank or foul situation was going to present itself to me, that day, or any, in the overcast moods of those days, those afternoons that stunk of wet dog and musk. I am horrible at keeping track of what day of the week it is. I mosey through flag raisings with my ears shut and my eyes in the fog. Imagining things, too, I’d creep around and lurk and loom, pretty much keeping to myself, without a thought or even a cigarette to spare mostly. The shakes’d come around, but they wouldn’t stick, and if I was loopy I at least was something, and that was at least, well, something. Don’t ask me to recall the ways I rummaged through the thoughts that’d plaster me like radio ads, or slats of sunlight through tree branches. Something heavy, you know. Something trialed and erred through. It meets with most expectant glances and swipes the looks you get so scared to return that you finally in the end of it know for certain that you are never, even in the bottom-most dwelling of cut-and-dry thinking, never going to not be able to remember well. The tourists stroll through, spotted and taken, got the better of, plastic spoons in their fanny packs, blistered and sweaty and out of breath. Ignoring things isn’t difficult for a guy like me. I’m no fancy motorist dressed in animal fur. I bleed maple syrup when it rains. My sweat’s gasoline. My hand’s never raised.

             

This is not the thing. I got around to sweethearting it with a few ladies down on Broadway. The types you usually try not to know. This is the part where my letters might get less swell. Just a warning, I guess.

Now I’m enthusiastic. I’m not rubbing shoulders or hips with ghosts anymore. I make plans to break the law, but I break them. Go what-with, oh Lord. Go. It pets itself, for one. Now? Now I’m easier on myself. I’ve got to be, or else, or else, or else, or else, or else…what’s all this been for? I can convince myself of sure things. I can. In the ever that’s never after, I get split faster than I get tired. Going swimming in pools with my shoes on. Rasping my voice to clinger-ons who won’t leave me be, ever, and still I go it alone for the most, somehow.

People starting cars with the door swung open. The temperature drilled out of them, countenance slung with drool. I can pick ‘em. Sure. I know what I’m not doing.

Crass was a girl who danced with her top off for cash. She was cagey, rundown, a showoff for business’s pleasure. With purple streaks in her hair and a heart to match, she kept her enchantments to herself, thinking, ‘If it’s the first thing I ever don’t do.’ That was enough of a lot to get her through and through. Besides, there were manners to consider. Tow-away zones and stuff. I got to seeing her more than every so often, and then it was just easier to stay a bit longer. All gyrating aside, I was considerate and didn’t have leisurely standoffs with the barking doormen or anything. I told her, “Love’s the only things I’ve ever known.” Crass didn’t flip about it or anything. She just lip-synced along with the current lap-dance song while she writhed on top of me. I counted the blocks there and back in my head. Little Darlings some nights, or I’d patch my way down to the Century or Mitchell Brothers if I didn’t feel like being harangued by the Belchers Of Broadway. The smell of the Tenderloin always brought tears to my eyes. There’s really nothing like the pungent sidewalk stink of sun-baked urine to lift your spirits. Crass? Hell. I guess you could say I followed wherever she’d go. And go is what she’d do for the most. I could prelate my spirits to lower ground than they should’ve been on, while succubused to a dour dream yet to go sour on me, and then play chess with my privates for the remainder of the evening’s pull. Drinks on the house, you know? That got me through. That got me eager for less, too. And awful, I’m not. So the pickings were dangerously set aside, for me, and then Crass’d come through with some botched reminiscences of whole-sale doting while slamming her heels into the stage floor and flipping her hair and slapping her ass and ribald-like fox-trotting about the pole and all that-- the works. Me? I wasn’t pie-eyed about any of it. You better bet or believe it. I could hold my own and not let on. I could roll God’s dice for sevens every time. But in matters of strictly concupiscent business, well, let’s just say I was corrupt on any level you might get to knowing somebody on. Wished weller than that, too. I was hankying all the pankying I could afford, and then putting what was left on my forever endlessly inflatable tab. I prayed with my fingers crossed.

             

Look. I don’t mean to pry or nothing. I know that aroma all too well. The perfumed allure and the inveigling soft touch of it too. Let’s not delve where we don’t got to. Ever the gutless sacks, we crop and paste and stick things where we ought to not stick ‘em. Sometimes I ask the lord for a little something extra. He comes through when he thinks it suitable for the occasion, like always. Don’t roll your eyes over it. I’ve been punched enough to know the difference between love that’s given freely and the stuff that’s prepaid. Hello. Hello. Is it a cheap-shit moron you’re looking for? Well, I’ve been signed up and certified and crumbling to pieces for longer than any angel could possibly sing about. Well, it’s life and life around here, that’s for sure.

The picture’s too little. It pays and it flashes and it cools its ankles. A little dab of it’ll do, but me? I always dollop out more than I can handle. That’s just my way. Take it or take it, I guess. And then it all comes down to one question: “Where are you going to walk to then, asshole?” It seems I never know the answer to that one. It seems.

Ok, then. Back over to Columbus and Broadway. The neon’s electric grip on night: an undulating flash and pop, peppering the underbelly of carnival-prize lust with bulb-bright daggers. The only peepshow in town. Slide a few bucks in the slot. The curtain lifts. The dancers lounge about in various stages of undress. The semen-soaked confines of a small, dark booth. We will ride motorcycles into the night, and no ocean will save us as we undress and swim. Where to go? Who to be? What’s left of a view of this whole ordeal that we’ll never chance to get again? Well, let me tell you, the lord ain’t quite on my side anymore. Not for the least of this. The lazy locker-room way the dancers mosey about, chatting leisurely with each other, like nobody’s looking. It’s trepid time for me, sweating it out with my last dollar slipped into the machine already, waiting for the clock to run out. Ogling all the bare flesh that I can fit in. But, so, I’m not quite jumping for joy over the whole titillating menagerie going on on the other side of the glass there. I’m behaving. I’m not so nervous. I’m bench-pressing my luck with patience. But, really, there’s no way to bamboozle myself into mistaking boredom for courage. Cooler notes of debasement’s truck taken with have-at-its come to roost on the shingles of my love’s roof. And I’ve had it. I’m through with it. The window just gets smaller and smaller as you stand there and try to figure a way out and a way in to what’s tugging you back and forth and all the way through all of the goddamn nooks and crannies of loss and hurt and dreams gone to rubbish in the murky fishbowl of the world you’re doing your standing around in. Shyness can go to hell. Shit. I’m down and walking. Game over, you know?

Had me a girl once. Had me a way to smile that you’d never know, or believe. Shit. Had me a speckled drawl in my tone whenever she was around. Had me a girl, and she had me. Had the rights to her ways. Had the blue-eyed days and the gunmetal grays of her nights to keep me company. Had me a girl. Had me a girl in Tuscaloosa and Minneapolis and Berlin and Tangiers. Had me a girl, but only up in my head. Once, I had me a girl. And she knew all of my worries and ways by heart. But now she’s gone. But now? Now I just say, “I had me a girl,” and move on down a barstool or two to make room for another.

Ten shotguns for a nickel parade. The leaks that never get plugged in the ship of being me. I want out and in. Don’t know which’d work out better. Really, the tides tell my sorrows to the shore while I skip rocks over my sea-sunk tomb. The stilt-balanced ends of this ordeal are making my means nicer all the times. There’s a paratrooper in the moon. We’re working on other options, cruising along on some long forgotten Baja highway all out of gas stations. I am not going crazy at all. Not at all. I am not in love with anyone anymore. There.

New Tempting Ways To Serve Bananas

             

            1. With brutal honesty.

            2. Flame broiled.

            3. Lightly battered with tapioca starch and drizzled with tartar sauce, producing an effect on the tongue relatively similar in texture to wet cement.

            4. In the morning after.

            5. Rasping, untouched, sprinkled with liver powder or pâté paste, held in the crook of an arm.

            6. Rived or hacked into pieces with a boning knife.

            7. Hardwired.

            8. Giving little or at least no noticeable ideas on how to fix whatever problems may arise when removed peels are slipped on.

            9. Hardy and robust with a hint of “Can you not dig it?” and cinnamon specks.

            10. Jailed.

            11. Worried about the numbers on a digital watch ever turning from 59 to 00 again.

            12. In space.

            13. Caught between lines in a tire store.

            14. Serendipitously (with beans and franks).

            15. Presiding over a mass gathering of cowcatcher collectors who keep mistaking buffer-and-chain coupling for love.

            16. Candied and split, with crabapple jelly and mayonnaise in the chasm.

            17. Soft boiled.

            18. Fleeing the scene.

            19. Aptly arresting.  

            20. Holding nobody’s hand, self-reliant, taut as a cooked hot dog, screaming, “I made bail! Jesus! I made it!”

            21. Cascading out of trouble with no recognizable features, just a blank smile and a horrified stare, sung awake by putting-green thieves who swap troubles out for unremembered dreams.

            22. Out to breakfast, but keenly aware of which way the wind doesn’t blow.

            23. Doing standup bits in an empty basement room.

            24. Scaling fire escapes, shouting, “I am not your boondoggle! I will be no man’s peeled prize! Get! I said, get!”

            25. Sleeping on a bed of snail shells.

            26. Mushy and mashed with raw cookie dough, salted, dusted with garlic butter and chives, peppered, and honeyed.

            27. Abrupt, uncompromising, and true of heart.

            28. Miraculously out of the butter’s chain of command, with shiny cutlery on the side, not dancing while the preparer sings, “My girl, she’s my only hope / look at her through my telescope / nothing she does is ladylike / a mile to her is an easy hike / she’s got the best hair / at least this side of Delaware / she spends her days staring at the ceiling fan / dreaming about being a librarian / she doesn’t own a single pair of jeans / I don’t think she’s going back to Queens.”

            29. Out of context but in style.

            30. Finally through with being hunky dory while reading The Count Of Monte Cristo out loud.

            31. Aged for 13 years in a vat of pickle juice, then hung with paperclips in a meat locker for 17 weeks, then rolled in wax paper, frozen for 2 days, and finally held accountable for all the things they should’ve said at times when it would’ve mattered instead of being sheepish and small and docile.

            32. Roasted and chopped into squares, in a martini glass with pelican gizzard stones.

            33. Lawless, a bit sour, and lined with pink sapphires.

            34. Green, stoned, testy and jealous, and flanked by ripe plantains.

            35. In arrears.

            36. Riveted, at peace, glorified and underdone.

            37. With a bad, unfixable haircut.

            38. In all likelihood better off than they’ve ever been before.

            39. Injected with synthetic testosterone.

            40. Yellow handed.

How To Make Friends By Telephone

            

           The length of King William’s arm (measured, slightly off) describes the order of method here, abnegating willpower and roses of course, to keep the Woolite-soaked rummage at a pointed distance. Other allocated factors (abounding here or there, or not at all anywhere, too) have there say in it. But we are ruminators at best, the pieced apart luck of quietly battling these taut yet flexible-to-the-point-of-frangibility structures is humbling, and we know it, and so should the rest of you.    

            Now, in the sight that’s not hind nor fore, there are tactics better used by a braver sort; that is not our concern. We have clingers who retrieve nothing in hasty gropes. We already do. And so we don’t need bushels or bindles of fog to come clumping in to meet us at the harbor’s edge. And so we do need to feel terrific and terrible. And so we do.

            You see, a seepage problem arose. There were circles to be drawn around peeled eyes. Piled low were the remainders. Immense portions of proportional dissonance (cognitive or otherwise structured) got spilled to the guests. Campy rewrites of classic literature came to dominate the playing field, with and without pencil illustrations. Watching and looking we’re confused, and people labeled their thoughts ‘litter’ or ‘trash’ until their heads were empty enough to think. Carnations died when the gas was left on. Friends were all lost; and all we were left with was drowsy airplane noise.

            Just like the curmudgeonly way one might utter, “If it pleases the court,” into the receiver of an unplugged phone, nothing’s proceeding except processing fees and shipping and handling charges. Only you can count others out. The in doesn’t matter if it don’t worry you enough. Even with that there not being said, it purchases its own calling to cradle and bemoan. Stay riled.

             Enjoy yourself.

            Now, people will say things for you if you give them the right opportunities for it. That’s the easiest stride to take. You don’t have to make your muttering count, but if you do it could hinder less the motivation for a listener to be surcharged with avuncular gratitude, or the chivalrous attitude to match it, at least, or at last.                         

            So, speak clearly if not calmly. Match the speaker’s tone, if possible, or use a portable restraint to imitate the effect of Muzak on the nerves. Communicating is breathing too. Between words or stumbling thoughts, give in, or at most give the impression of words being things one could be hung from but not on.

            Say into the transmitter, “The evening wore one.” But remember, even crystal can seem cloudy to some. So, say it again, this time with a bit more, let’s just say, passion. Hold the handset closer, until the curve of the smooth molded plastic brushes your cheek. Think of the apparatus as part of your hand-- or, better yet, think of it as your hand. Be not a rambler. Get to the point. Be confident. Gain the upper hand. Repeat.

            Tell something like this: “There are mood modulators in the keypad. A gift of connection in the soothing static. Silver satin runs translucent and gray between gasps and sighs.” Remember, when you hang up you are actually breaking an electrical circuit that connected you to the person at the other end while you were talking. A chemical balance hangs in the balance of your hasty pressing down on the switch hook. Be sure and careful in the ending of things. Take it lightly and own what that means to you, which is a stronger bond than you really should ever attempt to imagine.

            To be liked. To be liked. This is importance’s utmost challenge. It is the impossible made to look common, easy, never out of anybody’s questioning. Breathe like somebody’s who’s done this so many times before that it is only muscle memory now, and effort is not something you’d deign to waste, ever, for anybody, on any of this. Chat. Be engaged. Seem lofty and aloof. Being worth it-- somebody else’s time, that is-- is of all the essences around. Oh, and be cheerful too; it makes the going easier.

            Please press the pound sign sharply, as it was meant to be pressed, as if denoting a numeral or amount.

            The wires are sizzling with all the nothings between your ears. Firm pressure should be applied to all ego wounds by either a group of peers or hired assassins. Grip the receiver loosely. Hang on. Be as patient as possible before the raining of blows becomes habitual.

            Nervousness or jittery spells come and go. Keep speaking at a steady pace.

            Now. Say this: “Talk of the past, around town, for me, while the piano’s lost its legs, and the hardly aware are knocking on lampposts for luck. Out of that past we’ll creep, unfairly caught like colds or foul balls, and in the chimney’s crooked shadow we’ll lie and soak our nightmares in bourbon and bacon grease. This must not be love, at all. Not at all.”

            See? Now you’ve made a new friend. Isn’t that nice?

            Well, isn’t it?

            

Two poems by an anonymous former Rhodes Scholar gone to pot

my kind of execution

common as a cold

something head against head

burped quietly to sleep

freer to hear while nothing’s audible

while the crowd outside’s driving nails into an Iron Hindenburg replica

because our memories don’t go back far enough

and self-proclaimed critics abound

teeming to put some heart in our hands

just to hold

why don’t you write a computer sonata

why don’t you program your brain to evolve

dream backwards in the colors of fog

we are not heavy with barbarous smiles

hold shaky the reins of diligence

the politicians have declared sharing to no longer be caring

get it apart

right

dash away from the target

we are stained with blankness

the said has left you

the pace subsides

green with dark

bubble up and be paint’s peeling

there is no cover to run to or from

last

knee-jerk reductionism

ramifications of assumptions

in other words

there are no bananas left in the bread

pray

if you must

but holding breath is more to it

like cottonwoods

you’d say

more flustered than most

you’d say

sleek whispers to a doll

being Jesus on somebody else’s driveway

if the ketchup stains icherous the cement

sanity’s sanies simply oozes forth

what’s to never come

again

rise

or

lie

down

something foot to foot

dressed pallid to live

at last

for a little

cushioning

in the welter of it

in the swing of being

in the hood

or honked hook

delivered ad hoc

into the known

totaled and tallied

to no more

than less than one

accidentally alive

probable waving gives peeks to outsiders  

reflection pares slick pieces of blank history

into rubber bowls that do not hold

speak to the imaginary hand 

an infinite cleft in sleep’s spectral patina 

consciousness gruesomely paved

thankful enough

finally

to be through

a partial list of things I’ve been meaning to ask or tell you (sorted by relevance)

1. There are no pigeons in the stew, yet.

2. Could we star in TV shows? Comedies perhaps? I am fairly sure that I am made for the time between commercials.

3. I had to stop seeing Thomas Pynchon’s daughter.

4. Sunbeams are not made of dollar signs. Dark-age columns of light radiating beyond even Alfred The Great’s ability to describe them, they might sign more checks than we’ll ever have the pleasure (I am not so sure) of knowing.

5. Feel free?

6. Walk in the middle of the street, sometimes, if you can.

7. Those, or these, are not my bunny ears.

8. My “Do Not Resuscitate” T-shirt has gone missing.

9. Graffiti removal is only a part-time gig.

10. I used to agree with Mr. Wilde, that hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do. Now I think it is just a scam people use to hoodwink the passing time out of their lives. There is a difference; and bonhomie? It is no longer necessary.

11. The vacuum cleaner refuses to obey my attempts at making peace with the carpet’s piles. It is war now. Yes. This is war.

12. The bandwidth of my slow, slow heart has become narrow and inescapable. I am stuck buffering in the present’s stall.

13. Do you prefer doodles of poodles to maps of laps?

14. Roman numerals are for suckers.

15. My collection of coloring books are now too water damaged to be of any practical use: just a labyrinth of grays, a wad of snot-encrusted tissues. A mistake in stowing technique perhaps, and all is lost.

16. I think the toilet flushes better at night.

17. Smog punched, found out of love, delivered perm friendly to the palms, meandering purple-gloved butlers gone tray-less, empty vending machines-- it is with these things in mind that I spill Milwaukee’s Best on the pillow.

18. I was correct about the Kentucky Jodhpurs; they are only used in Saddle Seat riding. So, there. 

19. I pulled the fridge’s plug. It is now just a breadbox-- bigger though. 

20. Writing letters to the post office is more fun than you’d think. And, yes, I still never send them.

21. My Darwin’s tubercles vary in size depending on my diet. Cassava, limes, and dogfish seem to cause swelling, while stingray soup will render the damn things almost invisible. I wonder, do you still refer to these as Woolnerian tips? Well, I am sure Chucky Boy himself would agree with you on that one, if you still do.  

22. Do you miss the way the windows would drip with sprinkler water in the late afternoon?

23. I feel smudged.