“Sure, I got my foot in the door, but only to have that foot hacked off
at the ankle, and the door promptly slammed in my face.” --
the telling spontaneity of walking blue-taped to surer fires
(bloody, if not) in the necessary equivalent of bottomed-out time (shared or
spent) waking mushy, kind, ill-sorted, factually obsolete, encapsulated with worry
(or from it), jest-lunging, set-to-tasks, or almost dull too in the robotics of
it (that’s insistent) for what could matter and meekly grow weekly weaker, that
too a robustness (called for or not) in the stationary lull of mailboxes
clanking closed, in the rob and rot of it, in churched chance, in the shanked
surface (for the winter’s up for it) that hurls in on the mess, inscrutable, of
course, as the orders never get placed, last to the fence’s picket (never light
or just for laughs) runs body-wise to the rescue, recourse to the harp hearted,
refinement for the lower crusters, not pie-eared for now (at most), not ruining
the beer bar for the better, not only the worry that goes along with all those
whys, not numbered, not days (or the longing for them) rusting to nights, a
better-this-or-that-way to carry along in a soldier’s pouch, just a rest for us
(or them) too in the whale order of shoe strength, sure as shutters shut, not
at all likely (in the weather to fly) if it caters to getting mad at the way
flowers won’t grow
Some cushy job, some Nerf life, some conspicuous consuming
later, he went out and got himself killed. There it was, in the expanse of
envelopes and tweed curtains, something to call far away about, or just to
leave, kind of alone. He had none of the younger parts of a person you’d
expect. To the latest, to the oldest spanked brand new, money was just an
abstract concept, something to be whittled away and worn like epaulettes,
something to show rank or lift in the power structure of soft living: a showy
wattle-and-daub attitude and tempered-glass exterior covering up a fiberglass
soul. A low skim of responsibilities nudged towards the next skipped disaster.
Teflon for the moon’s mistakes. Gaudy stuff for the needy. He was always going
about reaping what he’d never deign to sow. Some rudely established hierarchy
of willful ignorance. Some spackled bunch of gloom, a glitch in the woodwork, a
harp in the junkyard. Just another sap attempting to get famous without anybody
noticing.
You, sir, have got some serious reneging to do. On the
surface we will not support it. Your taillights dim in the distance of whatever
wake this turns into or out of.
Most persons are of the most uninteresting sort, you’ll find. They go
bowling with the balls of others in rented shoes with their life. Am I to blame
for the shortcomings of persons I do not wish to know, or even walk on the same
side of the street with? You? Well, sir, that is about a third of the same
story, in all the cases, covered, as it were, with your maligned dog-shit
routine. Practicality is the same matter. Shame or no shame. Go under it; come
in cleaner than most surroundings. I am not at all waiting around for it,
though.
The years are long and strafed. We’ve got no defense. All
the contesting’s done for. In peachiest instincts, get the cropped substance of
what’s been had and taken. Nobody’s whistling. Color it all in. We’ve got lots
of nowhere to get on to. If you’ve stopped listening, I don’t blame you.
Don’t get me right, there’s a speed we’ll never accomplish
with the rainy way of things. All’s inherited with a squeegee’s swipe. A
third’s full’s mostly empty. Got a reason here that needs taking. Music that
crept by unnoticed on the water on its way to Peaksville. Sad is all there is
sometimes, and that’s misery crowded out, left for where’d-you-be or
chased-until-grown and the trouble with staying awake. Corner the pass. Greet
the moment in placed stays. Quality’s in the lingering of worry’s solemnity.
How aren’t you?
Reports on the world since you left it are all bad. I am not
tipping well enough. There are mockingbirds in the basement. No truck tires. No
hats or glasses. Just a room, a place to sit. The music’s for suckers, of
course, and the dancing’s all out of quarters. Minding it, here, with just red
socks and a martini glass full of olive juice. You don’t know the difference
anymore. In the dirtiest resting place around, I guess it is fair and
delicately gooey enough. All we own, or all we were, is displaced, rust-ribbed
and charred with undoing. A rugged affair, and some things still go unnoticed.
A slip towards the universal, and then pattering, and slowly a creak of steps,
indistinguishable surprises or tactics sent packing, the movement of mush, and
the streets have lost their shine while the onagers tame the rest of us into
stability. Released hurry does its liveliest. Caressing’s gone the way of
toaster ovens. A cube of frozen Sprite for your thoughts. Any? It’s a rip’s
wave of sad. Loosed care hungering for a taker. List, and it gets worse and
better, to the up of no down. There is no chocolate in hell, baby. And the
highest ranking among the troops of now get hitched to better-off-without-them
daydreams. Lyrics are meant to be sung. Me? I am not troubled. Not at all
dangerous to the touch. And if the news runs on and off, it’ll be a
resuscitated evening, something hard to spell, and in the middle of a laugh
something worries itself out. Or, then, well, in the best of it you could
clench a prayer and spook the neighbors. Traipsing gets me through. And if
there is no “it” to have, then we’ll haunt the movie houses and the junkyards
and bowling alleys, and the best rate going on coats checks the devils from my
head. And if we fall in the rum, and the running gets us done, then the spool
of whatever’s going to punch your guts out makes its own amends. Outlining the
cascades of fallen leaves, and we dash and drop and get taken in and out for
the lash of tomorrow’s tomorrow. We run on cash and candy bars. Something suits
the necklace of being, in the harsher ways of being me. And I still dial your
phone number in my dreams. At least there’s a liquor store close enough to feel
like home. Out of cards. Caught up in the tenses of time’s lend. There are only
pears here, and not a peach for miles. Not a robot in the merchandise. Not a
curl of cream in the coffee’s cup. Let’s spread nothing but the old, in the
bananas of our days, in the cusp of sopping dry, in the worms and in the sand.
I am labeled Do Not Find. Age is wasted on the old. And, so, here I don’t go.
draining backwards
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