Lullaby

Whoever you are

I've been writing you letters most of my life.
I am never certain if you receive them, but in my mind's eye
I can see you reading them in your quiet place with tender understanding
The curtains  are stirred there by a gentle breeze and I see your hands
Holding the pages, but not your face,
Never your face.
You haven't written back,
But I live in hope.

My older brother in arms, Vanilla Fudge.

Dream: drunk on the fringes of a hotel lobby or convention center, I run into the former Secretary of Defense and Marine General, James Mattis, and his lovely wife. He is also drunk. We meet and discover our common heritage. He is dressed in jeans and a pollo shirt. Each time I run into him I fumble with what to call him - Sir, Mr. Secretary, General - but he puts me at ease, tells me he's laying low and that "Vanilla Fudge" will do. 

Waking from a nap in Purgatory at 12:02 A.M.

Purgatory is a place of muted colors and bland flavors. It's mostly quiet, and when there is discernible sound- human, natural or mechanical - it strikes you as monotonous. If an audible sound (one heard with the ear rather than inside the head) seems of interest, it's almost always incomplete - a fragment - too vague for comprehension or to do anything constructive with.

If there's a feeling you're left with here, it's a particular variety of emptiness, not a total one though because you have your memory, which dulls and wears with time, so often repeated are it's contents that very soon, relatively speaking, you don't know with any real certainty whether they actually took place in the world or if they've just come to constitute a repeated story looping. It's like a bell chiming in some far distance, relentless and hallucinatory.

There are other occupants, you're not alone exactly. In fact, nearly the whole world is here. Of course, it is what is absent that is most real and most profound. 

Tom Waits

Merry Christmas, Motherfucker.

I bought him two beers
The young guy who walked in
Still wearing hospital bracelets
From where he was treated for a broken jaw
And failing kidneys which he obtained
In jail.

They treated him with Tylenol and time
In the hole for defending himself
We looked for personal injury lawyers
On my phone - he's sure he's got a case
He said in the hole, he lived on only applesauce,
Which the CO liked to call his dog food.

One Gone

There's a dead guy in my mouth.
They told me his prognosis was hopeless
Due to a crack that went all the way down
To the bottom of the root,

They said it was not my fault
That it was not a matter of neglect
That it was just a matter of pressure over time
And it could happen to anyone,

So I let them, gave them the go ahead
I sanctioned the hit
They cut into the tooth laboriously
And eventually extracted the nerve

Which is to say, really
They removed the soul
And this morning it is eerily quiet
Inside my mouth

Root Canal, Please

A tooth, it's roots, and a network of nerves
Make yourself an appointment a week away
Each day, the pain intensifies - only for you though
No one else can know, no urgency there
It's good at least for changing your
Perspective

Almost Blue

Sometimes it happens like that

A new friend; a Christmas party I'd have otherwise suffered through; some karaoke where the host knew my name, the bartender garnished a glass of water for her with great care, and I sang the Stray Cats and Motorhead pretty darn well for a non-singing fuck - a good night. When my head hit the pillow I said "thank you".

80

We wondered what that white cloud in the distance was, rising over the trees and hills of Pennsylvania, as we made our way across the state. I joked that it was a mushroom cloud over New York City. We listened to satellite radio and watched the cloud grow closer. It turned out to be steam rising from the reactors at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. The sky was otherwise  an unblemished blue. 

Travel Day

Across Pennsylvania on Highway 80.  Lots of wrecked guard rail - when you make a mistake in a big truck, it's a big mistake. Lots of road killed deer. The blood smear of an Eastern Coyote. The Pennsylavania Wilds. The Alegheny and the Susquahana. Punxsutawney, Clearfield, Snow Shoe and White Haven. I've come to rest in Bethlehem for the night..

Warren

Ohio again. This time I just work, eat at the nearby mall restaurants, and read back in my room. 

Auburn

More tires. Two 60,000 mile all-seasoners that I hope live up to the name. Walk a little with a small backpack. My foot steps are awkward, like relearning. My belly jiggles. Thinking of her strong hands and forearms. Getting mesmerized by a pair of eyes in a coffee shop, staring stupidly- she's waiting for you to speak. You don't, thereby minimizing the humiliation.

The article stated the obvious. The language of depression employs lots of downbeat adjectives, uses the pronoun "I" and it's derivatives more than the others, and includes lots of absolutes like "never" and "always".  So check yourself.

I don't think that gets it. They talk about depression as if it's like contracting the flu. Like one day it's not there, and then it is. And you start feeling low, just like that, on an otherwise lovely day.
They make no reference to the forces that wear you down. I suppose those would be harder to medicate and make a mountain of money on.

Social determinates - the conditions in your world that bring you down. That's closer to the ticket, I think. Maybe more about that later.

After The Divorce

A grey November Sunday, time to get up and get the laundry done. His dryer quit about a year ago and the washer caved a couple months later. When things break, you do without. That's paraphrasing his personal mission statement for the new normal which has now become routine.

Laundromats aren't so bad, an interesting slice of life. He goes to one in the city. The smell is thick and green when he enters. Apparently watching the dryers spin is more interesting when you're high. He hasn't tried that yet. Anesthesia. We all scurry toward painlessness.

He is prideful today, embarrassed with riches. The feeling surprises him. It's the exact inverse of the previous shame he felt carrying in his broken-on-all-four-sides flimsy white plastic laundry basket every week.

Today he carries before him the Dura-Maid, two-bushel capacity, Maximo model in contemporary grey. It features reinforced color coordinated handles on all four sides. It holds his week's dirty laundry with ease - no trail of balled up socks in his wake this week. Not only that but it accommodates a gallon and a quarter of liquid detergent with no strain at all. His back will give out before the basket does.

His youngest son slaps him on the back imaginarily, "Great choice, Dad!" He thinks he could probably come out of a hurricane intact sleeping under this Bad Larry.

He pours the detergent in, loads the washer, slides the quarters in the slot in an unbroken rhythm. Maximo sits commandingly high upon a shelf. He resists the temptation to buff it with his shirt sleeve.

Small victories. Baby steps. 

Sidetracked

Of course I got sidetracked, that's what I do. Start a project and it multiplies by two or three and they jerk and lurch and sputter in all directions then usually peter out or split at the next intersection. Today I submitted a 100 word essay to 100 Word Story. Let's see what happens. It's not my original plan, but at least I'm writing.

Armistice

We have been divided. Marine veterans for and against a president who today didn't pay tribute to our older brothers who volunteered for an early death in France a hundred years ago because it was raining. The leaders of Germany and France were there.

Not only was he a no show in France, but he didn't bother with the National Cemetery at Arlington either.

The rhetorical volleys on social media, back and forth between the few liberals and many conservatives among us, seem to have slowed in frequency and intensity today. I didn't see any one interpreting his actions to make them sound more benevolent or strategic than intended.
No one claimed that he had more important things to do.

And I didn't look for an argument with any of them or feel very strongly the urge to say "See?" That's not true, I did feel the urge. But I didn't pull the trigger.

I think today, with the rhetorical guns silent, we are all feeling this. We who once believed in something, stood up for something, and maybe will again.

This Place

Smelling white paint when I try to write
Seeing a small domed room from inside,
Newly painted, monochrome, with no relief for the eye.
The smell dries me out, dehydrates the words.
Reduces the world to locked door seclusion.
And me to solitary,  primitive, self-referred, smearing.
Illuminated dimly with pale fluorescent flicker.
Feeling along the smooth walls for cracks.

Smoke (draft)

A full year has gone without a single sighting. Each time he remembered the few instances of eye contact they'd shared, he'd felt a twist inside. The ache of a missed opportunity, which he should have dismissed and moved on from with a sigh and an "oh well" months ago but didn't, still remained.

Now he is sitting on a high-seated school bus with his knees pressed tight against the seat in front of him on his way from the parking area to the Holiday Carnival hoping she would also be returning. The short ride gave him a little time to reflect.

He knows he appears strange here riding with mostly women and their small children dressed for winter. There are a few men riding with their partners helping to manage children. They are younger than him, bearded, bundled up, seemingly domesticated.

It was easier to imagine he was part of this community last year riding the bus with his young son. Now, he's attempting  to push aside the feeling of strangeness by looking out the window trying not to go any deeper.

Doubt emerged and gnawed his confidence like a beaver. Was he setting himself up for a let down by coming here? What were the odds that she'd actually be here? Would he even recognize her if she was? Was the face in his mind even hers, or just one of his own creation? He is unsettled, not at all the vibe he'd imagined.

The shuttle arrives at the drop-off point adjacent to where you board the horse-drawn wagon if you feel like it. Small children under large helmets are waiting nearby for pony rides, a line forms to buy tickets for the games. He looks around too aware of the fact that he is childless, alone, and a male in advancing middle age. He doesn't know what to do with himself.

"Get out of your head" he says and starts walking.

She is right there, standing in front of the main entrance talking to a man. His heart leaps into his throat. No doubt about it, it's her. He feels obvious and obscene, turns his face from her and walks inside. Something needs to change.

There's time. Take a walk and look at what the vendors are selling - handmade leather good, lots of things made from yarn, framed photographs of birds, hot cider and kettle corn made on an open flame. Breathe and unwind. Smile at the parents and their cute and tiny children.

He spends some time looking at the chickens at the far end of the carnival and feels some relief.

"Gaw, Gaww, Gaw, Gaww, Gawwk" he says to the chickens.

A couple of hens cock their heads and regard him curiously. A rooster responds in kind, sounding annoyed. He feels relieved, he realizes, because he is alone. Except for the chickens. This is not the state of mind he needs to be able to talk to her.

He walks to the concession stand and orders coffee from an organic, free trade, social entrepreneur in enthusiastic Spanish. They make small jokes about the vendor's super-industrial-strength coffee grinder that he says could double as a wood chipper should the need arise. The man and his wife are smiling at him. He smiles back at them. The paper cup feels warm in his hands. Almost normal. He bids them good day and goes outside to stand beside the fire which is a tightly stacked pyramid, built with no small effort, for a sustained top to bottom burn.

One man with a short pointed stick appears to be the appointed fire keeper. The fire keeper and another man talk about their houses, their companies, sports. He exchanges furtive glances with them, lets openings to join in pass by, and walks away feeling distance again. It's time to find her.

Back inside the school, he does, at a junction of hallways.
He says hello.
She responds in kind.
He asks if she is involved with the school.
She says she works here.
He tells her they almost met at the Carnival last year, but didn't quite.
She says she does not remember.
He tells her he has been thinking about her for a year.
She says, "oh".
His mind goes blank.

He cannot remember what else was said. He goes outside where the cold air revives him slightly. He continues walking, away from the crowd, down to the barn where two donkeys stand in a stall. They look at him quietly for awhile. One has gentle eyes until it brays,

"Hee Haw, Hee Haw, Hee Haw, Hee Haw"

"I know." he says, "I know!"

He lets time pass, not that he can do anything else, knowing everything is ruined. He should apologize for making her uncomfortable before he goes. He's not sure if that will make things better or worse but he imagines how dismal things will be if he leaves now, this way.

She is standing at the very end of the line at the concession tent. It wouldn't be hard to stand beside her and have a private moment to explain himself and go, but as he approaches she seems to see him out of the corner of her eye and calls out to a friend a few feet away.

He reads this as a sign of distress and moves off quickly. He is standing now on the other side of the well tended fire pyramid. He is watching her lean into her friend probably telling her this creepy guy is following her. They start to turn in his direction, just as the wind shifts slightly, obscuring him mercifully in smoke.

He turns his back to them quickly, crouching, walking faster, crawling on hands and knees, scurrying flat on his belly, thoroughly disguised in smoke. He grows smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller, until he disappears. 

Stay At Home Haiku

Silent Sunday morn
White snow and I'm regretting
Stay alone for now

Indian Country Tourist (halved)

Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills must be like a swastika in a synagogue to the Natives here. The larger monument to Crazy Horse is close by and under construction. He's here for a Lakota writer's book signing at the visitors' center.

Driving through the Badlands, the cemetery at Wounded Knee, Bear Butte had him feeling spiritual. He looked forward to the conversation.

The sun is hot in middle afternoon. It's quiet except for the wind. Two cars in the parking lot. Someone assesses Crazy Horse through binoculars.
,
The writer sits alone with his books spread before him. He approaches the table timidly.

Hello!

Lo.

He's paging through a book, what to say?, decides to purchase. During the transaction, he tells the writer he's enjoyed his books and about his experience as a white man in Indian country.

The writer isn't really looking at him. He can hear himself talking and wants it to stop.

What do you think society can learn from Native spirituality?

Silence.

Don't think they'll learn nuthin.

Outside, the hot wind blows. That spiritual thing is feeling sick.

Unpunctuated

My thoughts if they're thoughts at all not just fears or programming or compulsions or drives keep running and running dragging me behind and I'm trying not to lose my genitals to road-burn shifting from side to side trying to limit contact with the road surface to hips buttocks and thighs until it stops or I break loose which fills me with shame thinking I spend too much time worrying about myself and then understanding that the trick is to time things right and leap right out of your head into what's going on around you in real life in the world and so on the turnpike you think you will treat yourself to a chain restaurant steak tonight so you exit and pass the scene of an officer involved shooting though you don't find out what's going on until later and there's a douchebag at the bar with a bluetooth in his ear having a loud enough to hear too well phone conversation allegedly with a lady who is talking about her fantasy of being in a threesome with this dude and another woman and it's just more evidence that everyone has been ruined by internet porn except maybe the people to my right who are a couple from the greater Dallas area that have noticed people here look at you suspiciously when you try to make conversation and then of course there are three screens of sports playing simultaneously including women's soccer in an almost empty stadium football replays that last all frigging week and NHL hockey which forces me into a feeling of suffocation deflecting my attention to everyone around the bar and the bartender all of whom annoy me except one woman who looks good but doesn't want to notice me at all and even if she did she'd no doubt do so only to agree that my earlier notion to learn meditation in order to get off this drag is a fine idea 

Skiff

The hold was full of well-iced silvers, reds and chums still barking and watching me through one petrified eye. I'd thrown each and every one of them from the Natives skiffs into the brailer trying hard to look like I knew the difference between them better than I actually did. I'd shoveled all the ice too.

A good day of physical work out on the river and I was a hundred dollars less poor. The captain was happy with the haul. My face was sunburned, the wind carried a chill, my sweat and the slime were staring to dry, and fish scales adhered to my forearms. An August evening on the Kuskokwim, and we were heading up river with a full load.

I wanted to get to know this river - to be fluent, sure-footed and handy on it.
I wanted to do it quickly.
I wanted a particular Yup'ik girl back in town to think well of me.

When it first appeared in the distance, moving downriver, I could not be sure what I was seeing. It was clearer as it approached but it didn't make sense. A skiff with it's outboard motor in the water, still running, carrying only a sweatshirt and a few fisherman's items. Wet footprints. It passed us with a certain willfulness, like a horse that had thrown its rider.

The river is a silty brown and cold. Its channels are deep. It rises and slacks with the tide. It provides and extracts life. The fisherman wore rubber boots, probably, rain pants with suspenders, maybe a rain jacket too. No life jacket of course.

It felt a little colder. The sun was setting in the middle of the night, and the tundra darkened all around. I stood thin upon the deck.

"Slowly", she said.  Her dark eyes twinkled with mischief and stared with all seriousness.

Pop Quiz

True or False

_____    I love you.

_____   You love me.

_____   We were meant for each other.

_____   If you love something, set it free etc..

_____   When one door closes, another one opens.

_____   We will find each other again one day.

_____   I am delusional.

Sing It With Me

The courage of the coward is greater than all others

A scaredy cat will scratch ya if you back him in a corner

I ... I ... I ... am a coward.

What the fuck are you listening to?

Huh? Oh, Vic Chesnutt. It's the playlist on my phone.

That's chipper.

Well, the guy had a hard life. He was paralyzed or something.

Shit, really? Sucks. How can he sing?

From the neck down maybe?

There's some important stuff down there. Am I right? Ha ha.

Yeah. Funny...

Heavy fucking song choice, Bro. I never heard of him before.

He's dead now. Suicide.

Oh. Well, I guess you could kinda see that coming, no? He should have cheered the hell up.

Yeah. Funny...

There's A Limit

The alarm on my phone sounds at 6 AM. I wake up tilted back in the front seat of my car parked behind a coffee shop. It takes a minute to realize where I am. Sometimes I work a night job and, in order to maximize the opportunity for sleep, I catch an hour or two in the car before my day job. Need to brush my teeth. Need coffee.

The covered dump truck tips it's daily load of the fentanyl overdosed into the incinerator. The driver gives me a two finger salute. Waving, I turn the corner tucking in my wrinkled shirt.

It's still dark, but the front of the store is lit by blue police lights. The SWAT van is parked in the coffee shop entrance. I squeeze inside. The morning rush hasn't started yet, thank God.

Three black people - a man, woman and child, dressed for school - are on the floor with their fingers interlaced behind their heads. The SWAT team, in helmets and body armor, have their weapons trained on them. One officer is placing zip-tie handcuffs on the child.

There's a small line of people waiting for customized lattes scrolling through their phones. One or two are drowsily recording the interaction, another is taking a selfie with the cops and the unhappy family as a backdrop.

"Go-od morning" I say hopscotching over the family - one, two, three - with a twirl at the end that makes the cops snicker. " I appreciate ya".

I'm standing in the line and the joker in front of me orders "a large, regular coffee". The place gets deadly quiet. All eyes fall hard on the customer. I'm close to hitting him - fucking idiot. The staff refuse to serve him.

Bravo! I yell, clapping loudly six inches from his ear. The others join me in righteous applause. Some throw balled napkins at his back as he stumbles out in shame.

Outrageous.

Indian Country Tourist

Mount Rushmore is located in the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota. To the Native people of the area it must be vandalism of the highest order. It's a permanent reminder, not graffiti that can just be painted over. Not far from there is the much larger monument to Crazy Horse which had been under construction for years when he arrived at the visitor's center.

He had come to meet a Native writer who was doing a book signing at the center that day. Driving alone through the Badlands, visiting the cemetery at Wounded Knee, climbing Bear Butte
and meditating there had him feeling spiritual. He looked forward to the conversation he and the writer would have although he could not yet imagine it.

The sun was very hot in the middle of the afternoon. It was quiet except for the wind. There were only two or three cars in the parking lot of the visitors center. Someone was assessing Crazy Horse through binoculars. The writer was sitting alone at a table upstairs with a few books spread before him and a box or two under the table that he wouldn't need to open. He approached the table timidly, respectfully, and said hello. The writer responded with a one syllable "lo".

He paged through one of the books he hadn't yet read while trying to think of something to say and decided to purchase it. While the transaction was taking place,  he decided to tell the writer how much he'd enjoyed and taken from the two books he'd read. He told the writer about some of his own experiences as a white man in Indian country. The writer looked in his direction but not really at him. He could hear his own voice talking and wanted it to stop.

He told the writer it had been good to meet him. It was still just the two of them on the second floor of the visitor's center. He asked the writer, what lessons can the larger society learn from Native spirituality.

The writer said he didn't think it would learn anything from it.

Outside, the hot wind continued to blow.

That spiritual feeling was paired down to its essence now. Mild nausea. Vague ache.

Folk Tale

Folk tale?

If you live in your head long enough, you lose touch with the folks. You can't remember if there is a shared belief system or common mythology in your fundament. I guess the same is true if you live on the internet. How about something like this.

On Election Day, all of the town's adults went out to vote every election year. They were all registered voters, informed on the issues, had powers of discernment, and they voted for the most decent human being on the ballot. They didn't sling mud, they didn't sabotage the process or make it harder for others to vote. They didn't view voting as some act of heroism.  They believed voting was a hard won right for many, and a privilege for theselves because they were never clubbed while having to fight for that right. None of them would ever consider missing the opportunity to use their voice in an election.

Do One Thing Differently

Stout of heart on the edge of sleep late on a Sunday night, tomorrow is the day he will begin again again. He sleeps as though dead.

Monday morning he wakes to the alarm, hits the snooze automatically, rolls over into an anxiety dream, doesn't quite get back to sleep but manages to avoid getting up for another three rounds. When he finds his feet, they are infirm upon the floor. He steps forward, not at all sure.

Something has occurred which has embrittled his spirit again. Laziness, a lack of discipline, self pity, no balls - he hears these things spoken in another voice and semi-counters them with a fuck you that provides no spark at all the first time spoken, not even the second or third.

He's looking at his pale feet in the shower, waiting for an idea. The drain gurgles his sloughed off epidermal cells. This is not my life, it's only that which no longer serves me. He watches the soap suds slide down his body, to the floor, into the drain. That which no longer serves.

Towel dry, find some clothes, off to work - Monday morning. Nothing different. The traffic is waiting, having had a head start, to repel his advance.

But there may be a Tuesday, and tonight he will remember the promise of beginning again again again with courage. This is why he had heretofore never kept a handgun in the house.

Cohesion

After marching back from chow, the drill instructors made us close all the windows in the squad bay. I remember that vividly because it was me who had to close them while running at top speed. It was a hot October day on Parris Island, and the drill instructors said they had a day of fun planned for us. The Senior Drill Instructor was noticeably absent, and we had already learned to recognize that as a dangerous condition.

No air moved in the squad bay. No air conditioning and no fans. Seventy-two of us stood on line - two lines facing each other across the squad bay. Three drill instructors worked their way up and down the lines looking for any sign of weakness, any unauthorized movement, however slight or involuntary.

They cycled us onto the quarter deck in groups of approximately ten and exercised us vigorously to the point of temporary muscle failure. Then we would stand on line and try to recover. Many of us vomited our breakfast during the first round or two.

Side-straddle hops, push ups, bends and thrusts, mountain climbers, run in place, on your back, on your stomach, on your back, faster!. one two, one two, one two

This went on all morning. The quarter deck had become a lake of sweat. The drill instructors amused themselves by making us backstroke in the lake. The squad bay felt like the inside of a greenhouse - humid, stagnant, sweltering. The recruits standing on line, locked and cocked, began to sway a little. This lack of physical discipline incensed the drill instructors.

You better lock your doggone body.

By afternoon, some recruits were openly crying. Some couldn't find their legs after yet another session on the quarterdeck which brought the drill instructors down like wild dogs smelling blood. Weakness brought only more pain.

From the far end of the squad bay, I could see the entirety of the two lines of bald headed recruits swaying. They made me think of church bells ringing. Sweat and tears poured, snot ran, recruits mouthed pleas to God, curses, exhortations.

Soon, we began passing out. After the first of us fell, the rate increased quickly. You could tell it was real by the sound our heads made hitting the floor. We fell forward or backward like trees, splashing in the lake that had now spread across most of the deck.

That night, just before lights out and right after the Protestant lay leader had prayed aloud for Jesus' intervention, the Senior Drill Instructor asked how many wanted to go home. Several accepted the offer.

We woke the next morning fewer and harder..

Black Birds

Dawn in a different state - warm, humid and fragrant. I am watching the sky move through lightening shades of purple, sipping a coffee, pacing outside my hotel. There is no one else around.

Strolling into a grove of pines, listening to the strange sounds of new birds. Grackles taking broad hops in the parking lot, the males with their long showy black tails. I'm wearing a shirt and tie, suit pants and dress shoes. Forgetting myself, I step in something slick and slide.

Later, I am standing in a room with a dead man and his family. My hands are folded respectfully, and I am looking at the hard-caked yellow mud on my black shoes.

Some of the family yell at me, some ask questions, accept tissues and plastic cups of water. Some hug me or glare with hate while others thank me. In the end, it's just the two of us remaining.

He's very quiet, still wearing the plastic airway the paramedics installed. I'm thinking about those long-tailed grackles, how they look kind of regal and pitiful at the same time.

Story that takes place in a bathroom

They called it a charity hospital when the Catholics used to run it. It's under new ownership now, maybe a little less charitable, but some vestiges of the old regime remain. James works the third shift here.

He likes to spend his breaks in the basement. It's deserted and actually pretty creepy in the middle of the night. The morgue is down there, and the beige tiled walls of the hallway feature black and white photos of two or three generations of nuns who once took care of the mad and indigent residents of this old neighborhood. The nuns are dressed in stiff habits and elaborate, terrifying headgear  just like Sally Fields wore in The Flying Nun. The Sisters in these photographs aren't at all cute and endearing though. All of them wear dour and severe expressions. At the far end of the hall stands a statue of the Blessed Mother with her hands extended downward. She wears an expression of compassion.

It is James' habit to greet her each night when he walks past. Tonight he reached out and touched her plaster hand on his way to the bathroom. He'd never touched her before and doing so started a train of memories in motion. Catholic high school, his years of service as an altar boy, incense, baptisms, funerals, solemn boredom and daydreams.

The bathroom smells of equal parts urine and bleach. In a hurry now he unzips with one hand and locks the door with the other. He hears the bolt slide into place, steps toward the urinal, realizes that the latch has broken off in his hand. 

What I Know Now

It wasn't a war about conflicting visions for the country. It didn't rise out of idealism. It was really just a wrestling match between brands. You chose Coke or Pepsi, Nike or Adidas, Country or Hip Hop - use whatever metaphor makes sense to you - but there were only two. The one you picked became the uniform you wore, the brand you killed for.

We didn't think much at all about who stood to gain, just reacted in anger to the other side. We believed in our logo, and very soon, nothing any deeper than that. We hated. Then we shed blood and reveled in the carnage for awhile. 

But it wasn't the WWE at all, a lot of shit is broken and a lot of people are dead. Now, I'm trying to write something down so I don't forget. Forgetting is how it happened, if you give a shit.

I'm not going to bullshit you, when it all finally came down I was kind of relieved. No more circular arguments, no more lies, no more propaganda, no more stuffing it down and holding it in. Running and gunning. Shouldn't have fucked with a well armed liberal!  We rape, burn, pillage and kill too -with sensitivity and equanimity.

Before it completely went to shit, each side bombed or shot up the other's news channels, gay bars, churches, schools, NBA games, concert venues, and Nascar races over the course of a few years. Riots became so common place they stopped scaring anyone. 

We adapted quickly. Outrage grew tiresome for most of us. Groups of like-minded kids started suiciding on social media as a form of protest, I guess, or just to get the fuck out of here, I don't really know, but the memes the backlash produced were kind of brilliant. LOL. 

I call this historical period The Plunge.

Before that, people had kind of checked out. A few of them got together and elected a show clown to the Presidency while the rest were watching porn or playing video games or keeping up with the Kardashians. He did the bidding of the richest, blamed it all on the poorest and the darkest, mobilized the fearful and the hateful and served them up an enemy with many faces to blame. Some people saw it coming and voted for a change. More didn't. 

Pursuit Predation

Arrived at work a full hour early due to the World Series victory and half the state taking the day off to scream at the parade. Time enough to take a walk in sub-freezing temperatures felt along the fingers and across the cheekbones, a quickening in the lungs with each breath drawn. Up a residential side street quiet with occasional renters and owners taking out trash or leaving for work.

I don't belong here. Some of them have suspicious eyes which suggest as much. When their eyes touch me, I begin to change.

Made a left turn downhill toward the river. Two pedestrians merged onto the same street heading in the same direction on the opposite sidewalk. They are walking together. They are wearing hooded sweatshirts like me. Unlike me, their hoods are up. I cannot see their faces. They walk quickly. A minute after I notice them, one of them peels right without speaking and enters a house.

She is now aware of me so walks faster trying to stay ahead. Something in her alertness changes me further in the direction the eyes started to. Her face is covered, but I can see her breath. She is wearing leggings. I know why she is out here so early, what moves her so quickly.

Everything looks different now but the river. She cuts across the grass and enters a condominium complex. I've changed completely. Someone else is possible again.

Everything's turned brown and is glazed in frost. Fog rises a few feet above the surface of the Merrimack. People passing in cars try to look at my eyes, but I am wearing sunglasses.

Nancy Stohlman's Flash Challenge

I've accepted a writing challenge for the month of November. Author and professor Nancy Stohlman is sponsoring a Flash version of  National Novel Writing Month in November.

I've failed twice endeavoring to write a novel in a month.

Flash is defined, for this purpose, as a story under 1,000 words. There's a Facebook page set up for participants which is said to feature writing prompts. There are no real rules beyond writing a story a day. I intend to post them here in whatever form they take.

As Though Seen With My Own

Your friend has cyanosis
Someone ought to tell him
He's hanging on the back of the door
His body seems ashamed
I do not like to open doors
For this very reason

See Michael Gira Perform if You Have The Opportunity

Pub

Waiting for traffic to subside in a bar full of Irish transplants featuring over priced food and charming accents. Outside a downpour ensues - thunder, lightning and bright sunshine. Rumor of  waterspout in the Cape Cod canal a few miles south. I have a nagging cough. GERD related. Denial isn't making it go away. Annie Lennox is singing her sweet dreams sexily, androgynously.

The after work crowd is moving in. It's getting noisier by degrees, and my tension follows suit. Beto is talking his ass off in Texas, and I'm wishing him the best, kind of helplessly, cheering listlessly from the couch. I'm thinking about putting my fist in the eye of the shithead who speaks for those tiki torch frat boys who call themselves proud. He says he wants more violence.

The world is precarious, always, and now we get a little taste. So with that I return to what's right in front of my face.

Push off the GERD thoughts
Finish your beer
Take your place in line on the turnpike
Go back to sleep. 

Miner For A Heart

Waking to imagining the scent of you on the pillow,
Even though I can no longer recall exactly what that was like,
Then imagining your daughter taking her first steps
Running some sort of clock in my head without information
Like one might do while trapped in a mine a mile below the earth

The other day, I saw a woman with a face close to what I
Remember yours looking like, she had the unsmiling look
Of striving like you often did back when I used to try to
Send you peace of mind.

It's October now, and the first night below freezing has passed
I am still above water, if you want to know, wondering how this
Can still be so one-sided after all this time

Do you ever think this way?
Knowing might be like pumped in oxygen

Arriving way down here

To Mississippi

The road from Monroe to Vicksburg was straight and flat. Trailers of hay bales and yams, cotton fields and brown water bayous, black bear crossing signs, road killed raccoons and armadillos. After crossing the bridge spanning the mighty river, I read the sign about the siege during which Ulysses Grant shelled the city forcing the survivors to shelter in caves. I met a girl in that town who couldn't understand why I'd come. "Why wouldn't you go some place nice?"

Some Shit I Heard

Very strong. Good man. Good body.
Real Women Love Jesus.
Pumpkin spice Bloody Mary.
The Republicans are stealing the vote
From the people.

Family

"Please. You are my brother" the stranger said as he paid for my sandwich.

What Makes It Difficult

First it was quiet as his breathing evened out
Then there was an awareness of this lack of tension
Somewhere hard to pinpoint
But his shoulders felt broader
His chest cavity felt deeper
His inhalations drew in longer, slower, calmer
Then the walls surrounding the cavity came down gently
Then all membranes dissolved
And there was a vastness
Not emptiness - full, open, synchrony
His heart was steady thunder
Strong, true and warm
This feeling of truth
Radiance

He waited for that feeling the night before last
After it was over, he looked for it
His shoulders had come down a little
But not the rest of it

Mourning This Morning

Grief is internal, and I'd say it lasts as long as it must.
Mourning is external, a public step forward from a place of grief.
It's an act, like throwing away the sheets you bought for my bed
Last slept in by you almost two and a half years ago now, I didn't
Mark the date, but I did maintain a physical relationship with
A trace of your blood for all this time. Today, I picked a long black
Strand of your hair off the mattress while remaking the bed.
I always thought this one is the last one, but this time I believe it is.
Bought myself an air purifier and a dehumidifier from your friends at Amazon.
They are both running now, changing the air in here. I have sage,
Sweetgrass and cedar which I am saving for the next time I feel ready
To take a step. 

North Adams

All the boys stood for the Anthem
on the home team's neglected field with more
cheerleaders than football players. I stood outside
the fence, the only evident visiting team fan,
waiting for my eldest son, taller than I,
to get his shot at a sack or a solid block.
It was mountainous and sunny and the day felt like
the early hours of a manic episode might -
everything suddenly a little brighter, more vivid,
giddy nearly to the point of dizzy.
I contained it, my face reddening in the brilliance,
taking in the silhouette of the mountain -
the one that inspired Melville to write
his whale.

Mohawk Trail

Asians on the French King Bridge
Photographing foliage
I know it better for
Jumpers 

First Impression

Wake to confining thoughts
the taste of paint
memories of cold feet and hands
and the feeling that it will be this way
until death

Dead Flag Blues

Pleasure Palace

They had a doll there you could touch for three dollars.
A whole session would cost you 40.
They had a 300 dollar cash deposit policy,
Insurance against deep gouges and stab wounds.

Ushering

There went Summer.

Chilly night, closing the slider, using the blankets,
   waking with sore throat in cold air,
   blue jays foretelling Winter.

Their cries travel all the way down my memory.

Got to think about oil now and tires again -
   tires always during no money times,
   and the black hollow that absorbs the light,
   removes all strength, turns you against
      you.

I'm not afraid but am hoping (a little)
   that this one will feel different from
   the last two.

Girl On A Plane

Seventeen
Saigon, Tokyo, Dallas, Boston
All alone on her way to boarding school
So brave, smart, determined, confident
Tiny
She starts a conversation and, during its course,
You imagine two worlds waiting for her
The first, she will master,
It is honest and kind, nurturing and fair
The second, will snap her up
You try to be a part of the first one

Roadside

Drove out of town this evening to a restaurant and bar. Two dollar margaritas during happy hour, boudin stuffed jalapeños, and a bowl of shrimp and grits with sausage and other good stuff in there. I liked the look and feel of the place, mostly empty. The music was good too. Contemporary country, I guess, but not the mostly shit I hear when spinning the radio dial in the car. It kind of set a mood, heartbreak songs.

I thought about the way you used to eat with such gusto and how watching you used to light me up inside. For a minute I had this idea that I lost you in the end because, in my head, I started saying things other than thank you.

Dallas-Fort Worth

"Caaaar please!"

Two notes. His voice is melodic, sounding to me like a soloist singing Gregorian chant across this busy airport terminal. I think he's Indian. I've heard him during the course of several trips lately driving his silent electric cart. Other drivers might jar your nerves with a horn or an authoritive tone, but this one adds something pleasant to the experience.

I'll miss your orphan tears

It's the heat

Don't think about getting hotter all over
On these warm nights in the South
Looking up at the moon every night
Watching it get larger with Mars just
Below and to the side glowing red
And watching us smolder

Butterfly

While waiting somewhat anxiously to sing karaoke in a Texarkana roadhouse, I happened to look up at a television screen in time to see a young person in a job interview. She said she wanted a career that made her feel like a butterfly.

Yes.

When it was my turn to sing, I let em have it all. Motorhead. A young man with a long beard told me after that people in the crowd liked my performance. Said a girl of 21 was filming me.

"This old guy is killing Ace of Spades right now".

Sunset: Arkansas

The sun is a big red ball I catch out of the corner of my eye perfectly balanced upon the horizon. The Natural State goes on and on, flat for as far as I can see, green and sultry and quiet.
It's not bad here- the only real darkness comes from
The natural state of me. 

Break Time

She's Nepali. Two years with her husband in a big Texas city working as a barista in a Starbucks placed at a terminally busy crossroads. Her natural smile has been professionalized. Her feet and back always hurt. America is not what she'd imagined. Everyone seems to be struggling. Maybe five percent of Americans are good, she says. the others all wear angry faces.

Saturday Morning

Home with trouble getting out of bed after sleeping well in a place where the crickets know me. Waking to a mess, neglected maintenance, regret and avoidance.

 I'm back on the road Monday. Let it sit. 

Southern Night

Stumble out of the bar alone after singing the last song on Karaoke Night. No one really responded. It's one of those nights, in a town far from home, when no one knows you or cares to know you. A sharp contrast to the magic and fast-friendships formed the last time I passed through here. Maybe it's something about the stink I give off when I'm alone and in my head.

Outside, the thick warm night and a slight hot breeze. I'm restless and a little drunk. Need to wait a while before attempting to drive back to the hotel. Open season on drunk driving Yankees here, I'm betting. Hungry. Food will help sop it up. A couple doors down is a 24-hour, Texas-born burger
joint I've yet to try, so I do.

The man at the counter is John. There's a crew of at least ten working inside and a line at the drive through window. John asks me how I'm doing so I tell him and ask him in return. His day started at 6 AM (it's now 2 AM). He is working his third shift of the day - one job to the next one and then on to this. His face and voice are calm and sincere. His eyes are tired, they hold mine the entire time.

He's got three children to feed. One was actually fathered by his cousin, he tells me, but she came home after awhile and they patched things up. Now he's got three jobs - fast food and retail - all right at about the Texas minimum wage. There's not a lot of time for sleep. He's not complaining, but his eyes... suddenly it seems a little harder to breathe, like there's not enough air in this room.

"You been in the military?" he asks.
"Marines" I answer.
"Semper Fi. So was I."
We smile and shake hands. We were in about 20 years apart.

"Hawaii was real nice."
We look around us quietly. He looks me in the eyes, seems to shrug without moving.
"Ain't nothin' but a thing, man."
"That's right, nothing but a thing, brother."

The hamburger is a good one, and I eat it in the parking lot leaning against the rental car. A bedraggled young woman walks up and asks if I can give her a ride. Her teeth are gone and her eyes are crazy, she's moving toward me in a kind of zig zag. Meth.
"No sweetheart. I'm not going anywhere."

But I am.
Tomorrow, I'll board a plane back to another life.
John will stay here to work another shift, and then another right after that.
I'm hoping he won't notice the thing about the air in there, but I know that he already does.

You Are What They Feed You

A gentleman explained to me with great certainty across the Texas airwaves that angels were created by God fully mature. He drove that point home for a good half hour as the prairie rolled by under the blanching sun. He used the word mature (pronounced with a hard t, not a ch sound) at least a dozen times. He said there has never, not in the history of all creation, been a baby angel.

Yeah? What's Cupid then? A dwarf?

Nightfall

ArkLaTex is what they call this region. From where I'm standing, you can just about throw a rock into Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. It's 97 Fahrenheit degrees at 7:30 pm, and the inmates are exercising inside the fenced in yard. Basketball, calisthenics, wind sprints - white boys with buzzed heads in white t-shirts and yellow sweatpants. Most of the old downtown on the Texas side is abandoned. What was it like when things were thriving here? Where did it go?

Paris, Texas

When you're like this in a place, you know what it looks like but not what it means. No sign here of Travis or Hunter. The downtown now is a once beautiful, vibrant public square gone to antique shops trying to sell off the remains. Two blocks out from there and it's all but abandoned. There are a few small businesses in the downtown selling crafts, olive oil, and Paris, Texas memorabilia (not a single reference to the German director, his movie, or the sad and determined man in the red ball cap), but I can't see how they make ends meet. Property is for sale, renovations are being done, hope seems to stir. It's hot under the blue sky and brilliant billowing white clouds. But even in stark daylight there are more ghosts than people here, more past than present. Only one place for a drink I've found in town. Better start with water.

Embarkation

Maybe this is the place where the air runs out, you're thinking, but then you see the barista who fronted you a latte when you forgot your wallet, and the guy next to you watching the Red Sox tells you a story about the ghost in his bong shop.

In eight hours you'll be on another plane.

"Lunatic fringe", says the radio, "in the twilight's last gleaming".

Episode

What do you call this? A relapse? Just a lapse? Some kind of dry drunk in which I walk around titilating myself with memories getting so far gone as to be able to taste you and re-experience some of what it did to my chemical constitution back then?

You're still in love with her, someone told me. Is that why everything is muted? Is that the reason for this buffer between myself and what I am trying to experience? Is this why there is so little color or flavor or feeling - this damper, dampening, withering?

It's better to move. Take me back to airports and hotels and rental cars.

As I know you must...

Field Notes: Texarkana

• Texarkana greeted me with humidity and with flies.

• Warm evening, windows down, cicadas in the trees. The bartender makes medicine from Maker's Mark, grapefruit juice, Drambuie, sage, honey and bitters then tells a story of feeding Dramamine to a psychotic cat while stuck in Memphis traffic. Newly weds from Arizona in their sixties down the bar. He stands and pulls out her chair when she returns from the bathroom. We talk Alaska and suddenly I am no longer tired

• No Ubers out at this early hour. I call a cab and a pickup truck with a horizontal crack across it's windshield arrives. The flies are waiting for me inside the airport along with one fat and silent cricket. Security here is vigorous. There's about one officer for every three passengers. They open my carry-on to inspect a portable steamer. They are patting down a woman's hair now. Outside, the lavender dawn.

To Brooklyn

Signs on the Tappan Zee Bridge remind you that life is worth living in case you have forgotten. Richie Rich lives in New Jersey not far from that bridge. Charles Darwin worked out his theory of natural selection observing eighty-eight lanes of Northbound traffic merge suddenly into four from up in the rigging of the George Washington Bridge. I park across from a public housing tower in an industrial area - shift change at a bottling plant, I think, a Polish beer. Brooklyn. Walk around the block and there is the savage guitar player I've come to see smoking a joint and listening into a cell phone. When he looks at me, I nod and give him a thumbs up. He waves. I walk by feeling twelve.

Whatever It Was

Already I've forgotten. I think it was "Nothing Else". Something I was writing just before waking from a dream. In the process of coming here, I lost it, can no longer be sure of what it was . Thought it was guidance from the unconscious. Maybe it was just a reminder to get my ass out of bed.

Don't Know

Why did you google her?, was the question she asked him.
Snooping is not something he often did.
In search of that ridiculous word closure, out of curiosity, in hope, or maybe
motivated by something darker?
I don't know for sure, he answered.
Did it help? She wanted to know.
No, I don't think it helped, but it was good to find out
something.

Brunch

A bad dog. A soiled waffle iron. The brisket carver roles his eyes at me, and I have to restrain myself not to smash the chocolate covered strawberries to pulp in front of him. There's a time for everything. The three kids are sitting together. I'm seeing them. This doesn't happen often. But there's something amiss, we are off key together as a chorus. A fractious family. This feeling is like a cloud of biting flies descending upon my head. It doesn't belong here now. I try different notes, seeking harmony.

Mild Distemper

The Russians may be using my blog as some kind of virtual jumping off point to spread doubt and faithlessness across the land. Who are these visitors? Meanwhile, I'm withdrawing even further from the idea of people and from people themselves. This has little to do with the Russians or the ridiculous president. My interactions with people are so often tedious, laborious, more difficult than they should be. I have little patience left for it. I'm ok like this, with just a quiet morning and the fan.

Runner

Many times I've given up only to re-experience the pain of starting again. There's a belly here, fully formed, the kind that forces your navel to stare at the floor. It didn't exactly sneak up on me, but I guess maybe I care enough now to pay it some notice. Made a decision to take a month off from beer (August 7). Made another decision to get thirty minutes of exercise in the morning. Started today.

This is an achievement. I've been mostly dormant for a couple of years. Inspiration has been hard to come by. Haven't been able to convert the occasional spark to a sustained fire.

Set the timer and step off. A horsefly finds my head inside the first minute, and it's hot. Two minutes of walking, two minutes of easy running, and two minutes running a little harder than that. A sustained incline impedes my ability to conform to the plan. Anyway, I keep moving forward, breathlessly,  belly shaking, up and down hills, through the grass, in a kind of loop. It takes a little less than 25 minutes but I'm satisfied.

In the kitchen, I'm trying to breathe evenly. I'm drinking water, feeling sweat run down my face and body. Also feeling something moving quickly up my right leg. Ticks - two of them. This fucking place is cursed.

I'm not feeling very well at all. Call the credit card company to tell them to cancel the goddamn card which I paid off June 1st only to find a statement in the mailbox today complaining of a late payment and charging me a fee.  After cursing the auto-attendant for a few minutes, a man comes on the phone and says he wants to work with me, assures me me that I have value. like he's talking me down from the handrail of some suspension bridge. After hearing my grievance, he manages to reduce the balance from $47 to $7, and yes I would like to take care of that today, thank you.

The sweat stops after about half an hour, and, dry, I feel a little better about things. By bedtime, two more ticks have made themselves known.

Not For Granted

Celebrated my birthday with a massage
and by putting the air conditioner in the
bathroom window which enabled sleep
through the hot and humid night, avoided
people, let it pass without much emotion,
a little further down the belt - that's all,
but it's a number not everyone gets to see.

Another Birthday

Drove them to where they were going
But did not stay for the annual visit and a dip in the lake
Despite the fact that we were flirting with 100 degrees
Instead I watched the sun menace us slowly
A hazy orange ball taking it's sweet time
A young buck at 8 pm, a yearling I'm guessing
Sporting two horns about the same length as his ears
Stopped and talked for awhile as he ate his leaves
Asked him if he'd kindly restore me to sanity

Ohio

I.

Warren/Niles, Ohio. Meatless breakfast in a chain hotel. Desk clerk says she wins people over using her chipmunk voice. She gives me toothpaste. All around me there is asphalt.

II.

Sodom, Ohio. Passed through quietly without molestation, hindrance, or temptation and managed not to look back. Avoided eye contact with the Chief of Police at a four-way intersection. Sunny and green, landscaped houses, trailer parks, beer-wine-lotto - rolling through in a rented car. Back in Niles now, a hillside cemetery, final resting place of The Queen of Hearts herself.

III.
Niles, Ohio,

Rare Time on Sunday to Reflect

Didn't write about the deer I saw the other day
skinny and delirious, running out of one of
the city's downtown public housing projects
hooves like skates on the asphalt surface, frantic

Didn't write about the several skinny foxes darting
across the road after nightfall along the entire route home,
and the slow porcupine standing still in my headlights waiting
for its death, reprieved tonight and probably oblivious

Didn't write about the dates I've been on and the moments of
life I felt, surprising me. Still alive and perhaps of momentary interest
at least to someone else. Despite this,  I'm chained to the floor.
"You're probably still in love" she said,  kindly.

Summer Dream

Dreamed of a toddler falling through the ice
on a cold and deep stream that served as the walk
to his family's front door. I went down once and missed him.
Impossibly deep. He's sinking like a stone.
I woke up filled with sickening doubt.
What if I can't?

Three Feet of Grass

Pushed the jungle back a little bit today
Sometimes you have to make a choice
To pick a side -  to work for order or for chaos
I'd been contemplating letting the jungle
Reclaim the lawn, then the house, then whatever
And it was nice to let it go for awhile, but the dew
Every morning on the tall grass wet my shoes
Mowed a path in the back too
Maintaining something I promised I would
Why are you on my mind again?

With Only Minor Ache

Thinking of it as a break with continuity, and the new reality
Is just disconnected events without particular sequence
A dog sleeps at my side now twitching through a dream
Sleeping alone is no longer something to get used to
Normal now so long, I prefer it
Sober now with minor aches.

Imagining the indignity of position of a found body
The discoloration of the face and its half-open eyes, burst vessels,
Blood pooled, the ghastly stricture, slump and stillness which
The friend who finds it will never shake, smoke, drink or scream from memory
The rate continues to increase, I think, because the world is sickened now
Nearly unto death, and we are, after all, of this world and only this.

Sober now with minor aches
I think I can handle Google and it's revelations
And find only a change of name and evidence that
You found what you wanted and landed on your feet
I can't see far into your world from here, and to this I
Do not attach any particular significance.

Pre

Got into town earlier than I needed to
not wanting to miss or be late for the
school musical. I parked on the street,
threw some trash into the public receptacle
on the side walk, fed the parking meter,
and spent a little time in a bookstore
where I used the bathroom then wandered
unable to focus on one book after another.

When it was time to go, I reached into the pocket
of my jeans but my keys were not there.
Checked the other three with the same results.
Retraced my steps. Not on the floor or the shelves
of the bookstore, not in the bathroom, and no one had
turned them into the clerk. Outside, I could not see
them in the car through any of the windows. Checked
the trash receptacle. Repeated the entire process wondering
if I'd gone somewhere else that I was not recalling.

Ended up looking down into the trash receptacle again.
It was placed on the corner of the town's busiest intersection,
lots of car and foot traffic, school kids walking, people enjoying
the sunshine of an early Summer afternoon on the patio of a cafe.
Peering in, all the way to the bottom, I could see them. The receptacle
was deeper than my arm was long and it took a little obvious effort
to retrieve them. People gawked a little. I felt it, but not much.

Easy as Falling Down the Stairs

When I'm driving at night
animals reveal themselves
in glimpses, flashes, like
maybe someone I could talk to
someone who might get me but
then they're gone into the darkness
a function of motion, perception, night
and only the porcupines could I catch
if I tried to. Then there's the fucking
suicides, countless as raindrops now

Tuck

Yes, we are dying, and
they are staring at screens
sitting on gym equipment as I am
vaingloriously attempting to
build boulder-shoulders before
turning 52 next month while drilling into
my Swiss cheese memory the upcoming school play
in which the youngest sings and plays a candlestick.
He is already thinking it's not worth trying because it
all goes wrong no matter what. I try to tell myself it's wisdom
developing and not despair. The song ends: this is why we sing.

Address

Returning to the night silence of this place again
Which keeps me awake for several hours after
Having adjusted to the sound of the air conditioner
Coming on and off which kept me awake in the hotel
For the last three nights, and it goes both ways -
Feels familiar and safe with an unspoken threat to swallow me.
This morning, with dawn, the sounds of the birds,which is better.
One day this may feel like home.

Texarkana Moon

Into a tube, up through the clouds, and out of my head - that's what traveling can do.

Ruby Throated

I ended up brewing the sugar water and putting the feeder out after all. This morning he was out there. Too soon to tell if he's here with a mate or not. No sign of her. We looked at each other through the window for a good long time, with recognition, I'd like to think. Welcome back, old friend.

88

I could feel my blood moving,

my head was clear and free of fog,

I was not drowsy or sad, and my 

stomach hurt a little from 

laughing.

It's not something you get over...

A few remarkable things I've yet to remark on

There was the brightness of the full moon a few nights back and the way it shone upon the white clouds. I wanted to look for someone who would appreciate it too, but I was alone and managed not to turn my head.

And a coyote trotting up the road in the path of my headlights. When it turned off the road, I stopped the car, rolled down the window and talked to it.  It's ears moved and it stood still, watching and listening.  I thought I saw playfulness.

First warm night last night, and I slept with the door open. A tree creaked in the breeze, and in the morning, birds.

May Soon

This is about the usual time of the hummingbird's arrival
and you haven't put out the feeder
and you don't know if  you will

Yesterday a mourning dove looked at you through the kitchen window
standing on the rim of a fetid, neglected, black-stained bird bath
half full of brown water and rotting leaves. When?

Don't know yet if I will this year, boys, you said remembering
the single male hummingbird who lived here all Spring and Summer without a mate.
She didn't make the trip for reasons of her own you guess.

This, all again.
You don't think you want to revisit and remember the
beauty or the pain or the long, long, quiet seasons thereafter

I've Had But Couldn't Keep

More or Less

Dig this disconnected feeling-
a somehow string of unrelated days

And nights, I am something left behind
or maybe something new

Each wake up, forgetting or
maybe becoming

Chance

At home again, fox in the front yard
surprised to find someone lives here,
not sure if this quiet I wake to at sunrise
is heavy or light, dark eyes, south Texas,
Muse, her colors, the curves of her lines.

Quiet, The Winter Harbor

Monroe, LA

The slight sweet scent of pink lemonade honeysuckle
in the shaded courtyard of a Louisiana psychiatric hospital.

I could stay here, rocking slowly, and just the scent
could put things right.

The river is cresting, her name is Ouachita.
Locals here pronounce it "Wash-ee-taw".

She rolls smooth brown and gentle, hides her terrible power
behind fluttering false eyelashes and the sweetness of her smile

There's not enough time to know you,
but I am glad I met you

morning

i'm buying fuel oil five gallons at a time
and the silence that flows through this house
and the madness it carries on its waves like plastic
bottles and drinking straws is entirely my own
there's a certain relaxation knowing that, an exhalation
I try dancing, but I'm still pretty tight
what happened to you that locked you up so?

Leaving Ohio

Leaving Ohio in twenty minutes, driving a muscle car that announces its presence, an exercise in the ridiculous. I went to the gym this morning after laughing with the church ladies. I had to hide in a side corridor wondering if a myocardial infarction was taking place. A conversation last night makes me think of the evolution of our narcotic tendencies.

Youngstown

A delayed flight to Pittsburgh and a long landing in blowing snow. The rental car man gave us a free upgrade, so I drove out of the garage in a Dodge Challenger with a loud exhaust feeling seventeen and silly. On the night highway I felt better letting it run without effort past 8o miles per hour trying to remember that I was driving with my boss. Checked into the hotel after midnight. Youngstown, Ohio.

4:18

Of course before Spring could arrive, we needed to get three snowstorms out of the way in a ten day span. Yesterday's dumped about two feet. I shoveled it in four separate shifts and managed not to have a heart attack which is positive. I'm single now and I kicked my roommate out. It's 4:18 AM.

Must Have Been Something I Loved

Spring

The wind of a winter storm rises driving the rain, now

Trying to make up it's mind between Winter and Spring

Threatening me with at least six inches of heart attack snow

It could go any way at all, and I am close to the edge

Realizing that the pace of change is about to accelerate and

It's too late to escape the flood

Texarkana

Rented a nearly purple Toyota after landing in Dallas-Forth Worth

The air felt warm but not humid outside and we stopped for BBQ 

And a fried pie off the freeway where the sun was setting in such a 

Hazy way silhouetting passing semis up against it and we passed the

Sign for Paris which made me remember and recognize the looping

Overpasses from the movie so I looked out briefly for Travis with his

Lonesome eyes and red ball cap and on the freeway you can do one hundred

Easy, without feeling it, so straight and free of potholes it is so in no time we 

Reached the hotel which was surrounded by strip malls and chain restaurants

That were very much the same as the ones they have back where I'm from. 

Marrakesh

Wake to uncertainty, good
Recognize that as truth
Turn on some music
Going into the shower
An app a friend suggested on
Facebook that allows you
To access streaming radio
From around the world

Leave your body on the killing floor
Let yourself float and dream once more

A Reading

No one normally lives in your living room
No one normal lives here
You're sitting here today, a holiday, trying to read
The second job starts in a couple of hours
The alternator needs replacing and you're hoping
The car will generate the electricity needed to deliver you
To the eight and a half hours that will cover it.

Distracted, you stop to vacuum the rug noticing an inch of grime
On the wooden window sill, open a beer, feel your belly
Sitting there when you sit back down where it didn't used to be,
Your ass is flattening too, gluteus minimus, maybe you ought to walk
Up some hills, do some mule kicks or something
Get back to the book: someone talking about a woman
The character walks thirty miles every week for.

A friend to his mind...
Thinking of this, the tugging of yearn
And then you get stuck on a sound
Drip drip, drip drip, drip drip, drip drip - uniform
Cadence, a metronome of distraction, so
You leave the book on the arm of the chair
The asshole's shitty dog wrecked

The kitchen faucet is not the offender at all
It's the solar-powered plastic daisy potted on the window sill
Where she placed it, waving its butterfly hands cheerfully,
After assessing the potential for sunlight exposure carefully,
The day she said you'd lost your brilliance and put up a bird feeder
And moved a few things in and, for a time, wore the soft eyes
Of said friend.

Seventeen

The boy chose Valentine's Day for his massacre, at a school, which I guess is where you go to make a statement these days with an AR-15 carbine and a high capacity magazine or two. The news anchors stumbling over themselves to tell the facts they don't yet know first. Ambition trumps compassion, you can here it in their words. I don't really care what drove the kid.  I'm not really outraged or disgusted. I am not thinking or praying or posting about it. This is only more of the same, and I am no longer.

Feb 14

The ice remains in patches on the driveway, but the next three days near fifty ought to take care of it. This time of year is so often exhausting. This back and forth between Winter and what comes after. Don't even want to speak the name for fear of bringing its memory to life. It's still Winter, no matter what it looks like. And I still have a mountain of bills and a refi that won't go through and a court date. I'm writing this thing to try to take me beyond that, into what's next, but it's still Winter.

Skipper

Money woke me at 2:45 AM. Since then I've gone back to sleep several times, each time having small dreams, most of them obvious and anxious. There was one, however, in which I was hopping lightly stone to stone across a river. I was following someone else who was very worried about falling in and getting wet. I gave the problem very little thought and skimmed over the top of the water, just touching each stone with the toe of my shoe and pushing off. It was kind of pleasant. 

Probate

couldn't sleep last night
working on the financial statement
inept at the computer
clumsy, forgetful, angry, irritable

had to push this morning
to get the papers handled-
completed, notarized, filed, stamped
and transported to the loan officer.

yes, in fact it is dissolving
there was a bit less tension after
but no celebration, I was really
only tired

no villains, no victory
just an awareness of time,
change, inevitable death
a 7&7 seemed appropriate

the hipster behind the bar
knew what it was but they
don't stock Seagrams in places like that
so he provided a reasonable facsimile

I didn't toast the occassion
or drink to anything in particular
but the drink smelled kind of good,
might have been refreshing

Goodbye and Thank You, Mark E. Smith

Goodbye and Thank You, Joe Frank.

Deferred

You can't get anywhere lazy,
if there's even somewhere to go,
so you apply oil, heat, and too many
contrasting seasonings to the last of
the three eggs, not exactly what others would
recognize as a scramble, but you get it
down.

Long ago a friend observed that everything
you ever cooked, which wasn't much,
ended up the same color. Brown. You
haven't seen that friend in many years,
not because he insulted your cooking, but
because you lose track of things, because
you lose things, because everything is
loss.

A half empty glass,
glass bottles, coffee cups, clutter
the night stand which is really just
an undifferentiated surface to be defiled.
You should really clean this place.

The past week took the lives of two word-men
who impressed upon you and have been
among the voices in your head for many years-
Joe Frank and Mark E. Smith. It's a little worse
without them.

Two days off work with a broken car -
a tie rod snapped after months of deferred maintenance
causing your left front wheel to turn right against your
will and efforts, thankfully it didn't occur along the 600
miles of highway driving you did that day, some of it
with your daughter in the car - half empty, sure, but
half none-the-less.

Business casual stroll after the tow truck departs
nine or ten miles home as the wet road surface
turns to a skating rink. Who's the one person you call
when everything turns to shit and you need help?
No answer comes immediately. Your brother, sure,
but he's in another state. It's better like this though-
walking, feels good to have distance to close, and
you step off determined.

Call an Uber? Fuck that. You realize quickly that
your night vision isn't what it used to be,
and when cars approach with their high beams blazing,
you are blind, stumbling and slipping a little
cursing a lot through the darkness beyond the edge of the
pavement. There are no sidewalks. Not too much traffic,
and when there are no cars your mind goes where it used to
when you walked all the time. It starts revisiting, bringing faces,
most of them smiling, laughing, funny stories, memories.
There's no one else walking. No one to tell them to.

You could be a ghost out here, but the cold air
stings your face, the heat of your breath steams your glasses,
on-coming headlights blind your eyes, your feet are unreliable
on the ice - ghosts don't deal with shit like this.

When you leave the main road, you get
over an hour without seeing a single car or person. The
stars are out, it's quiet and cold.  You spook a deer, you think,
hearing it crashing through the trees and then the sudden rushing
sound of a swollen brook coursing under the road as you walk in
almost complete darkness.

Your stride returns, but cautiously, on ice.
Unlike your long walking nights before, you can feel your
knee and hip joints. The bell in the Congregational church,
confident it's steeple is bigger than the Catholic's,
 chimes twelve times.

You slide down the frozen street on your shoes.

Forty

Another milestone approaches
and maybe it's arrival will really
end the counting which officially
stopped six months ago.

I can't feel what your life is like now
but often imagine various story lines
always hoping happiness for your little one
and a deepening of everything for you.

Magneto

Estrangement

Changing while driving
I jam the arm of my prescription sunglasses
directly into my eye
my reflexes apparently are still on watch
but I wouldn't be surprised if
they're day dreaming at their posts
about frolicking greener pastures

Not Today

One of these days
I'm going to execute
The day I planned
The night before.

One of these days
I will check all the boxes
And lay down at night to
Instant sleep, righteous.

Winter All At Once

Much of New England
yesterday. like me, was
in need of emergency auto repair-
tires, batteries - casualties of a
record cold snap. There's a snow
storm coming in tomorrow on top of
it. I feel dread in the air, the potential
for panic. Something about this isn't
ordinary.

Jan 2

Not exactly resolute
But this new year looks a little
Better to me than the last one did
Or so I think in the early morning
Of it's second day

ps: Moments after writing the above
My car refused to start at five below
zero and I missed an important call.