Tuesday, December 31, 2019

New Year's Eve

It's never been one of my particular favorites, but after work I went and bought myself a good looking western shirt and entertained the thought of going out to ring in the new year, maybe even find myself a kiss at the end of the countdown. Never have been one for crowds or woooos, and when you combine the two, well, that's pretty much hell for me.

I took a short nap. It's 9 PM. What now?

Well, I went out after all. Crossroads. When I first arrived in Big Spring, someone told me that was a good place to go to get stabbed. As it turns out, it's also a pretty good place to be on New Year's Eve. They didn't let me sing Ace of Spades, but that's ok. Black, brown and a little bit of white - lots of dancing and no problems. Glad I went.

Everything is more than just one thing. 

Monday, December 30, 2019

Basking, I guess you'd say.

There have been many things along the way that I wished I could have shown you. Things I wanted you to hear and see and feel with me. I miss laughing with you still and remember it well. Laughing with someone else isn't the same. But what I miss most is that feeling of brimming over with something warm whenever you were close at hand.

Sunday, December 29, 2019

Not much to say about it

Not too far from here
Outside Forth Worth in a place called
White Settlement
Two parishioners didn't make it home from church
They didn't make it to the hospital either
I didn't leave the room today until dinner
And then couldn't find much that was good to eat
Or to pass the time with
No one walks the streets here
I did for a few blocks in the old downtown
And I ran into two distinct black cats
Neither crossed my path
And stars

Saturday, December 28, 2019

Day O' Work

I'll tell you what occurred.  I walked out the damn hotel into the balmy morning parking lot and seven or eight of those orphaned cats jumped me out of pure malice, scuffed my shoes, and shredded my damn sweater. I started the car and drove down and around the block to the Starbucks that's still novel enough in this town to always have a line. It takes those youngsters about 15 minutes to make a drink. Three of us came to the crossroads at the same time. I was fixing to turn left into the parking lot. Someone else wanted to pull out and turn right. And the transgressing third pickup preventing us both from rightfully doing exactly as we intended was stopped cold, not signaling any intentions whatsoever, when it was supposed to be going straight forward. The passenger in that particularly honry vehicle saw fit to point at me just then. Of course, I immediately shot the tip of his index finger off right through the dang windshield of my rental car leaving him with a startled O for a mouth. Sure the windshield's covered by the insurance policy, I'm in Texas. That freed things up a little, and the offending vehicle moved ahead and out of the dang path of progress.

The purple-haired girl at the counter inside said, "Good mornin', Greg".

I said good morning back, knowing all the while my name wasn't Greg, fingering the pistol in my pocket.

"Do you know, Freya, that mariachi music fills me with a dizzy sense of surreality and alcoholic dread ?"

"No, sir. I did not know that."

"Let's go ahead and keep it that way."

"Yes, sir. You have a blessed mornin', sir. "

Outside, I notice again that there are no crows here. There's no consolation for me in that fact. I'm thinking it's the freaking fracking and that sickly smell of burning natural gas all the damn time. The grackles that survive here move like post apocalyptic marauders. They'll probably be waiting for me tomorrow morning. 

Let go of desire: no grasping, no yearning, no attachment.

After a long sleep, I'm back to work in Big Spring.

There were a few notable events on the return trip. The first flight featured a crew of two physically beautiful female flight attendants in the main cabin. One didn't smile at all, and the other smiled a lot, though not really at anyone  It was as though she were smiling for a camera or acting in a stage production. The smiling one called all the women "babe" and didn't acknowledge me at all. The unsmiling one hit my sleeping kneecap squarely, twice, with the beverage cart and she didn't acknowledge me either.

In Dallas-Fort Worth, I squandered a couple of hours in a small roped-off bar. The bartender was a small person with a big voice. Her name is Edna. Edna asked me to pay for my beer as soon as it landed. She went on to tell me a story, at the top of her voice, about how many people don't pay for their drinks in airports. The difference comes out of her pocket at the end of her shift. On Christmas Eve, she had to make up $43. This hurts when you're making less than three dollars an hour. She told me she tracked one woman down, followed her on to her flight mad as hell, told the flight crew she wasn't getting off until the woman paid. The flight crew backed her up, gave the woman the option to pay or leave the plane with the police. She paid.

One of Edna's customers finished his beer and headed out. He passed behind me and half-whispered "She's louder than my dad, and he's 80 and stone deaf".  She saw him, didn't hear what he said, but she looked down anyway, apparently stung, knowing it had been about her.

I told Edna I'd be her undercover back-up and started scanning the remaining customers. She made a guy leave $20 on the bar when he went to the bathroom. I assured him she'd tackle him if he got any ideas about not leaving it.

A young woman walked up to my side of the bar. Attractive, fit - she had the choice of two stools, one beside the good looking younger man who had since returned from the bathroom to find his $20 still on the bar, or the one beside me. She chose the one beside me. A voice told me it's because I looked like the safer option. Harmless. I sunk a little.

She's spent Christmas in Dallas with her brother and his kids and was on her way home back to Kansas. She'd studied dance and then taught it to little girls. I liked that. Then she got an offer to  come out to California to work for the Hyatt hotel chain. A series of promotions took her from Palm Springs to Miami to San Antonio. Last year she decided she was going to take what she'd learned and do her own thing. She bought a bar in her Kansas hometown, in a historic building, and learned a lot about carpentry in the process. It's running pretty well now, they're getting ready to expand by adding a restaurant. Their peak time is during the pheasant season. Kaycee is her name. She's 29. I told her I hope she'd find time to teach little girls to dance again, and bid her good luck. We shook hands, and I felt a small ache as I walked away to my gate.

On the next leg of the trip, I was upgraded to first class. It was only a one hour flight, but they still managed to get three drinks and two snacks into me. I felt self-conscious drinking and eating while the ones looking at the back of my head with envy and hatred went without. The flight attendant was a tall, hilarious, twenty year old. Smart, quick, very funny and courageous - I recommended she give stand up comedy a try. That was a short flight, and I was almost sorry to leave.

I found my way to the rental car, drove East through the oil fields and the smell of burning natural gas, stopped for dinner at the Texas Cajun, checked in with one of the waitresses whose Dad had a stroke a couple of weeks ago, joked a little with two of the others, and headed off to bed alone. Which seemed appropriate.



Thursday, December 26, 2019

Winter Night

We're in that short span of days between Christmas and New Year's Eve when I received your message, shortly after having given up hope, six years ago. I went without expectation. A little later I was holding your purse, gloves, hat and winter coat outside the rest room. Later still, I involuntarily kissed the top of your head. You were a little drunk by then, and I already understood that I was hopeless.

Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Folky


Ceremonial

The injection is given to nearly all of them, no matter
Sad, psychotic, addicted, manic, hopeless, traumatized, poor -
Trapped
And they accept it

I see a blackened glass jar inverted
Let's call it the world
For now

The story of the baby Jesus is told to the children at the altar of an affluent Episcopalian parish
Jesus and Mary were chosen by God, she tells them, and they were people without a lot of money
They were poor people, and God chose them to bring Jesus into the world to save us
And they accept it

It's dark in the jar, hard to breathe
I'm ashamed and
Trying hard not to scream

The last Jedi is up there on the screen now, she's fighting the darkness - both
Inside and out, the odds are impossible of course, while we chew our popcorn
Ultimately she triumphs, after enduring heavy sacrifices, but we win in the end
And they accept it

I fall asleep while she's climbing around inside the hulk of the Death Star
Sickly in need of a new story
These no longer heal or nourish

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Christmas Eve Again

Texted with someone this morning half a world away, floating in a salt lake, immersed in a different culture without the North American commercial emphasis around Christmas. Said it felt refreshing. The simple joy of being together.

Tonight in a Chinese restaurant with my three no longer children, marveling at the people they are becoming. Grateful for the opportunity.

Monday, December 23, 2019

Travel Day

Travel day
No pre check
Annoyance
Then the girl with the backpack
Smelled like hard drinking
Had no ID
Hispanics, she said,
Even though I'm half, I don't speak it
A tragedy happened to me...
Twice
I've got to get out of Texas
It's her first time flying
Scared
Going home to Washington
Crying
I need to see my little boy
Raped
Talking to me
An older woman on
Her way to Alaska
Walks up and hugs her
Without hesitation gives
What I couldn't

Sunday, December 22, 2019

Don't Mind Me

Walking uphill, the paved loop in the state park,
sunshine, quiet, 70 degrees,
my head is clearing, my lungs laboring, my mood improving
and then, off to the left, a snapshot.

Two women in sunglasses, one reaching the back of her hand
toward the other's hair as though to stroke it lovingly, they see me
and freeze, her hand drops, expressionless faces look off to nowhere.

It's ok, I want to say.
I can see you love her.
I'm really not that guy.

Saturday, December 21, 2019

Sleep it Off

More down hearted than I imagined
over the political affiliations of people
I share history and experience with, felt
earlier that maybe I needed a night out
to blow off steam, but now just staying
put after steak and shrimp at the Texas Cajun.

But then I return to thinking of someone I
felt so close to - I ignored her politics and
she never challenged mine. If we had continued
together, what would it be like now?

Friday, December 20, 2019

I Spit On Their Agony

My daughter kind of enigmatically warned me
not to get caught in "the hotel limbo".  It's been a month
now, and I haven't even turned on the TV in here.
Tonight, I got to feeling a little confined, the air conditioning
coming on and shutting off, that repeating pattern of
sounds starting to bore into me, so I pressed the button on the remote
and the TV fired up with channel after channel of nothing I wanted
anything to do with until black and white Anthony Quinn as
Zorba the Greek.

I guess I've never watched that movie all the way through. The orthodox townspeople
are twitching and snarling with blood lust, surrounding a long haired beauty in black.
Who is she? An adulteress, I'm guessing, and I just know they're going to stone her.
And what about the dead guy those glaring men carry on their shoulders, who is he?
The husband, wronged, who threw himself into the sea, I'll wager. Their brother.
Anyway, they eventually cut her throat despite brave Zorba's attempt to defend her.
Because a village has it's way of doing things, and you just don't want to buck that.

I'm going out to eat another bad meal prepared by distracted teenagers.
Not much of the food here has been much good, and I'm considering not eating
at all next month. So on to the Desert Flower, where I had such a good time a month ago.
But it's not there this time, that good time, it's fucking comedy night.
How much comedy can one small high desert town sustain?
I'm not feeling it at all, the people start looking to me like Zorba's psychotic villagers,
and I know it's time to go.

Out in the street
someone makes a big noise gunning his engine.
Wow, that car's almost flying -
for about two blocks.

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Early to Bed

Take a young intelligent beautiful girl
who has been punched and choked unconscious
for a couple of years by the father of her child and put
her on antipsychotic medication because she's afraid to leave
the house, hears voices at night telling her ugly things, and has
terrifying nightmares.

This fucking place: you can't get a therapist to save your life,
but you can buy an AR-15 quick as you please.

I'm skipping the comedy show down at the hotel tonight.

And invisible Jesus, he is all around being trusted in and hoped upon,
but he won't pick up the fucking phone.

And the hotel bar is full of men, oil field stereotypes - the only woman
is the bartender, and she's even more sick of looking at you assholes
than I am.

So buy the suicidal guy a little kitty litter to grease the skids,
and pick up the check for the young couple sitting close in
the Mexican place, stroking each other's hands,
as high as colorful kites
on love.

Slow down, the greeter told me twice today, it ain't worth it.

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

I Wanted to Write Something Nicer

Maybe I'm getting sick,
the vicarious hopelessness of the man
and the conclusion that we came to,
the fracked fields and the poison water
injected back into the ground -
twice, in different towns, I heard women
say "oil man" today with what sounded
to me like desire, you can't help the economics
of desire, it's just nature, or programming, or fuck it,
and I can't help wanting to set fire to it all.
Leaving the restaurant where I was caught
muttering to myself more than once, I interrupted
a scavenging stray cat making his rounds,
we were going in the same direction so I threw
a bacon cheddar summer sausage out
the window of the van, and he
probably felt assaulted

Monday, December 16, 2019

Dumb

One of those questions came up today
you don't want to have to try to answer
because every possible response is
absolutely unsatisfactory.

Keep going, you want to say,
maybe it will change
because
everything is always changing.

But it's
his pain,
and not
yours.

Sunday, December 15, 2019

87 North

Woke up a little late and chose North as the direction of the day - up RT 87 to Lubbock.

Lamesa is where the fracked gas and oil fields give way to cotton fields and life returns to the land.

I met a Cambodian-American couple with a donut and kolache business there.

Sam told me about Cambodia, about how the same crooked people have held power for 40 years, about how China is building a military base there, about the exodus of Cambodians who have learned other ways of thinking and want to return to Cambodia and change things.

He's counting on Donald Trump to protect them from the Chinese.
Obama's face was too nice, Sam said.
"Trump's face looks mean and ugly," said Sam, "China is afraid of him".
"Trump don't play," he said.

And I was politely smiling, shaking my head a little.
I am not so sure he's got your best interest at heart, my friend.

Lubbock was quiet on Sunday morning. I saw Buddy Holly Boulevard and two blocks of bail bonds places where it intersected Main. A freight train loading at the the cotton gyn. Empty streets. Full church parking lots.

I drove around the low houses in the subdivisions, Texas Tech, a mall overrun with Christmas shoppers from far and wide, and I had to contend with traffic as the afternoon progressed.

Just a city. And me, only a ghost. 

Saturday, December 14, 2019

Before You Get Too Proud

There's a pair of dachunds in this town,
I used to see them in the morning,
working a circuit of dumpsters.
The female was heavy with puppies.
It got a little cold, and I haven't seen them since.

Almost every time I look out a window
in this town, I see cats stalking vacant lots,
sleeping in the beds of pickups,
moving like the wild things
they've learned to be again

Many of the people who talk
to me in this town, tell me of
horrors, sickness, suffering
they've never gotten help with because
they've been left out there too.

Friday, December 13, 2019

Shallow Breathing

Solitary user on the multi use trail
All was quiet for the hour but the wind
And the drumming of quail wings
At the top of the hill
There were doves there and smaller birds
Organized into stealthy bands
Giving little away when they moved
But a noiseless flash of motion

I've been half-thinking a thought
For a couple of weeks now about
The desert out there
That great open space
And how I tried not to see
Those long running fences
Or understand that it's ultimately
All fenced in

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Regular

Thursday night at the Desert Flower
Is a very very good time, but I'm tired
After 10 hours of scrambling.

Watched the moon rise, bought some groceries,
Stopped for tacos, stayed all to myself tonight.
I'll be in my rented bed soon. 

Power

Jose walks into the bar in shorts on a cold night for West Texas. His left leg looks to be titanium.

He's got a boxer's nose, scarring on his cheekbones and forehead. The look in his eye is hard when our eyes meet. I offer to buy him a beer, but she just poured him one.

Before long he's crying, telling me the story of his legs. Apologizing for acting like a bitch.

He lost one, and the doctors who performed the amputation said he was going to lose the other one too. But an Indian doctor approached him later and whispered, "We are going to save your leg".

The first group of doctors kept on with the same negative prognosis, and the Indian doctor kept countering it, quiety but persistently. And Jose came to believe him.

Jose cried tonight to a stranger with gratitude for the doctor in San Antonio who saved his leg.

That's what health care should be able to do.

That's what I should be able to do. 

Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Friend

Exhausted by the sound of the human voice and with air travel delays, I resigned myself to the last leg of the trip to West Texas wondering how I could dissociate completely for the next hour and a half. Instead, the man beside me turned out to be open hearted, long suffering, and still full of hope and faith. Younger than me by several years, he had survived more, overcome more, and as a result, deeply understood each day of his life as a gift. He stays busy, his eyes are open, he wrings all the life he can out of each day. They aren't promised.

He understands this better than most, and as we talked about how we move forward in our lives, the airplane began to shake. The shaking escalated to sudden falling and rising. The girl in the seat behind us squealed. We two laughed quietly together - the experience of turbulence - the words we were speaking to each other put to the test. We looked out the window and saw only clouds as the plane rattled and jerked. He said life is exactly like this - turbulence and zero visibility - but we keep going forward nonetheless. Faith he called it. Determination, I said.

There is healing in the world, he tells me, God is good. Don't ever give up on yourself.

Monday, December 9, 2019

By The Time I Get To Phoenix


Oh, Magoo! You've done it again.

Always have been scatterbrained and distractable. I have a hard time staying focused. I'm someone who should make checklists, but that requires organization, motivation and routine. I do not enjoy routine. Boring. Feels like a prison cell, smells like paint.

Anyway just to keep things from getting monotonous, I got up at 2:30AM for a 6:30 AM flight, packed the few things I unpacked on Saturday morning, and was on my way. I drove the hour to the garage I park in, was happy to find a space inside, opened the back door to remove my backpack and tiny suit case and found the suitcase absent without leave. The tiny suitcase was at home, sleeping on the couch, just where I'd packed it.

This of course would cause me to miss my flight. I called the wonderful people at the airline. Someone answered the phone. He informed me that for no extra cost, I could fly stand by, but each of the three remaining flights to Dallas today were overbooked, making my chances of getting aboard skinnier than slim. He could reroute me through Phoenix though, and I'd arrive in West Texas about 8 hours later than planned, and it would cost me about 500 additional dollars.

Can't really charge the company for my mistake, so I opted to burn some frequent flyer miles. They gladly accepted fifty thousand of them. Now I am on my way to Phoenix where I will have a long lay over and likely end up drunk.

An old white guy can't have a Chinese houseboy with a braid and buck teeth today without being horrible, but someone like Charlie - who ran around with frantic devotion saving Mr. Magoo from the consequences of his own actions - would probably do me a lot of good.


Sunday, December 8, 2019

Shift

He asked me this morning what I'd do with a million dollars, and I gave it to him straight. I didn't tell him that I keep a current detailed contingency plan for any huge unplanned influx of cash that may befall me. I update it nearly daily.

He told me he'd put aside money for college, pay off the mortgages, wipe out his siblings' student loans, sock away a bit for his mom and for me, and if there was any left, put a little toward his retirement.

He also made his bed without being asked.

Saturday, December 7, 2019

Happy 70th Birthday to Mr. Tom Waits.


That's Why

First, a flight that included a Harvard Business School student with zero respect for a fellow traveler's sleep (one diagnostic indication of bad character), then transitioning to temps in the 30s and snow, then the car started without a problem after two weeks in a garage, and the tire with the bent rim still had air in it, but my driveway at 3 AM was covered by a foot and a half of snow and significantly more than that where the plow had packed it in, then while shoveling to make room for my car and to get to my bed, I thought to myself why the hell did I come back here for two stupid days?

And then early this afternoon, I saw my youngest boy looking taller as he walked out of his house. We ate a meal, he got a flu shot, I got a haircut, we swapped some stories, jokes and laughs, watched a movie and everything was right.

Friday, December 6, 2019

Before it Fades

Snapshot in my head of a tall girl in an airport
standing with her back against the wall,
she has beautiful black eyes, and when our
eyes meet she looks down but smiles big.

I walk right up to her and she puts her arms around my neck
and we kiss for days right there against that wall in the main
corridor of a very busy international airport, we were drinking
in the morning and first noticed each other from across the bar.

Some of this story is true.

Thursday, December 5, 2019

Thanks, John Wade


Flight

A coworker was annoyed because I never pick up the phone when he calls. Somehow I shut my ringer off inadvertently, so he demanded my phone and programmed the various sounds to notify me of calls, e-mails, text messages, and scheduled events. Today I sent an e-mail, and as it launched, I was surprised by the sound of the alert tone known as Note. That's the one that used to announce you. My body felt the same visceral reaction it did back then. It's been years.

What a sound that was. A symphony in a single note. 

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Scale

Two weeks in the same hotel room, the same small town. I apply the pain scale to myself and can't come up with a number. I start out thinking maybe I'm unwell, but there's no acute sadness, physical pain, happiness or anything really. A day and then another day. Riding the elevator down to the lobby, I guess I'm lucky to have these days free of anguish. They are not to be taken for granted.

You don't have to look far to understand that. The hotel bartender mops when it's slow. She's got to clean the area herself. She works another job at the state hospital during the day. She tells me about her son's friend, a kid who hung himself behind the church, over a slight from a girl he loved they suppose. The girl cried at his funeral - probably what the dead boy hoped he'd see - but in a month she had a new boyfriend, and the dead boy didn't see that either. She tells her son this story so he understands that dead is for keeps. 

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Desert Thoughts

Now I have these desert scenes in my head. Maybe I could live there, about 25 miles outside a border town, with the wind, the space, and the mountains. Maybe, over time, I'd get to know a coyote well enough to throw bones to. Maybe we'd study each other in the near distance and wonder what happened.

The sign at the entrance says this was once a Comanche crossroads. They describe the Comanches as bandits, slavers, and murderers and the Texans (the white ones I'm guessing), stretched thin by the Civil War, are quite obviously the good guys who had to endure these abuses. I wasn't there. I'm just taking a walk.

I am walking up one of the few hills in Big Spring on the paved loop trail around the state park at dusk. I come alongside another walker who slips into conversation with me as though we had been talking right along. She says her husband has been dead for a few years now. Her first boyfriend and best friend, they married in high school when she got pregnant. He quit school, got his GED, and went to work. They had almost 40 years married and happy when he died suddenly - right in front of her - of a massive heart attack. Very quietly she tells me that she felt so helpless. For a moment, I can feel that.

Sunday, December 1, 2019

Dreams and Gasoline


Toward Fort Stockton

Put fifty dollars in the tank yesterday and headed southwest with the border and the Rio Grande in mind. Back down I-20 West to Monahans and the Sand Hills National Park feeling eager to get beyond where I had already been.

The dunes were white and the wind blew strong forcing me to squint while I walked up and down watching the sand rippling in waves across. On the wind, I heard traces of children screaming and laughing. A few were sliding the steep slopes on rented saucers, the ones we used in snow where I come from. I added this to the list of things to show my own kids, something we will do together, and I will hear them laugh with the same joy as these.

And then I remember that my children are grown, or nearly so. A wind gust slaps my face with a blast of fine sand. I remember, right then, when I believed both you and I were both horses, even though I knew it wasn't really true, but believing is so much better than math.

Too much of that kind of thinking so I head for the truck, and then the two of us head for Fort Stockton.

There are oil fields all the way out there. Such a huge part of West Texas looks like a Frankenstein monster threaded and run through with pipelines, tanks, pumps, drilling rigs, flares burning off gas
and a particular nauseating subtle stench surrounds it all.

I listened to two men speculate about what happens when you pump oil and gas out of the ground. One said the cavities immediately fill again, with what substance and from what source, I don't know. The other said the cavities result in sink holes. Empty spaces just under the crust that eventually give way to a yawning abyss. I imagine this whole basin dropping underneath me while driving 80 miles an hour.

Driving past RV parks and a man camp of trailer homes arranged in long rows, I notice a place called the I Don't Care Bar and Grill. 

Friday, November 29, 2019

For All the Shit That Happens

The bar was open Thanksgiving evening so I stopped in for a drink after work. Cigars, cigar bars, cigar aficionados are of no interest to me. None. Normally I would avoid such a place.

I went in because I could see only one customer. He was a young Oklahoman with a beard and modern hairdo sipping whisky and smoking a cigar. The bar tender had been adopted and abused repeatedly. The effects of this have carried over into adult life. She said she made a stand up routine out of it which she performs at a bar just down the street.

Another young man comes in. Thirty years old, he said, and free of family commitments today because his ex-wife gets the kids on the holidays, cause he has full custody of them on account of the high school student boyfriend she's keeping company with these days. He's hired a private eye to watch them and provide a report on how many times he goes in or comes out of the house. In and out, in and out, again and again and again.

He talks about a lot of things, but it always comes back around to her 18 year old high school lover. He talks about the AR-15 he's got in his truck right now. He carries. He's licensed to carry. He's carrying now. Everybody he works with in tractor parts sales carries too. It's the Wild West out here, he says.

He's got a 100 round drum magazine for the AR-15 and a special trigger that discharges a round both when you squeeze it and when you release it, doubling the rifle's rate of fire. He carries a shotgun in his truck too.

He's learning about fine cigars lately, appreciating them. He's been smoking them once a week for about 3 months now. He's cultivating an interest, a pass time, something else to do and to think about.

"I almost pulled on that high school sumbitch the other day because he charged my Dad who has a legal disability".

"Everyone carries around here. You have to, because of all the shit that happens".

Thursday, November 28, 2019

A Quarter Mile That Way

The dilapidated duplexes at the top of the hill at first glance appear abandoned with plywood where the windows should be. Three semi-wild dogs move swiftly across the semi-arid landscape. They have the shape of domestic dogs, but they're darker somehow and they move in quick, coordinated lethality like a predawn patrol avoiding detection. The duplexes contain a few people squalidly. They also contain drugs and one or two small children.

Meanwhile, you are walking through the hotel parking lot in running shoes without socks, a fleece jacket with nothing underneath, and shorts with a button fly and tie set-up designed for sleeping. You don't venture out in pajamas normally, so this feels transgressive. Outlaw. You wish your nuts felt heavier.

A flock of geese fly over in the low grey sky. They don't really honk like the Canada Geese up North. It's a different sound - strange and foreign, if you like. Exotic, if your prefer. Mindset.

You are looking across the interstate at the TA truck stop. They'll be serving Thanksgiving dinner today if no one else is. Plenty of trucks in the lot. You aren't the only one, but you do slide into self pity effortlessly.

At Stripes, Marcel is dancing at the register.

You say, "Thanks for being here today". 

He smiles, takes out an earbud, "I'm sorry. Wha'd you say, sir?

You say it again, and he tells you it means time and a half for him. You place a plastic packaged raspberry danish on the counter and ask him for two dollars in quarters, if he can spare them from the drawer.

He tells you "not a problem, sir",  counts back your change from the danish with particular alacrity, breaks open a role of quarters on the edge of the counter like a master chef cracking an egg, counts you out two dollars for the laundry, and wishes you Happy Thanksgiving with a wide smile.

You walk back to the hotel, not wearing any underwear, listening to exotic birds cross a low hanging, West Texas sky thinking about what people mean when they say they're grateful.

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Wednesday, 3:30 AM

She was right. I can't sleep thinking about the three cases I'll be presenting before a judge in a few hours. I'll just have to go in with what I have. Wing it.

Yesterday, a hell of a wind came up in the afternoon turning the sky brown with dust. A dust storm I guess, not a real haboob, but something to see nonetheless.

Making friends with bartenders around town. It won't take very long to run out of new places. There are feral cats here around the outside of the hotel. People know the hotel by its location, behind the Starbucks, which must still be relatively new here.

An oil boom has raised the cost of living in the area and brought in a lot of men from outside. Douche bags, she calls them, who claim to have a lot of money but don't tip that way. 

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Generational

He was loud and an asshole, frankly, making threats and talking shit, being lewd toward the women. People started discreetly moving out of the way. That is, all except for the older man with the long grey beard wearing a tee shirt that read, "I Am A Wrecking Ball".

He walked calmly over and sat directly across from the younger, larger, louder man. His shoulders were relaxed, and there seemed to be just the hint of a grin under that beard. 

Monday, November 25, 2019

Pecos

Yesterday, a drive to Pecos. Sunny day and up to 80 degrees, down I-20 through Stanton, Midland, Odessa and out into the Permian Basin filthy rich in petroleum, natural gas and potassium. I passed Sandy Hills State Park and marked it as somewhere to return to, saw a sign for the Texas Pecos Trail and thought that's something I need to look into, saw signs for Kermit, New Mexico, El Paso, and had the urge to keep going. The Davis Mountains came into view on the southern horizon. Small dead coyotes along the shoulders of the highway mingled with ribbons of truck tires and plastic hung up in the scrub. The closer we got to Pecos, the more trash there was along the roadsides. It's all pump jacks, tanks, pipes. tracks, flares, drilling rigs, trucks, man camps - oil boom.

The Pecos River is what I wanted to see. I glimpsed it crawling under the highway, hardly more than a stream, winding it's way through the oil fields. A personal injury lawyer had taken out a billboard bragging about a 10 million dollar settlement he'd won for a client blown up in an oil field explosion.

Pecos was quiet on Sunday noon. A desert town, again with the trash and old cars and pieces of things strewn all around. Rodeo grounds - home of the first ever rodeo - and real tacos at the gas station/market for $1.20. Found a Mexican seafood place very far from the sea and giggled to myself about them probably serving Pecos perch. Stopped in for fish tacos and a Chelada. Made a friend from Cleveland who came down here after being laid off from her Assistant Principal's position. Said she always wanted to drive a big rig. She lives in one of the man camps. She told me she just keeps to herself and works 4 weeks on and 2 weeks off. She's working on her Ph.D on line at night. She was dressed up in big gold hoop earrings and necklace in that dark place with it's Mexican futbol on the TV and short Mexican men under baseball caps all packed into the picnic table seating.


Saturday, November 23, 2019

Come On Now

You don't come to a place for a short stay and start judging everybody.

It's not cool to be a Massachusetts liberal suggesting a better way of life to West Texans after being in their homeland for two and a half days.

People wear cowboy hats here, and they mean it. It's not some ironic hipster affectation. It's the real deal.

I saw my first Trump hat during the lunch rush at the Whataburger in town today. The place was packed with high school kids on a field trip wearing their blue embroidered Future Farmers of America jackets. The man was probably 80 years old and he knew a lot of the older people in the restaurant. There were Mexican men breaking for lunch, and Mexican women eating with their children. The old man in the hat looked at me on his way to a table. I avoided his eyes feeling hot embarrassment on his behalf. He wasn't obnoxious. He's a community elder. What does Trump mean to him?

Saturday evening at the H.E.B. is a cluster fuck with everyone rushing the place in oversized trucks and SUVs in a small parking lot made for standard sized cars. It's like 50 to 100 aircraft carriers pulling into port at the same time. I managed to maneuver my own battleship into a space out on one of the edges, miraculously without hitting anything.

On my way out of the store, I heard a ruckus and saw several cars and trucks stopped at the entry/exit to the lot. A helmetless Harley Davidson rider had been knocked down, or dumped his bike trying to dodge an interloping pickup. I walked up close to make sure the man wasn't pinned under the bike. Thankfully, he was on his feet and apparently unhurt.

Originally, I'd thought I'd go out for a beer or two. After all, it's my first Saturday night in a new town, but after the H.E.B.,  a quiet night in the hotel room sounded just right.

Ay Que Bueno!

She said to her mother, "pork sausage, turkey sausage..." with a big smile,  as happy as a little girl on Christmas morning.

I had just come in from a short shuffle through the frosty morning and wasn't feeling too good.

Just yesterday, I was looking at the same breakfast items complaining internally about the poverty of choices.

Douche bag.

Friday, November 22, 2019

Reunion In Absentia

Didn't know where we knew each other from
But we both double took that last time we saw
One another in mutual darkness trying to remember
Who the other one was out there in the world of light.

It claimed you soon after that and when I heard I remembered
Who you were under the sun way back then so seeing you
Now is a little chilling, honestly, you reminding me here
That I am next.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Arrival

Landed in the flat brown sunshine of Midland-Odessa and made my way to the compact rental car I'd reserved a few days ago. It turns out to be a Chevy Silverado Super Cab. Oil country. Not a lot of EVs or hybrids around here.

A drive to Big Spring across the dry, brown, plain listening to Pat Boone's 50's show on satellite radio. Oil derricks, refineries (I think), railroad transport operations, possible drilling stations intermingled with cotton fields and, out along the far horizons, giant wind turbines lined up for miles.

I had the lunch special at a misplaced Cajun seafood place - a pound of boiled shrimp, potato, and corn. The Mexican waitress asked me what I wanted to drink, and I asked for a Lone Star.

"My favorite kind of beer", she giggled. A lovely flash of white teeth and black eyes. This is her family's place, I thought.  She opened the beer for me, asked me if I wanted the cap.

Unpacked my stuff at the hotel. Let the shower run for awhile to take some of the wrinkles out of my shirts. Opened the curtain to a fourth floor view of an old water tower, a gutted building with its twisted metal roof rusting in long strips on the ground. Flat and brown all the way out to the hospital at the base of the mountain where I'll report for work in the morning.

Out on my own to the Spanish Inn for a Tex Mex dinner. Another family run place, but this one has deep roots here. A patron tells one of the older waitresses he saw her daughter the other day out at her new job. She didn't want to work at the restaurant anymore apparently. They're taking about the younger generation of females - how they do their make up. The man asks what this thing is with girls shaving off their eyebrows and replacing them with a thick black line. He says they look like they have burnt french fries across their foreheads.

Outside, a cold dusty mist has blown in from somewhere. Feels as though the temperature has dropped 20 degrees since I landed. People are complaining about it. There's something about this I am experiencing for the first time.

I have a headache so stop to buy a bottle of water at a convenience store trying to get used to the extra length of the pickup while parking.

A woman under a hood walks by me singing, jittery, sizing me up as I stand there trying to select a drink. After my transaction, I see her in the parking lot with the hood of her SUV raised. She appears to be trying to pour water into the radiator. She is rocking back and forth, putting her eye down close to the radiator's open mouth. Her car looks stuffed with a one bedroom's worth of belongings. She is spilling water, noticing me, smiling, pointing in recognition from the store just a minute ago, whipping her head around. Meth.

I'll be here for two weeks or more.

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Big Lake

Traveling again to Texas, but somewhere new this time, and for several weeks. It'll be good to go again.

Monday, November 18, 2019

Gonzales

True, I'm distractible and frequently lack follow through. I spend a lot of my energy doing what characters did in the old cartoons when they're getting ready to take off - sort of pull back, run madly in place in a blur while the sound effects man goes nuts, then launch like a shot in a puff of smoke. That's what I'm doing now instead of getting shit done. 

Friday, November 15, 2019

Where I've Been

Since the last time, November's come in and stripped the trees bare, made the skies grey, sent the temperatures down to as low as ten degrees.

I went to Texas, came back again, bought heating oil (before it ran out this time) and paid the bills.

I spent some time with each of the kids, sang karaoke, made a friend who treated me right and made me grateful.

I stood in front of muchisimas statues of Nuestra Señora de Santa Muerte in that Dallas bazaar the tornado just barely missed, watched the first snow flakes fall here at the highest point between the Berkshires and the East Coast, endured a couple of tedious and uncomfortable flights, and gathered the shiny frequent flyer miles feeling like a sucker with a sore ass all the while.

I talked to a girl armed with a pink can of mace through the car window, and later, to some other people about another girl who shattered on the sidewalk.

Friday, October 25, 2019

Not yet

Sex? More or less I guess, but I still can't sleep beside anyone else. 

Boyish

The boy is sitting still over there hoping someone will recognize him and tell him who he is.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Like This

She showed him himself, inside, something like a map of his circulatory system.  His arteries, veins, capillaries carrying blood full of oxygen and nutrients through his tense musculature.

She showed him herself, in the form of a serpent, her body the same shape as his arteries. She entered his system and, as she moved through his blood vessels, his tension was released.

When she'd passed all the way through, he felt relaxed for the first time in memory. 

Saturday, October 19, 2019

Personal Unconscious

Jung said there were little dreams
and big dreams

the little ones come from the personal unconscious
mind

and the big dreams come from the cosmic unconscious
mind - the archetypal, universal stuff

well, I dreamed of being in the compound of one of my
punk rock idols this morning

he was like Richie Rich, guiding a small group tour,
showing off his boxing ring, tennis courts, etc.

i was pretty stiff and probably afraid of saying
something dumb

anyway, that was a little dream.

after my shower this morning something inside me said,
"life is love and loss, if you have the courage"

well, do you?

Friday, October 18, 2019

Little Dream

Returning now to drowsiness
and silence here, the leaves dropping faster,
little interest in keeping company with others.

That's just now. No need to call it anything or generalize it.

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Fall Spring

I didn't bathe in the spring
with the other naked people
where I'd seen that frog floating
motionless but attentive
the morning after the first frost.

Saturday, October 12, 2019

This Day

The yellow wood
peak foliage time
a day with my boy
not so young now
neither one

Friday, October 4, 2019

Good bed

Back in my own bed this morning, which I do not feel like leaving, but I've got to buy a sleeping bag and rain gear for this weekend in Maine. It's colder than I'd like, and wet, but there it is. 

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

There's got to be a little rain

The cough I inherited from my daughter on the drive down is getting worse. Today was spent driving in a foul mood that never broke. I don't know what to attribute it to. Drove up through the bone dry hills and mountains of Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia. Suffered some sort of loss of meaning. What am I doing out here? Depressed by snack cakes and energy drinks , CBD and adult bookstores, CWD and  AR-15s , Jesus and personal injury lawyers.

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Thing Of The Past


She was a very nice lady - sweet, polite, went out of her way to make me feel comfortable. She said racism here ended in the 1950s or 60s. She said "integration or whatever it's called" is a thing of the past. I think she meant segregation.


She said, now blacks down here want government handouts just for being who they are. The more kids they have, the more money they make. If one of them happens to die while left in the backseat of a sweltering car, they just make another one.


She said something has to be done, those goddamn Democrats just want to fight everybody.

Driving North

Leaving New Orleans this morning for Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
I want to see the place as a backdrop and imagine her in the frame.

Monday, September 30, 2019

If you have a night in New Orleans

Skip Bourbon Street. Find Frenchmen Street. Tip the bands. Dance.
Mix liquors and expect to suffer for it. Drink water, lots of water.
Hot beignets and coffee will help to ease the pain, whenever you wake up.
The Original Muffaletta at Central Grocery is a fine sandwich indeed.

Sunday, September 29, 2019

Motion and distance


Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, and now, Louisiana.


Daughter delivered safely. Both of us better understood and understanding. She starts anew.


Tonight I'm on my own in New Orleans.

Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Yes

Up in a few hours to drive with my young adult daughter the 1,700 miles to Texas in her small high- mileage Toyota, Starla Ray.


The road.


Yes. 

Why I Don't Clean The House

That letter again, found in a drawer, two pages torn from a pad, a vital organ torn from its housing, too bad we didn't make it to lilac season you said, but we did, and more than once, it's just the road wasn't straight.

The closeness was surreal at times, you said - and I felt it too - but it doesn't last you said, as I'm typing this more than five years later.


Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Loom

So now the night is longer than the day
I am remembering the last two or three vague winters
during which hibernation was my primary coping skill
letting time elapse, immobilized, I'd like not to repeat
that.

Monday, September 23, 2019

Will You Welcome Children?

Australian dust storms and red skied Indonesia,
   all the parched carcasess of wild horses at the
      baked clay no-water-hole. Talk about a let down.
         We have disappointed you, to say the least. 

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Grim

For the past several years I've been visited frequently by a troubling thought fragment trying to surface. I never allow it to develop very far. It has to do with what happens when climate change has gone past the tipping point, and it becomes clear to all that we've fucked it up beyond repair (humans). It's too late  fully realized.

I see masses of sensitive people - the wrong people - dying in large groups by ritual suicide in an attempt to ease Nature's burden.

I don't know how to dissuade them. I don't have anything better to offer them.

Stay and fight.
Probably yet another war metaphor isn't going to help much though.

Stay and try.
This is trying, they say through earnest tears.

Stay and start fresh. Let's stop a minute and think about what that could mean. 

Tuesday, September 17, 2019

I Will Love You From Afar

When the cold wind rises
and cuts me, making my eyes run,
and it will not relent, despite my
demonstration of suffering, it is
incapable of mercy, like rising
hurricane waters toward an abandoned
dog left chained to a stake,
I will wonder if you are doing so...

In one take, it's like a little capsule of warmth
dissolving deep in my guts, releasing just enough
love to perceive and to keep me stumbling
forward...

And in the second take, the water lifts me steadily,
I am choking beneath the tightening collar, at the end
of the rigid chain, swimming in a frantic circle, with
those words in my ear - mocking me...

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Gig

The moonlight shone upon his high white sneakers,
and I was driving my first shift of an hour and a half.

The city was in the midst of becoming it's new self,
and I was half my grandfather.

The places he showed me are of the city's old self
and no longer here to show anymore.

Saturday, September 14, 2019

Boy Harsher


Stranger

Walking across the bridge, over the canal, through crisp Autumn air just in time to see the great yellow moon rise above an unfamiliar part of town, I felt excitement and a hunger to walk the dark shadowy streets all night. 

When I lived here years ago, those same shadows, bridges, mills and canals, depleted me, starved me, tried to kill me.

Now they are romantic,  as though seen through the eyes of a stranger.

Friday, September 13, 2019

In another state, close to the shore

More evidence of Fall
Chilly morning
House temp in the low 50s

Memories arrive during this season
Visiting ghosts
A neat Spartan apartment
Unable to sleep or relax
Your patience with me
The way your body shivered
Soon to make your big move
All alone
Brave, open,  and in motion

Saturday, September 7, 2019

Seasonality

Yesterday I went for a walk during an extended dusk ushered in by the far outer bands of what had been Dorian, slayer of the Bahamas.

The air was cool and I noticed the process of yellow, orange, red and brown. The acorns were fatter than two weeks before when I walked this same route through hot green steam. Wild grapes developing, not yet fragrant, I want to transplant them. A sad iconic seasonal scent. Like lilacs in Spring.

Three goats bleated at me from a high platform with what seemed like urgency. Was it the approaching storm? Had their caretaker fallen face down in the grass, dead, while engaged in the daily routine of feeding them? Maybe they were heckling me, but I'll tell you, it seemed like a plea or a warning.

It's good to walk. It's good to see no one while walking.

The changing sky, the changing season, the changing everything we do not perceive.

At home, I felt tempted to revisit the music I used to play for she and I. Not you and I. All third person and past tense now. Let's be reasonable.

That slowness, soft light and shadows, it all happened in my body. Less than ten seconds. I should never go there again.

The yellow jackets have created a hole at least a foot across in my backyard. They are working furiously. What do they know collectively? How deep is that hole?

Friday, September 6, 2019

Scene

In the dream, I am reaching up through bare, thin branches
to touch the hand of a small child held aloft by her mother
who I do not know. The child and I smile at each other, it
feels familiar, but we are strangers, and that becomes clear
to me as we separate in a rain soaked parking lot and I am left
holding an overcoat missing the black chevrons of my lowly
rank on its collar.

Thursday, September 5, 2019

Wise



Aphorism found on a hallway blackboard in a psychiatric hospital:

"Live Free Or Eating Disorder"

Saturday, August 24, 2019

Norwottuck

Arrived at the top of the small mountain
like a winded, dented can of soup.

The pilgrim must, before all else,
be humble. 

Saturday, August 17, 2019

Sturgeon Moon Walk

Set out on an hour walk at 9:30.
Humid night, mostly quiet, suburban to rural continuum.
Walking the main road without light is probably a bad idea, though I've done so for years.
Detour into the subdivisions hearing air conditioners.
Television (or whatever it's called these days) glowing through the windows.
Glimpses of the surreal- enormous images on wide screens.
Some light their entire perimeter.
My presence alerts a small house dog inside.
It barks, just doing its job.

I like the darkness better. The bat that swoops my head to get a better reading. The full moon rising silver over the tree tops - a sturgeon moon, from the Algonquin, named when the rhythms of things probably made more sense.

I am sweating, moving.

Cotton underwear and t-shirt are not the best idea,
but I'm only out for an hour, just getting started,
not bearing a load.

I seem to see possibility.
Am I actually looking forward?

Friday, August 16, 2019

April

In my head, a long walk in a far away place seems like just the thing. I've got some ideas brewing. Finally feeling good enough to look forward and conceive of a goal. 

Thursday, August 8, 2019

Tonight

She feels anxious
Depressed
Exhausted
In pain
Unstable

She wants a
Psychiatric evaluation
A diagnosis
Answers
Clarity

You're a living person
On a dying planet
In rapidly changing times
Alive
Stay like that

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Flickering

What does that flame upon your head symbolize?
Your suffering? The suffering of others?

The Holy Spirit?

That drive inside to place yourself
in the scene at every major and minor
last stand?

Monday, July 29, 2019

Jude

He's been away or
I've been out of contact,
which is more likely.

Maybe he's dead,
decomposing in some
storm drain, or
maybe that's just the smell of
my diminished returns.

Anyhow, we need you now,
Captain of the last ditch,
If never we did before,
we need you now.

Friday, July 26, 2019

I Can't Say Anymore

A day of inaction
thinking of the asteroid that nearly missed
and the climate reports rolling in from the North
and my kids growing, trying to find their ways

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

July 10, 2019

At 6am I woke to the alarm and a natural urge to urinate following a good night's sleep with the fan going and the slider open.

Walking past the screen and looking out, I found myself a few feet from a doe and her fawn who were both staring at me. We watched each other for a couple of minutes like that, and I talked quietly to them while I peed, but the sound of the trickle startled the fawn who made a little hop behind his/her mom. They faded slowly into the green leaves.

Good morning I said to the Snake Plant and the Bamboo perched closed to the window in the other room. New sprouts are breaking through in the Snake Plant's three inch pot. I think I'll need to repot it soon. 

There's still enough food for the hummingbirds, but I should probably change it out tomorrow because it's been pretty hot. I put two feeders up this year, and the pair in residence opt for the more private one. I think it's the same male -that single guy who was here last year - but he's remarried. I don't see them as much as I did that first year.  I guess they're a little more shy or maybe I'm a little less approachable.

Driving around the corner on my way to work, four or five baby cottontail rabbits scramble like the Keystone Cops to get out of the road.

Tonight the fireflies welcomed me home sparking just enough to let me know they are many and that I don't really live alone at all.

Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Not That Way

I don't even want to look at it. Cut the ropes and let it fall into the deep canyon below. The whole thing dangles from its tether, down the length of the opposite wall, obscured forever in fog.

Let's get out of here.

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Hind

But what I do have is tension
and plenty of it
Relax they always say
Oh okay
Why didn't I think of that?
Now I've gone and cracked my molars
All the way down to the roots
Shoulda, woulda, coulda

Sunday, April 28, 2019

Complimentary Drinks and Heavy Appetizers

Last night I went into Boston
and drove by the event center
where she had one of her shows.
Doing so stirred aging feelings,
mostly dread.

An appreciation event put on by
the company I sometimes work for
counseling people in the wake of something awful
held in the Grand Alcove of the Ritz-Carlton.
I polished my shoes and wore a tie that matched my shirt.

A nice spread of serve-yourself-appetizers and two drink tickets,
my hand trembling while cutting the gorgonzola. I don't really network.
But soon I was talking with a lady I'd never seen before, work mostly -
people and jobs we knew in common, the brokenness of things.
She was smart, fiery and beautiful.

She joked early on that I must have started working at 15,
suggesting that I didn't look as old as I am, and then again
later, in another joke, said I wasn't too hard on the eyes.
She's married, mostly happily, with three boys. I said I'd walk
her to her parking garage after which was just ten feet feet away.

We laughed, shook hands, did not exchange numbers,
and now I cannot even remember her name.
But she allowed me to forget the event and other things too
for awhile. I left that place feeling like I almost belonged,
well nourished and mildly intoxicated.

Thursday, April 25, 2019

Ouachita

I noticed quick nervous cats along the river and the kids playing in the neighborhood on the other side. I noticed how high the brown water is and looked down into swirling eddies from the bridge. It's after 3 am now, and I'm listening to the thunder rolling through. What do I need?

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Room 307

Started out with a good omen, although I have this on nobody's authority, three deer raised their heads in my headlights grazing in a foggy field at 3:45 am. The rest of the trip was segmented motion. Drive and park in the garage where I then wait for the shuttle, through airport security with no waiting or incidents, a flight to Dallas, short layover then a connecting flight to Monroe on which I was seated beside one of many Bubba-sized individuals. Northeastern Louisiana at about 75 degrees with a nice breeze is not a bad place to be in April. Late lunch of fried catfish, shrimp butter sauce, gumbo, biscuit, hush puppies and mac and cheese, a long nap, a trip downtown in the evening to watch the high Ouachita flowing under the bridge and people eating crawfish all around the town. 

Saturday, April 13, 2019

Projection

Boredom, one-too-many beers, and a not very subtle but effective marketing ploy brought me back to the internet dating site. I had a "like" waiting for me. When I checked to see who, I saw her screen name, or on line dating handle, or whatever you call those names people use to reveal or conceal themselves to unknown, potentially fantastic/horrific others. It was a one-liner that expressed a I've-been-hurt-but-I'm-resolved-to-be-hopeful sentiment like thebestisyettocome.

I read, takethispukebib. Not even close to the name she had probably carefully chosen for herself, and I'm quite sure it's not the idea she was trying to put across, but it's what I saw. 

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Youngstown, Ohio

She said she bought the house she's living in last year for nine thousand dollars cash. She bought the one next to it on a short term mortgage for eleven thousand and rented it out. She said there's nothing happening here and she won't be staying long. You can't really live here, she said.

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Bonvoy

The smell in this room reminds me of a Middlesex county office park I used to patrol while working as a security guard in college. It was a foreign smell. It made imagining the people who worked there - what they did, how they lived - seem distant and unreachable. A reminder of what I thought of as the prison inside. I'm not so stark about it now, maybe, but how they live still seems distant.

Monday, April 1, 2019

Out like a lamb

Woke into a soft Spring morning to pack for the trip tempted to leave my sweatshirt behind. Landed in Pittsburgh a few hours later to snow flurries. Drove to Youngstown through a squall and settled into the hotel. The smell of the room made me lonely. Eating dinner at the bar didn't help with that - men watching college basketball, maybe the game before the final four, I don't know for sure. 

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Louisiana, Monday Afternoon

Soul food lunch across the bridge from the airport. One of the chefs is singing. The server tells me to enjoy the show. I ask her if he's singing because the food tastes so good, or does his singing make it taste that way. That's the mystery, she says, Creole soul.

I'm in a heavenly coma driving East toward Monroe. Green grass medians, a certain delicate tree flowering in light purple, roadside shrines accompanied by American flags, sometimes Confederate. The radio station out of Shreveport is good - local R&B and Southern Soul. Feeling pretty good. Double check it, and I still am.

Years ago on a Greyhound in Oklahoma, a girl got on dressed a lot like a Dallas Cowboys' Cheerleader - white short-shorts, white cowboy boots and hat. We became acquainted on the ride, got a room together in Flagstaff where we showered separately and napped together and nothing else.

She told me about her dream, the one the bus was taking her closer to, to move to San Diego and become a pilot. Later, on a postcard, she told me not to keep my light under a bushel.

That light flickered a little bit today, I think, driving Rt 20 across Louisiana, but there was no-one there to see.

Saturday, March 9, 2019

Alpha

Oh yeah?
Then I'll slam that fuckin' door shut
Every time you knock or scratch or
Come within the maximum effective range
Of the outer frontiers of my lawn

And another thing, that little bastard living
Off the compost in my kitchen has been served
No more peaceful coexistence, motherfuckers,
We tried that harmonious shit, and now there are
Five of your little bodies lined up on the counter.

Thursday, March 7, 2019

There's A Door Needs Closing

Can you accept me as I am?
Mother and son
Wine and weed
Cable channels and video games
A good school system
In a gritty town
With a lot of history
Respite, I guess
A little mercy

Friday, March 1, 2019

FB

I went seeking
and when you seek you often find
and when you find you sometimes bleed

And now I'm bleeding, waiting for my heart
to find its way back to normal or at least something
I can live with

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Again

In the glove compartment, I found a card tucked inside a red envelope with your inscription written in second language cursive. You hoped we'd get through our hard times soon. I heard your voice for a moment, saw your face, felt my love, and again had to wonder why we are apart - you off in your world, me here in mine not answering the phone, which almost never rings, listening to a mouse rummaging through the kitchen.

Friday, February 15, 2019

Valentine

We talked in my dream last night
For the first time since I met you
Why now?

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

301

a long night of mostly sleeplessness 
littered with anxious thoughts, grinding teeth,
ridiculous dreams

at least the rain has stopped 
this hotel room
quiet as a tomb

Sunday, January 20, 2019

It's A Suck Day For Chickadees

It's a suck day for chickadees
   and for people who live outside
      and for you, maybe, all alone inside

I'm watching them through my window
   after a night of snow, followed now by rain
      and ice, that bastard, turning foul weather into cruel

Clearing the feeders of crusted snow, adding sunflower seeds
   I can hear them tweeting up in the bare trees
      I think to offer them food out of the palm of my hand
         Half realize the vanity and stop

I thought about the roosting shelter seen in a catalogue and not purchased
   And about the people living in tents under the Houston overpasses I walked by
      And those little smirking shits gathered around that Native elder drumming and
          Singing for their healing, all alone

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Koro

A hotel along the highway and the accompanying sound of cars and trucks in motion. Misty in the parking lot, neither warm or cold exactly. This town is downwind from a paper mill, but only outsiders smell it. Wondered if they'd rob me outside the convenience store, those kids getting high and harassing the check out girl with the big scar on her forehead. Remembered the video of the guy on K2 freaking out in the hospital. I've developed a beer belly all of a sudden, or I'm just getting around to noticing. Song on the rental car radio makes me feel remote, even from my memories. If I had more energy, maybe I'd panic about all that's disappearing.

Monday, January 14, 2019

Country Torta

He came with his family from Guadalajara where he'd been police. Now he runs a restaurant with his wife and children in Arkansas. This is their second one. He says he thinks they burned the first one down. 

Party Guy

A small box of red wine and a bag of powdered sugar donuts from CVS. Dinner was too-salty-tacos which didn't agree with me. A night in a Northeast Texas hotel and a dream of a party where my friends were merely acquaintances and the younger-than-I ones gradually coupled up and moved off leaving me staring into the embers of dawn. 

Saturday, January 12, 2019

Born Into The Waves


Seasonably Cold

I know now it was joy brought the birds and
Not you

I know it's coincidence there are no birds
Here now

Despite the fact that it's zero degrees and
Harsh conditions

I put the bowl of the broken bird bath beside the grave of
Your dog

I added corn, seeds and peanuts to it this morning and
Squirrels came

I like to think of your dog chasing them without malice and
You smiling


Friday, January 11, 2019

January

Contenting myself maybe
With paying for a young woman's beer
In secret because the boy she lives with
Was hanging out on their couch
With the girl he is cheating with

I don't want anything
Like that
This silence, this bed
My self
Not so bad

Thursday, January 3, 2019

Feast and fast

A squirrel's been casing my house the last few days
and I've been thinking of the birds again so I bought food
to put out for both parties. Something came
and ate the two dozen eggs I composted after being in my
refrigerator for at least a year. I emptied the cabinets of oats and
grits and instant potatoes from another time period, nearly five
years ago, and put that outside too.
One long ass coma to have been in.