Millions of diamonds and the clipper ships out on the water tonight. All of the dreams of a nation, or at least a nation of two, hanging in the balance belief gun blasts and random expletives in foreign languages. Appeals to heaven fall on deaf ears. God has not been here for too long. Yet we still pray, and pray, and ask him to deliver us from this. In the morning the sun rises high and the men on the TV promise something better as they tell of something worse. Children with guns, our innocents, take aim at our hearts and lives. It all was not supposed to be this way. It was all supposed to be a field day. It was supposed to be kids playing soccer. Poor kids, but playful. The ingrown toenail feels as if it fills my boot tonight. I want more than this continent can offer, and it can offer more than my home. I felt love once, but I gave it up for passion. The heat rises. The desert swells. It is the dry season and I will only think of you on occasion as I try to sleep...
Trying to fight off the sleep that seems to only come when not wanted and then never again. The stomach tonight will begin to eat everything including the actor, starting from the inside. What movie will it be now, now that the whole library is in the piece of credit-card-sized hardware. You could not make this, up, the lineup looks like The Man from Laramie, Say Anything, Bright Future, Husbands and Wives, Ulysses, Moby Dick, White Noise (book not movie), a self-portrait of John Irving done in cursive, the most recent issue of Reader’s Digest. And there is the man painting pictures of Jesus, and Mary, and the disciples, and Calvary and the Cross, and the dream finds me in the church, then in the hotel and then running from the man with gun that wants to steal my stories, but they can’t be stolen. “They are my stories, you fucker!” I give him all of the paper, but there is encryption and invisible ink, and he talks like Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy, “G’head! G’head!” and Jon Voight is dreamy but not so much as Jimmy Stewart, and I play all of the parts, especially Hoffman and the Hunchback of Notre Dame, in this dream of this movie of these movies in my dreams, I play all of the parts except Jimmy Stewart, I could never hope to be that...
Tonight I’ll take the street out here, left then right, and then left again and down by that place where we once sort of lived together, and then on out and east and past the all-girls school and the place where you sell your hands for presents, and even further past the place that serves the succulent rotisserie chickens and hard-crusted mac and cheese, and the place where I took the things I didn’t want after I met you and had to make hard decisions. Things got easier and then harder themselves, the a period of simplicity, then constant headache. This headache drones behind my eyes such that I really cannot even see the horizon much these days. I try to smile through it all. I invest in vision plans. I continue further out past the nondescript pub that I drank non-alcoholic ales during one of my attempts to curb my burgeoning alcoholism, and then further past the place where we could sometime turn off for birthday lobsters, and before that the place where appliances go to die or be resurrected, and then eventually onto the piece of curving four-land and then the two-lane branch and further onto the Hwy. 33, where always lying on the horizon is Mexico and it’s promise of ramshackled multi-colored structures and relief from the headaches in a more arid climate. The possibility to live among new others, or possibly completely alone, in a little ventilated place with an obstructed view of the sea, where all things are possible, and then I will forget, or pretend to forget, until the road crews finish the...
It’s his last time in the church, having had sullied his faith in a scandal as big as the lectern standing erect at that end of the nave. This is the last time he will kneel, the last time he will pray, the last time he will put it all in another’s hands. He spends awhile saying his goodbye, and rises to his feet with the squeak of shoe leather, he pivots militarily and descends from the heights of the apse to the depths of the exit, where he will turn once again, and cross himself one last time, before descending fully, and then he will just live, without worship or prayer, never to set foot or knee in that church, or any other, until the end of his...
Does it not matter that I thought I had a vision that would die before 35? I hope it’s not true and Owen knew his foolheartedly. I always wanted more than that. I always wanted to get to bed earlier. I always wanted to be a baseball superstar. It doesn’t matter much anymore. I strapped my dreams to a sinking ship. I will figure my way out of this, but I have, at last, lost the last of my innocence. I knew what the cost was, but it was worth risking… and still is, I guess. It’s not that it doesn’t hurt, because it does. It’s not that I cannot live without you, or you, or you. I can live. It’s just that once I knew love like I knew the way my hands write my name, and now my name is strange to me, but I know love, and I know you, and I will follow and love and break and enter and crush my heart into a pulp. Itwasalwaysyouitwasalwaysyouitwasalwaysyouitwas alwaysyouitwasalwaysyouitwasalwaysyou, and now I have to figure out a different...
“or no we won’t. Instead tomorrow begins a long weekend in which I will be twisted in to knots, or things you cannot understand, and I will think of the ways in which Steve nailed my testicles to the wall today, and the ways in which he still loves you, and in the ways in which I keep F-ing up all over the place. I need to find my way into that bed back there with all of the knotted up bed sheets and the moisture with this moisturous air all about, and try to put myself out of misery for the night and to wake up in the morning with a new deposit in my bank account, and to finally realize that I am happy for my friends who have carried my ass this week that I began with only $11 in my account. Thanks for the dinners, camaraderie, joy and conversation. I guess at the end of the day that is all you need, and not a late night phone call. We all have something to do tomorrow, and some of us don’t get to choose when we get to do it.” — As William was speaking...
Why Tuesday? When my brain has been so settled as of late, and the organ grinder has stopped, and the ladies on the corner are making up names for the people that pass by. Why Tuesday? When it could be Wednesday and we could now be half way there, whatever ‘there’ means. Why Tuesday? When my heart has tried to rejoice so much lately with hope and the weeds don’t grow so quickly. Why Tuesday? When tomorrow would be a better time and I could figure a way for you and me to rhyme. Why Tuesday? When, on a Saturday, we could spend the day eating ice cream and, very possibly, ‘making love?’ Why Tuesday? When any other day would do and today is Tuesday, and so, Why...
Saint Louis is dancing its hair around a chair in the square. I am asking the questions that will cause a pause in the conversation. Does it bother that you stand in a line longer than the other? If I come from over the top it is because of love or loneliness, rather. How heavy is your lid? I wanted this to not be the USSR. Come up to the front of the queue, I have always thought the answer was...
I got a pack of hooks from my uncle when he was in town right before he had to ship back to Fort Bragg, NC and he told be I would catch the largest fish in the pond down the road if I would just fish with these hooks, that I would not even need bait and that the fish would come out simply laying on the the hook, not really hooked by it, and that the fish would talk and tell stories, and I could tell my friends all of the stories that the fish told me, and that I would be much more popular, because I got these hooks and would catch this fish. His one warning was that I must throw the fish back once I have caught it and he has told me the story, otherwise bad luck would come to me and mom and dad, and that our fields would burn, and the sky would fall all over daddy’s land. I reckon I will send that fish back quickly after he tells me the little story. I reckon I want peace upon the land here, and I will throw it back. I imagine he may have more than one story to tell, and I’ve got a big bag of...
“By and by,” I say, and she understands. She asks what I am doing for the Saturday night, and I say I thought I might spend some time working things out; a little time howling at the moon. She tells me I sound like a big old bear when I do that. We stand in the front yard looking at the first few stars that have appeared on this clear evening. “By and by,” I think, and I wonder what it really means. She tells me she felt love once, but it was some two or three years back and that is all gone now. Tomorrow they are calling for rain and I know it will. The clouds can be sensed in the clarity of the stars tonight. If the earth will be destroyed by fire the next time, I don’t want any part of it. A flood would be much nicer, could wash all of the scum off the street like in “Taxi Driver.” I think I still love her, know what that is to feel it like I do in my heart, or something like that. She questions, writes me off. I can tell in her eyes it hasn’t been the same for some time now. I guess she’s been leaving since the first day she really came. What’s this love that I try to define? She thinks she knows and I do to, and one of us feels it and the other doesn’t, but I don’t know if we could even begin to wrap words around it, if words are even possible. I push down two...
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