the plowman's gone

2009-01-26T11:31:00.000-08:00

the touch of the apples left wax on your hands

2009-01-23T07:19:00.000-08:00

before it got cold at the waterfront

2009-01-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

absentee landlord

2009-01-15T10:25:00.000-08:00

the butcher

2009-01-13T07:09:00.000-08:00

maggie

2009-01-12T09:04:00.000-08:00

he struck the pelican with the rock, soundly

2009-01-11T19:42:00.000-08:00

the ambassador at parliment

2009-01-10T11:05:00.000-08:00

after an ice cream at wall drug, we made for the badlands

2009-01-09T12:55:00.000-08:00

the sailor and the sirens

2009-01-08T08:35:00.000-08:00

he played a song by Willie Nelson, previously unrecorded, about a strangler, that night

2009-01-06T07:53:00.000-08:00

County fair just north of Charleston, SC. Nov. 2008

2009-01-05T08:36:00.000-08:00

2008-05-06T21:32:00.000-07:00

Mr. Hepburn's Cinderblock Castle

2008-05-06T18:53:00.000-07:00

There is a sign posted in the airport on Eleuthera. just outside the snack window. the sign reads, "I dont wish to hear nobody's problems AND I dont wish to know nobody's business" and the quote is attributed below, to Hastings (Bugs) Peter Moss. it is written in simple block letters in bright green marker on water color paper. Hastings, or Bugs, stands behind the counter; a single, dirty salt and pepper dreadlock (curiously well-groomed) hangs well below his thighs. he smiles, drunk, and swigs again off his mountain dew.

This pumpkin-hued airport, which, at first, was a pleasant enough postponement of hatred and impatience.
Mr. Hepburn is the supervisor, in particular, for our airline, one of the three represented at this airport.
This is no longer a joke.

Our plane had almost left the ground. I was buckled in, and in one of the rear seats. Both propellors whipped into action, people had begun to chat; one woman with the Glamour photo shoot had closed her eyes; I was happy to rid myself of the resorts and the fat germans and the old man with the jowled codpiece, and the wall-eyed waitress who asked me each morning if I was ready for my "expresso". Bless her heart, though, and I mean.
And then the whine of the engines that underscored the propellors just. quit. and collectively, we cocked our heads.
The tarmac was as hot as we'd left it.

Hastings (Bugs) Peter Moss changed his pants this morning, beyond the window of the snack bar, and behind the fridge only after the he tried it in the open of that little kitchen, and caused quite a stir from those ladies in regards to the sight of his swinging willy, those ladies who waited and wiped at their brows in that purgatorious lobby.

I'd sat with the pilot and the co-pilot at the junkaroo bar, on the gigantic concrete patio fenced in by cinderblocks. we looked across at the tarmac. at the plane. the co-pilot assured me we'd be in the air tonight and dont i worry, but just keep drinking like HE wanted to. told me about his escapade in cuba a couple years back. about how when he and his buddies arrived he asked for B girls, fresh meat, you know, and they got 16, 17 year olds. Not whores, nice girls, you know, who liked to have fun, he told me.
the pilot deferred with his eyes, tapped the ash of his cigarette into the eye of the industrial wooden spool we sat around.
and the co-pilot bragged about how much he paid the man at the club, and the pool stayed open for him and the nice girls who just wanted to have fun, and how they slept on the beach, and then he listed with his fingers the meals, and about the linen curtains, and how his buddy married one of those nice girls.
And that pilot, ginger haired, with ears like oyster shells, shook his head, and did not blow out his smoke, but let it drift, instead.
The night had crept on and their doubt increased and I went in to the bar, inside, to buy another. two local girls sat at the bar; they were plastered on posters on the bar walls in bikinis, advertising the local beer. they leered at me to show resemblance, introduced themselves and told me how much THEY loved the new york subway system, and I politely raised my beer and crossed the airport, the tarmac, where a mechanic worked under a bright ten-k light, a mechanic flown in from miami so many hours later, the same mechanic who would not discover the problem with that second motor until after we'd been tucked mysteriously into a hotel by the airline, without checking in, after a meal of conch fritters and french fries.

The little man with hair like coiled bedsprings woke us early, before the light; we followed those path-side lanterns to the fifteen passenger van, this morning, as they rushed us to the airport, again, to answer our prayers and faith in the same head-scratching mechanic.
In the night, he'd given up, faith be damned.

And dear Mr. Hepburn, who always speaks in a low tremble, like fingertips on the heel of a drum, that sonofabitch, we'll he doesnt show up until late in the morning, where he promptly ushers us onto the tarmac, beyond security and out of his ear shot, and away from our whining self-importance.
On that tarmac, where we bake, until a coup is staged and we fight our way across the street to a breakfast table. I roll up my sleeves and work on my tan.
we jump at the sight of any plane that approaches. all that land are cessnas, and we consider bloody marys.

Though Hastings (Bugs) Peter Moss might take offense, willy-in-the-wind as he is, i've here, indeed recounted my problems and my own business.

2008-01-02T09:24:00.000-08:00

royal oak, MI. - lynchburg, OH. - wheeling, WV. what we saw there; a list.

2007-12-29T09:31:00.000-08:00

on christmas eve, the frenchmen said he didnt know the prayers in english. my cousin told him, from the drivers seat, as we pulled up to that church a block from the Greektown Casino, that my brother and i would be happy to put to the prayers to him in english. he winked, and we all had a chuckle to spite our ignorance.
the priest wore a toupee visible from my perch three pews from the back. he quoted from the beloved holiday movie, "it's a great life" and there were murmurs. he did not correct himself.
detroit, that haunted wasteland, only good now for passing through, the low end of the barometer of better things.
i left there under heavy fog.

lynchburg, after cincinatti chili - chili over spagetti noodles, topped by shredded cheddar cheese, eat your heart out bob evans, white castle and cracker barrel - and the hot tub. i wore baseball shorts, borrowed from the adolescent girl cousin of JB. both of us in too-small shorts. budweiser. the water was 104 degrees. he didnt last; out we got, on the pleather couch i slept.

morn of the 28th: geese on a frozen plain of ice. fields of corn, cut to the stalk. due north on I-70, east of columbus, there was a billboard. five commandments were written there. the one about coveting, and four others. i turned to JB and said i thought there were ten and were these the most important, really? not half a mile later came another billboard with the subsequent five.

the army surplus store off main st in wheeling west virginia, just before a slice of pizza at dicarlos famous. we asked a woman wearing matching sweatpants and shirt, purple; asked after a good cheap bite of food. she told us the soup kitchen, where she was going; she smacked her lips and sashayed, just a little. said it was tasty AND free; we declined. found dicarlos famous, instead, there, at the confluence of the ohio and the wheeling, rivers. the cashier lady gave JB pepperoni despite his vegetarian inclinations towards cheese pizza.
we rolled a log cut in the shape of a buoy or cannonball, we argued, into the river there. the milky lime-hued river culled it away.

in pennsylvania, finally, we peeked ground under sheath of snow.

also, the man in the orange vest who cut antlers from a deer brained by a Kenworth, last night.

the concrete siding of silos broken away, bare to the rebar.

aluminum siding on a double-wide, reinforcement for snows and cold yet to come, courtesy of "heartland Express of iowa city, iowa".

but new york, again, and werent we thankful. the new year in a city that reinvents itself, molts daily.

2007-11-15T12:50:00.000-08:00

before the snow, fiercely

2007-11-15T12:31:00.000-08:00

We came by this place in the Adirondack night. The moon had been with us in plattesburgh and now as we overshot lake placid into Elizabethtown for groceries, and kept on wrongly, to find ourselves bookended by low cliffs like the craggy beards of so many miners.
My pal tapped the dome light and the moon made an irish exit.
We were lost. Retreated backwards until we found 73, wound south. Noshed on turkey sandwiches over-mapled in syrup until we came through Keene, past the Olympic high jump training facility, steel girders and concrete pillars naked without snow.
He read the map and made the car dark again and told me it was at the peak, our turnoff.
That place came and went, no turnoff in sight. The rain came and went, like flour tossed before the kneading of bread.
But we came about this place, through the trees, over the one-lane bridge housed with aluminum that roared under new rain, past the lodge. There was a notice posted warning of bears, of illegality of alcohol in camp, and of a temporary closure, though payment in the morning was accepted. Cash or credit.
The lean-to was three walls, a floor, pitched roof; it faced the firepit, a dense thicket of alders and by the heavy stroke of wind come through them, we werent far from the cliffs we'd seen from our lost highway.
The rain came harder as we tossed our bedding into a heap on the floor of the structure, and I built a fire. I stood over it, held out the folds of my jacket that my back might bear the brunt of the rain, and the flames might catch.
They did.
I finished my beer, felt the burn in my throat. Lifted the lid of another and drank that, too.
My friend feared for bears. He bit his lip and pulled a sheepskin around his ears. Asked, could they smell the beer in our bottles? I wagged my finger and told him he'd better finish it, then. He kept his back to the wall, tucked under a mound of blankets, away from the fire.
We put our bottles face-down in the pit with the coals and the burning logs and the last drops hissed out and it was dry. Under gust of wind and flog of rain, those bottles would shatter in the night.
But we would not clean the shards for many hours, when we woke under breath of light snow, destined for cheap coffee with the taste of burnt olives and snake shit and we would cook our soup by the river on that bluff where the wind spread our fire in the trees and but for the heaving gift of snow might have cooked a cavern in those adirondacks on that morning on the first day of november.

2007-09-22T12:35:00.000-07:00

ser(e)pent

2007-09-22T12:33:00.000-07:00

Before we could break for the dock, the sprinklers burst. My back to the cedar shingles, I shimmied to the redbrick steps that led to the water, now dark save for a spat of light thrown by the moon’s wane. They came behind me and we found the planks of the dock beneath us. We walked to the end. Plastic-capped clusters of pilings lined the dock and we made bets about the first man to climb one, and could he dive without an ostrich-head plunge into the shallow water below.
We stripped. The sprinklers sputtered on the lawn above us, and the house, backlit by headlights, loomed ominous. I turned my back to it, jumped greedily into the water. It was not cold and my toes dug into the sand under there. I came up. Blew my nose into the water. There was an eruption to my left, and the tall man with red hair and a blue-bird on each forearm came to the surface. I yelped in surprise and we laughed, swam from each other, past the pilings.
We climbed out, averted our eyes, dove off the low dock. It was this that made me alive. And showed me how I’m not, often. I want pain. Or pleasure. Really I just want, because I’m all out of small talk. Ambivalence owns me. I make such great efforts to hide any eagerness I might feel that I do not know what I was once eager for.
So I fall, again, into the water. I fear for sharks swept into the bay with the tide, which clings now, to the high white water mark on the pilings. Under the moon I make out, barely, the birds that hover the fishnets strung between pilings across the bay. They swoop. Beaks open. Then, beaks full. Then, perched again on those pilings, wrestling to swallow.
Like the snake in the seagrass the other day. The gardener snake, how had only the toads leg in it’s mouth, when we found it. How the toad struggled and flopped. How the snake unhinged its jaw. Deliberately, without angst or pause, pulled and there was no enmity between them. The toad, he puffed up, and with flat black eyes, unimpressed, gave in to his view of the sand and reeds and the sloppy grins of us as we suckled excitement.
When we looked again, just a webbed foot in that wide, wide mouth.

So I gave myself up to the mouth of the sea, in the dark under the moon.

(sic)

2007-08-16T20:00:00.000-07:00

Three male models, and I, on South Beach, Miami Florida. The shoot was over, and while we waited for our car service, we'd taken to the water. A quick dip we had, and walked up the beach. The sand was dry and soft and hot.

(Verbatim:)

'Wanna get me some before I go home to the old lady,' said the veteran model.
'Fat girls,' he said, 'you can push on their tummies and they fart. They always want it.'
'What about the pidgeons of Milan?' asked the young model with a heavy brow that hid his eyes.
'Oh yeah, they were nuts,' said Veteran, 'I’d give my lil bro the bb gun, he’d shoot four of em, somebody’d call the cops, and I’d be like, it’s my ten year old brother, and the cops would leave em alone.' He shook his head.
'But the pidgeons of Milan,' he said.
We came to the gate at the hotel. Rinsed our feet at the spigot.
'Oh yeah,' said the old one, 'Like, I saw a bunch of em, crowded around this dead one. they were fucking it.'

'Huh?'

The old one nodded, 'Yeah, they were fucking it. All of em, like a gangbang. One after the other, fucking it. And it was dead.'
The youngest model, and a booger stretched from his nostril to his lip, said, 'Sounds like you were getting a little amused!'

They could not think of the word he meant. We carried on, up the steps, where a nodding valet stood by our luggage.
The old model shrugged, 'And they have nipples. Pidgeons got little titties. Really, look it up.'

(these guys are real.)

2007-08-12T18:31:00.000-07:00

2007-07-29T13:42:00.000-07:00

from popham beach, south

2007-07-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

I watched the low-lying clouds envelop the islands off the shore. The lighthouse on the outermost island grew vague, and was left to sound a horn every few minutes. A light drizzle fell around me. Made the sand taut, dappled it with moisture. I walked to one of the allotted campfire pits, and under the bare soles of my feet, the calloused cover of sand gave way, revealed a buttery interior until the next sheet of rain hardened that, too.
Put my backpack and twine-tied firewood among the logs below the bank, below the reedy field above that led to the many winnebagos, tents, my car, highway 209 and through those trees, over the swamps, a few short miles, lay the shipping town of Bath. Popped my umbrella, stuck it in the sand between my back and the wood. Dug out the old black coals, the sand from the previous fire.
Took a piece of wood, then a handful of brush and crumpled-up newspaper, jammed that against the wood. Took a match, bent it around the back of the book, struck it, bent it back, let all the matches catch. Held my hand above the flame, for the rain. The brush caught. The paper caught.
I stood a minute, let it smoke and crackle. Put the next log on. It smarted, despite the rain. I hopped back and forth, danced a little. there was no one left on the beach. Just the fishing poles left by the man, who left the beach as I set foot, who asked would I chase away that rain away with fire, and I told him, I'd sure try. And he watched the poles now, jammed in the sand, from his Winnebago, watched the line run slack into lazy, rain-dappled waves.

And so I’d escaped. Some six-hundred miles I’d driven for this. Up the Hudson. That first night, the north beach of Lake George. Past the batting cages and the miniature golf-course and the town of flip-flops slapping the pavement with so much middle-class entitlement. Past this, into the trees, over the fire where I perched my can of soup that it might boil. Had a beer and a cigarette, saw patterns in that canopy of arms perpetually stretching, above. And then the quiet reigned no more, but the m-80s, roman candles, and the whoop and cackle of so many boys with sideways perched baseball hats. And from the other shore, a mile into that fog, formed when the sun went low, there was a boom like cannon fire; the clouds lit up. The fireflies, too, they joined in as a sulfurous cloud passed from my campsite to the next.

Three hundred miles south, the flag is still half-mast in the city for that cop. The routine traffic stop turned gun battle. His clean-shaven face on half a million newspapers, and he just couldn’t hang on.
To escape: in the city of 14 million people, we’re able to presume not a person out there has woes like ours, not even the man pissing in/out of the doors of the subway, the mute screamer from that train so long ago, the man who fell along the tracks, the second MTA worker to go under in a week. To perish, hang on down there, all tunnels with no light. it was the trains that caused my hunger for the north, the wild.
For that late night ferry from Portland, Maine round the islands there, within gawking distance:

And the trees, on the first island, lit up with red globes of christmas bulbs hung high from every branch, above that boathouse, linen-draped tables, and so many dishes scraped of leftovers, stacked high and glistening.

And the oil tanker that, by the weight of its hull, could not pull closer than a mile to the locks, and so pumped its cargo to smaller vessels. A terrific, monstrous, thing; mute waves lapped it, and the lights were modest, but there was a deftness, a certainty of power.

And the kids, at each dock. Lanky, sultry-eyed teens at each dock. They sat in, on golf carts. They set lobster traps on end, plywood on top, set plastic cups, poured beers. Popped ping-pong balls the length of the table, giggled. Deferred their eyes, brushed thighs against the knuckles of boys leaned against their makeshift tables.

And my rental car, as the ferry docked. My rental car parked on a street run dark under fickle streetlight. How I brushed my teeth, spit in the gutter, curled in the backseat, let my breath fog the windows, found sleep.
It was for this I left, took my escape. Nobody loves the New York August. Not david berkowitz, the mets, or the melting callogen smiles on so many west side crones.

2007-07-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

2007-05-03T18:01:00.000-07:00

that business about the unwanted moustache

2007-05-03T17:10:00.000-07:00

i once asked a famous playwright, did he have a pen?
there was a cigar hung casually between his thumb and index finger. he tapped it then, with a deliberate tautness, and ash hissed to the pavement, as my place on the sidewalk, and that of the girl, this girl who i was walking with, also impeded his march. she was drunk, and so was i.
we stalked NoLIta for a felt-tipped pen, that we might draw moustaches on every poster of that girl who was supposed to be some multi-lingual musical prodigy, incorporated, and we just wanted to draw some twirly squiggles there, above her smug pixie lips. maybe even a unibrow or two.
the posters lined the protective plywood that kept the passersbys safe from falling hammers, nails, frogs, migrant workers, and sheetrock, on that southeast corner of the streets of prince and lafayette in the lower east side of the city of new york and also the state of new york, 10012.
so we rushed to the bodega before, in our stupor, our artistic possession could subside.
and it was there, on the sidewalk, below the green plastic awning of the bodega, those languid carnations to our right, how they flopped lazily in their buckets, that we came upon the playwright.
that writer of gritty western tragedies, star of stage and screen, who was by any means a handsome man; cautious eyes, cropped but sensitive grey hair, and a fine-lined jaw spritzed with ranch-hand stubble.
but a severity came over him as we blocked his path. he balked at our attention; we stood our ground, and swayed, grinning.
and when he drew that cigar away from his body, and tapped the ash like a bow strung tightly, said, impatiently annunciating each syllable, "no, i do not have a pen," there was no mistake about the weight in his words. a gold mine, there, and something fell between us. we were still, and forgot the posters. just the pungent, horny smell of the carnations and his cigar and the clarity of that november air, after the first freeze.
and past us he walked; the smoke lingered on my tongue, bitterly, and punched at my eyes like an onion cut.
the bodega had pens, a variety of colors. we chose black; we drew moustaches that night. and sometimes, devil horns.

2007-04-01T10:24:00.000-07:00

charlatans, all

2007-04-01T10:21:00.000-07:00

At that awful jazz bar. The façade is creamsicle orange. We finish our hot dogs, push open the door.
The place is three car lengths deep. The exposed brick behind the bar is whitewashed, the walls are spotted with blue and orange halogens. The cover is ten dollars. The music doesn’t float, it perches, swoops, and punctuates. I’ll have the pale ale, I say. Dubbba-dipdipdip-paaaaa! Say the drums. That’s six dollars, says the duck-lipped bartender in the loose fitting blouse and tweed skirt. Dowwpikapikatumtumtum, says the bass.

The clientele are a murky bunch:

The two blondes, whom we overhear are Williamsburg residents, talk over the music, shriek for attention. No He Didn’t! says the big girl, throws the overshoulder eye at my friend.

The older couple, teeth stained with cabernet, nuzzle like lovebirds newly found; he runs his hand through a spotty beard, adjusts his cokebottle glasses, whispers first in one, then the other ear. She laughs, slaps his thigh.

Down the bar, closer to the musicians, lie a forgettable bunch of thirtysomethings. All of them ringless, all alone on a Saturday night. The square jaw Indian girl forgets to suck in her tummy, and to compensate stands to show her male counterpart the benefit of her hypothetical sit-ups. But this bar is small, and when you stand, raise your voice, burp, clean your ear, attention is drawn. And so we all criticize the merits of her bellybutton.

The lipless, sourmouthed man in the unbuttoned cardigan slouches out to smoke; we knock knees to make space. Once outside, cigarette perched between his lips, he knocks the window for the bartender’s attention. When he gets no response, I catch his eye and stand to help. The bartender smiles as the smoker simply waves and I sit without purpose.

The jazzmen in the back are bathed in green light. The entrance to the bathroom is directly behind them, through a cheap plywood door. The bassist twitches, eyes closed, fingers dancing. He stands, involuntarily, to pluck away; he is a big man, and his hair brushes against the low ceiling. The drummer is obscured, and at every opportunity, introduces the keyboardist, the bassist, and himself, Marty Pullman, with a flourish of drumsticks and a wink at the black girls, newly entered, who look lost and embarrassed by his attention.

The smoker from before ducks in and we tuck our knees that he might cross. He touches my chest, on the buttons of my vest and tells me thanks. I smile, look to my buddy. He rolls his eyes for me.

Finally, there is the woman opposite the bar, two tables away from us, her back against the wall. There are shopping bags on either side of her. Olive skin, cheeks deflated and gravity-bound, her stare petrified to the door behind me. but there is movement in her face; her lip trembles, her eyes fill. With deliberate unselfconsciousness, she finishes her wine. The waiter trips over her after his cigarette and she asks for a cup of coffee, clears her throat.

My buddy and I have a table against the wall, just inside the door that the shifty, dreadlocked pudge keeps leaving open as he goes out to smoke.
We sip our beers tentatively, afraid that we might contract whatever these slow-pitch Saturday night sob stories are afflicted by. I lean in, tell him in a low, patronizing tone that I never want to get old, and he agrees, quickly, heartily, coldly.
The loneliness here is not final, nor is it self-imposed. It is not sad, yet. But we leave anyhow, beers tucked in our pockets.
We finish them by the swing sets on fifth and first. East of Stone Park café, away from the Williamsburg girls who have tailed us from the bar, whose sandpaper voices irk me from a block away. We make our escape up seventh, my buddy tells me to go long, swigs away his beer, tosses the bottle. It slips through my hands, the neck snaps on the pavement. He tells me I’d make a terrible dog and we flip our collars for the cold, cold breeze, turn the corner quietly. I yell for those hipster scum to Go Back To Billyburg, and those girls go silent, for a minute. A smoke-voiced Fuck You carries easily in the breeze, and the girls fade towards fourth, towards the F train. The streetlight above us times out, shuts off.
I finish my beer, hang it from a rowhouse wrought-iron fence. My buddy salutes and walks towards Prospect park. I walk south on sixth, hands stuffed deep in my pockets.

2007-03-16T14:24:00.000-07:00

mauls and wedges

2007-03-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

The sky opened for us, last week. But the vineyard was too wet. The northwest corner was immersed, and algae had begun to form there. I’d sunk past my ankles in the muck as I tightened the trellis wires.
So we took to the beach, scavenging for posts seven foot tall, the breadth of your fist. After the snows, after the storms, after twenty inches of rain in no less than three months, the beaches are stacked heavy with trees battered to an appropriate size. And so we went there.

It’s three years older than me, said the older man, of the truck, as we three crammed into the cab. The youngest son sat bitch, legs pinched together, that he might avoid the girth necessary for the stick shift to operate. I sat at the window, pressed my forehead to the glass, watched the moisture in my breath collect, impair my view.
The truck was a flatbed. And built in 1954, from the tab stuck to the ashtray.
The older man pressed the starter, a knob to the immediate right of the gas pedal, and she gunned to life.
He chose to avoid the driveway; the latest storm had rendered four Willows, shredded their yellowy remains across the stones of the road, a wood pile, and whatever amassed under that broad, plastic tarp. He drove instead, into the field, and tucked between the northeast corner of the vineyard and the eight-foot deer fence that ran parallel to the road.
We took the back roads. The older man told us that she aint exactly legal, and took us deep where the trees reach so high on both sides. Where the trees twine together up there, like fingers church-and-steepled.
We passed the homes of friends; counted four divorces in five miles of road.
And at the intersection at the bottom of a hill, from the top of which the older man held the brakes, we found the third son.
He’d parked his car in the trees on the northbound side of the road. He sat cross-legged on the hood. Slowly, he drew his legs from beneath him, hopped to the pavement. The older man fixated his eyes on the rearview mirror, cursed the chance of a car coming over that hill.
The third son hopped onto the flatbed. And when the older man gave no sign of contradicting this, the youngest, to my left, saw the opportunity. He squeezed out as I lowered my body, tucked my head against my shoulder, and he too found his place on the flatbed, against the cab.
Three miles further and we left the paved road. For dirt, potholes, and a glimpse, through the tightly-threaded stony-barked Doug Firs, of the beach. The boys back there stood on the flatbed, gripped at the cab, ducked under branches. I stuck my head out the window and the breeze parted my hair, long and dark now, with streaks of grey, and I whooped to the boys and they whooped right back.
We left the trees behind then, as the road broke into the open. High bluffs to the left of us; a broad yellow field to the right of us, more bluffs below that, and the water. The grasses were matted, rotted and darkening. The snow had crushed the life there, and gravity was not forgiving.
We tore from the road, found our way in that flat grass. When he reached the bluffs, he parked parallel, and I looked out the window, down the bank.
He told me this is the last time we’d collect from here. The old woman who owned it, she was gone, and she’d left it to the university.
I told him great and he grimaced. Told me the university would turn around and sell it, and it would subdivide, three parcels at the least.
We got out. He pointed, there, a house, in those trees, a house, not to mention they’d flatten the existing one, rebuild from that foundation, but bigger.
The third son, spiteful as he thought of this, mentioned the bluffs and how high they were and they would never build there.
Again, the older man grimaced, said they’d make a road. Blow it up. He turned his back on us, took two splitting mauls, six wedges, passed them out. Then, the chainsaw and a tank of gas.
We found the trail. The bank was made of clay, and we descended with little difficulty. Tossed the mauls and the wedges to the rocks below, and climbed the last twelve feet with a rope tied to an Oceanspray.
The older man told us he wanted forty-five of em, the posts. Check the insides, he said. Watch for rot, he said.
I took a maul and three wedges. The third son, likewise. To the older man went the chainsaw. The youngest, he took to hauling the logs up the bank, to the truck.
The wind was weak, at the beach below the bluffs, and quickly, I broke a sweat. Removed my sweater. We worked in silence with just the slap of the waves around us.
I split one Cedar post and the smell of a spicy cider reached up gently. I split another and the salty, clammy rot of the wetlands lashed out. When I stopped my chopping, mopped my brow, and asked the third brother, did he have a girl yet, he just smiled, ran his hand through his thinning hair, foreshadowed by the porcelin scalp of the older man, and the waves chided, lapped the toes of my boots, and I split another round.

2007-02-10T19:51:00.000-08:00

but i will miss the hamburger skirmish

2007-02-10T19:29:00.000-08:00

My view out the window of Best Western, room 253:
Concrete. A winter-strangled birch across the lot. Dead grass spitting up through the pavement. That sparkling purple American sedan which never leaves the Waffle House parking lot. West of Monkhouse Drive lies Airport Casino, which obscures my view of the Avis Rent-A-Car, the Hampton Inn, the airport. Power lines and storage sheds complete the clutter. And only a stones throw away, a Waffle House and a duel gas station/sandwich shop.

On our day off we pass the time in Samuel L. Jackson’s escalade. The rental company in Shreveport has only one champagne colored escalade, and we have to share it with Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson. The scene we use it for: actor Ray McKinnon takes a shot to the head, sprays blood all over the interior. We spend hours cleaning it, to varying success, and the felt-like interior is blanched pink. We hope Sam wont mind.
Jeremy takes her 0-60 with his foot pressed to the floor, lays a track of black strips on Louisiana’s highway five just east of Stonewall. We cut north around the lake, shuffle out the boardwalk that leers over the swamp, over the garbage that peers up from that murky water.
And as Valentine’s Day approaches, Shreveport and I ready ourselves to part, perhaps for the last time. Oh, the moments we’ve shared that I’ll never miss:

1.) Fried barbecued chicken.
2.) Pneumonia.
3.) The Couch In Room 253, The Best Western Richmond Suites, Shreveport LA, 71109. I wanted the Spud Webb Model, but they gave me the Mugsy Bogues Version. Sleeping on a couch that size—for a month—is about as comfortable as spooning a chainsaw.
4.) The Hash Browns at Waffle House. With tomatoes, onions, ham. The term ‘Round the Fleet’, here applies. This refers to the british navy phrase for flogging a man in front of the entire crew of ships, usually to death.
5.) Tom Sizemore’s story about the Wizinator. About when he took his urine test in front of the sheriff, and after completion, the fake dick came off in his hands. Precious.
6.) Biscuits.
7.) Styrofoam containers.
8.) People fat for lack of ambition, fat for abundance of fried, barbecued chicken, jalapeno poppers and TAB.
9.) The downtown casinos and every ten-gallon hat within, every menthol cigarette pinched between every dimpled sad-sacked finger and the sallow, jaundiced eyes of the backwoods pawns of this Sportsman’s Paradise.
That I will not miss.

(bonus) But the flea market where I got my sunglasses? And for a deal, could have bought My Awakening: A Path To Racial Understanding, By David Duke, AND gotten a free Ban The NAACP bumper sticker. That place? Oh, right. Wont miss that either.

2006-12-31T10:22:00.000-08:00

but i would miss these things:

2006-12-17T17:01:00.000-08:00

*when the bar is closed, and the beer rises in my throat and i grasp for cigarettes i'll regret, to ride in a towncar. to cross the brooklyn bridge, where from the city lights sparkle and pop like bacon fat burned on high. how that towncar bumps along and i slide across the pleather and try to read the name of the driver as he talks on his earpiece and i think hes talking to himself in some far off language. but maybe instead he speaks to his wife, and she waits for the papers to bring her stateside, from jordan, pakistan, haiti, zimbabwe, iran.
*the girl who, at the flea market, amidst a saturday morning symphony of sparkling useless broaches, pendants, necklaces, airforce uniforms, cabinets, broken sunglasses, old brownie cameras, and tooth-rotten old men who wither away in threadbare lawn chairs, sings. she sings through her braces, her rapunzel-length red hair, her knee length celtic-cross embroidered cloak. like joan baez, bonnie raitt or tammy wynette, even, unfettered by her self-conscious or the sidelong goof-eyed stares drawn by the bustling doubters around her.
*or the young psychic, the single mother who sits on her stoop and calls for customers. the bell on her door reads, Ring For Psychic! but why solicit, if she really KNOWS? or how about being single, raising her kid? did she see that coming? and that paint on her nails, removed not by acetone, but instead, by time, by hot water, by nervous scratching.
*or the busboy, his hair cut ambiguously short by the Suck-&-Cut Trimmer, splayed against the wall as he slouches against that handtruck, cigarette dangling from his lips, mummified by that stained old apron, as the sun reaches down behind staten island, the tugboats behind him gone blue and lightless.
*the barrel-chested man with the flattop haircut. and his pal, with the cueball head. how they lean against the opened tailgate of his black chevy truck on 7th & 21st. how they watch the sky and i watch the cages at their feet, and the flung open doors of the carefully built and delicate wooden cages, and when i turn and look at the sky with them, i see the pidgeons, sixty of them or more. how they flex against the hazy blue sky of the last day of this year. the men chuckle, excited. each time the pidgeons fall from the sky the men move to the cages and laugh as the flock of birds, ever coy, surge in an upward wave. the sun shows on their bellies as their wings beat the sky.
and i walk to the bodega for bacon.

2006-11-18T23:44:00.000-08:00

2006-10-07T15:01:00.000-07:00

After the harvest, after the departure, before the arrival

2006-10-07T14:11:00.000-07:00

thoughts rendered by the smoke lounge at mccarran int'l:
the endless dings and pops of the slot machines in the b-terminal. the occasional hiss of a successful slot i have not heard.
can't tell the ash of my cigarette from the dandruff round my collar, down the backwards stitch of my inside-out tee shirt.
the thin, miniature gambler, his long strides, assured plastic grin, stalks in for a match.
this marvelous toothache of a town.
there is no beauty here.
like a strainer with no holes, the bile at the surface, here.
her makeup, her tired heavy eyes are no match for the grim, florescent lights. from the immense, circular snow-hued pillar in the middle of this room, this perpetual terminal, there extends 25 panels, varying lengths, of harsh unfeeling light. each panel points in directions we might hope to travel, hope to leave this glossy hole.
what would captain cook find here? no cannibals certainly, as the only fights here are the insufferable odds of the slot machine, which serve as the same odds he would face on the great white-capped mystery he took head on. This place would render him dead in a day.
we are fat by every desire nourished, and surely our enemy wouldnt keep our jawbones as the tahitians did, wouldnt post them on his marae, his temple, but for the shame of such a sad-sacked saddle-bagged foe.
that the first tahitians who met the West thought us goblins, they were right, and gods who saw from the back of our heads, wrong; but that we row facing backwards, pressing ahead blindly, our faith in the man in the back of the boat, of that they were right.
our ingenuity and our curiousity will undo us. first, by boat, our pale ancestors, sick of rain and rock, they longed for lush and moist and fertile stuffs, and by sea power, found that.
then the wright bros took us farther, left less to mystery.
now, only faithful ignorance leads us anywhere but the despair of nothing to discover by impending complacency, and a bigger belly.

but have fun, they say. lighten up, they say. quit smoking, cigarettes make you depressed. quit worrying, your dandruff will go away. get a job, find your niche, or forever relegate yourself to the wanderings of a bottle rocket with no guide stick. prone to burn out mid-air, and like icarus, it's not the climb so much as the fall that hurts.

the boarding call comes for my chicago connection. then, my detroit flight. but finally, to the volvo that takes me to the toledo funeral. to the thunderheads like sinuous fat cut from the bone; how they greet me there with rain so thick i squint for unblinking bloodshot taillights until the clouds bath wet ohio cornfields with the unreserved yellow of the naked sun, and my cynicism is silenced.

2006-09-15T22:39:00.000-07:00

The Body Politic of a Thumb War

2006-09-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

(excerpt from my journal, in the recent 18 days i spent on a 24' gaff rig ketch, The Tern.)
Day 2

...we're now camped on Quadra Island. on a remote northeasterly corner. it was sunny today, but windless. between turns at the oars, we hopped naked off the gunwhale, cannonballed everybody in the boat best we could. passed fish farms to which we exuberantly gave Thumbs Down.
today i discovered: on boats, i'm a rube. though raised (in)consistently on small sailboats, i've accumulated only the following boat terms:
*Tholpin: (noun) a 9" pin that fits through a hole in the rail, and serves as an oarlock.
*Gromit: (noun) a circular piece of rope that attaches the oar to the tholpin.
*Mizzon mast: (noun) the aft mast.
*Main mast: come on.
*Jib: (noun) the small sail attached to the main mast, which, in good wind, distends like a pregnant woman's belly.
*Sheet: (noun, verb) the line by which you control either the mizzon, main or jib sails. ex: "Sheet in the jib, swab! She's luffing."
*Shitwhack: (noun) a large amount. ex: "Hey everybody, I boiled up a shitwhack of bean flakes for dinner!" (syn. 'Jesus Big')

Decisions on the boat are made by consensus. three thumbs: Thumbs Up, Thumbs Sideways, Thumbs Down. Yes, Blows with the Wind, and Veto.
Every day there are proposals; which passage to pick, when to stop, where to camp. Onboard, whoever is at the tiller makes the basic decisions -- when to jibe, come about, break for lunch, but when greater decisions need attention, someone calls out, "Consensus!" after which, proposals are made, thumbs are hoisted, deferred, or downed, and we move on.

Last night, after a shitwhack of bean flakes, rice and cornbread (made of inapproximate amounts of cornmeal, milk powder, baking soda, water and huckleberries,) Robin made an attempt to amend the thumb rule: he wanted to add a new thumb.
"The upward thumb implies assertion of a proposal, the sideways thumb implies indifference or weak allegiance, and the down thumb is a clear NO intended to prolong the discussion," he said. "But there has been a time when i clearly wanted to say no, but i only wanted that inclination to be heard, and not acted upon. I propose a 'just so you know' thumb."

This, of course, raised new issues: would this bring about too democratic a group? was this too many options? would this dissension lead to an I-Told-You-So attitude, a feet-dragging unwillingness to go along with the proposal?
In hushed tones, we discussed this for the following hour, as the light dwindled and the fire crackled and tightened the skin on my hands, put there, above the coals, as the fog rolled in. Then, as several of us began to doze, Ben said in a loud, stately voice,
"All in favor of a fourth thumb?" he put his thumb up.
Slow and sleepy we raised our thumbs. That we did so in silence was too much for Robin.
"Wait a minute," he said, "I withdraw, for lack of a greater interest, my proposal from the docket. I veto a fourth thumb." He punctuated this with a hearty downward thumb.

That was the last we heard of the thumb business.

2006-08-15T00:05:00.000-07:00

i got water in my ears.

2006-08-14T22:57:00.000-07:00

the tractor, in fourth gear, pushes steadily down the row. the tines dig deep the soil. churn thistles and quack grass and mustard into a sloppy pigtailed mess behind me. i get lazy, let the steering wheel pull me down and my right tine catches hold a fifteen year-old vine. a madeleine angevine. cuts her deep and sinks the front wheels. i hit the brake, the back left, and the tractor digs in deep. mangles the plant. no chance for repair and the tractor is stuck. the sun hangs low and the sky's blood red.
I kill the engine and hop free of that little green bull.
the fields are bare; the grass, long ago cut, long ago baled, and i walk through and kick holes for lazy snakes. my arms are dark with dust. my face too. i kick through that grass and my eyes, they itch, my nose stuffs up, and CHUU! i sneeze a healthy portion of dirt.

i hop in my dodge reliant, an upscale K car, the Woody Wagon we call her for her piney sides. the car of summer. drive her to the dock at Odlin park. as i make the turn, a fat man in a white tee-shirt stained yellow motions for me to slow down.
i cut the engine halfway down the hill, take her out of gear like dad taught me. tuck in to the boat launch, walk the sandy trail to the dock out there. my deckshoes hit the aluminum gangplank and seagulls squawk and wings beat the water and then i'm alone. just the sun on the water, the ache of the dock, and a boat out there, past the glare.
pull my tee-shirt over my head. kick off my shoes. arms hang at my sides, i stare hard at the green. i wonder for the cold, but i know it. that little breeze over the water will, in an hour, drag out the fog and wrap up the dock and stuff the inlet like so many cotton balls.
i dive forward and the wind's kicked out of me before i hit the water.
as i drip back to the Woody, an old man with a dull squint and cokebottle glasses asks me,
'how you doin?'
my shoes squeak from the wet of my feet.
'like a shot of caffeine,' i tell him.
and i drive back for (another) dinner party.

i play badminton drunk as my mom sets the table. set the table for eighteen, she did. three picnic benches, as i swat! then backhand! then swat! then tumble! my glass upturned, wine spilt across my wrist, across my woolen jacket.
i lick it up.

dinner for eighteen: the old woman, age undisclosed, sits at the end of the table facing the sun. but she's half-blind and my mother's stuffed her very own hat down over the poor woman's eyes, a full remove from our drunken bloated faces.

at the other end, the principal of the local school, his resolute mustache, his symmetrical head, his burning blue eyes.
the twins to his right, (he) the soccer player who bests my footwork with one eye closed, one hand tied, (she) the island-reknown chef, big round eyes lapped with the blackest mascara.
her beau, his father and mother: drunk.
the principal's wife, forgotten already.
the twins' parents.
my parents.
my little sister and her friends, also twins, but much younger, much brattier and far more sunburnt.

in sum: eclectic, you might say. bound by the size of the island, you might say. marooned, you might say.

but, the food:
*salmon,
*potato salad,
*dos equiis dos equiis dos equiis,
*green salad, and
*two glasses of siegerrebe (a french guwurztraminer).

another round of badminton scored in gut ugly german, then turns on the ice-cream maker. crank away, boys, crank away. spooned it out, creamy and mild. took a peach off the tree, cut the pit free, push the sweet meat deep in that foamy heart-dart. there.
there it is. country livin.

2006-07-29T18:05:00.000-07:00

duck, duck, goose.

2006-07-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

some three thousand miles later, sans mustache, and the poplars outside the window move like unsynchronized dancers.
the island here is quiet now.
i hedge the vines. it's the perfect Little Man game. put a two foot blade in my hand, "them grapes stand too tall, take em down to seven foot." and i do, little walkman wrapped into my belt loop, bonnie raitt rappin about men she left, men who left her, what she wants in a man, and the one and only whom she caught just a glimpse of.
and i whack the top off the vines. sharpen the blade between rows. the flick of the wrist, and they fall about my feet. just the big empty field of glistening leaves, ugly matte of dirt and pebbles--and me, a lonely samurai in deck shoes worn through the toes, those black jeans, no shirt and a wide brim straw hat.
when i get too hot i trundle off to the dock at Odlin, park the car, hot-step it over the sand to the lazy fishermen at the dock, who lack even the effort to hop a dingy. if the tide's in, i dive off the top pier, and Lazies grimace as i turn up the peace and tranquil of that murky green bay water. make a big old mess of sound, that pssssssh! of water and the gasp in my lungs.
but they muse at the efficiency of the cold water and the speed with which i hop back up the dock, how my heels hiss on that sand, and my volvo burns out, spits gravel across the beach.
this is where i hide from: the boat accident (one dead, one coma, one arm shot full of screws and bolts, one distraught mother/pilot of two survivors). the bad party (one grudge, two arrests, one forearm bite on Felix the cop, two counts assault, one confused community). the cancer (two months to live, she gets). the acid burns on my brother's hands (they went away).
hide until it all rights itself, until this cough goes away (ragweed, methinks, but fuck it anyhow).
hide, please.

2006-07-03T22:53:00.000-07:00

if adieu means 'until God', how do you say, 'until september'?

2006-07-03T22:43:00.000-07:00

(He calls it a perfect day when he describes Coney Island):
It is dark but for the boardwalk and the rides and the glittering lights, like punchy colored fruit from so many trees.
The Cyclone climbs, aches and groans up that initial mountain of steel and wood, thick with creosote, bulging with massive spikes and screws and washers and nuts. The girl with my big southern friend twists herself up in his arm and chirps with terror. There is a great pause as we reach the top and the first cars tip the edge, over a chasm I cannot see.
And gravity claims us.

The rollercoaster whips me across the two seats I alone occupy, and don’t think I am not aware of, for the first time, and am certainly stronger for: the bare tenancy of that seat.
My stomach embraces my throat and we kick right, and I am pinned back, and free from the tunnel, I see, again, Coney Island:
*The Wonder Wheel, slow and methodical, rearranges those little boxes of boxes of people like mice navigate a maze.
*The batting cages sound off like twelve gauge volley; aluminum bats tonk! balls into the net, and in the fast cages (100+ mph), those hard rubber balls whup! the backstop past the hungry swings of spike-haired Coney Island Sammy Sosas.
*The baseball field down the way empties as the home team holds the competitor to one hit and a man stranded in the ninth. Drunken fathers sling sleepy kids over shoulders and puff cowboy killers all the way to the Q train.
*And those Brooklyn girls, below, in their halter tops and jean shorts. Those sunburns that develop as the florescent lights of Ocean Avenue blast on, to expose crimson lines across their breasts, between their shoulder blades, on their knees.

The Cyclone hits a flat patch, and then a deep, dark pothole: the bottom drops out, we lose our collective breath, another twist, another turn, and our little train wretches to a stop in a tunnel of light and voices (get OUT the train!).
They stare: ticket takers and lever crankers and teenagers with thrust out hips and cocky in their eyes, in their twisted up mouths.
And the Nathan’s Famous Onion Pepper Dog in my gut remains there (reluctantly, thankfully).

But now, I will return Home. For the summer, for the five borough July/August blaze of heat and fire in the eyes and minds, on the street and in the tired, overwrought recesses of my head, my heart, my body. The way it wilts me on the subway platform, the way I kick free of my sheets—can’t sleep but for the wutwutwut of the overhead fan—and for the way I yearn to jump from a boat, any old boat, headlong, heels bare to the sky, into the salty, kelp-wrapped water of Puget Sound.
Funny thing is? Never done it. Played it out a thousand ways in my head, romanticized the fucker, remembered it to my friends as it were true. But no, I never done it.
Ever considered the coldness of that water? The way it sucks your breath out when you meet it? The way it leaves a salty white frosting head to toes, eyelashes to pubic hair?

Cuz you aint gonna live forever, and there’s no guarantee you’re going in your sleep, or at the top of a ice-capped, sun-kissed mountain, or tucked away on a hammock with your greatest love. But that indeed, It can be cold and violent and sudden with no chance for reconciliations or hatchet buryings and if you forget those things you always wanted to do but never had a chance and put off til another moment, one of convenience, then—BUT there are no convenient moments,
it. all. occurs. right. then.
so finish it then as if the next thing you did, even without a moment to recollect or sweetly wax reminiscent—Finish it then.
You want the mountains, you long for a river and the quiet, and the pull, and you want for the strong, assured, peaceful hand of the water to carry you down, then do that.

(well) I want for the mountains, for the pull of that unencumbered hand of the current of the river or the sea (cleaner, I would hope, than the waters of the tri-state area), and so for the Brief Moment, I’m off to the Manifest Destiny of the Great NW, before we pave it under.
Please visit me. Please. Remind me of this grand old clusterfuckery, to which I’ll quickly return. Because you, your grass is green as. green as.

2006-06-20T22:17:00.000-07:00

and we move, again

2006-06-20T21:33:00.000-07:00

two helicopters are what it takes to fly the victims from the wreckage and as they pan the skyline above us, everybody on the burm where i stand, everybody on this highway in rural pennsylvania, everybody turns. looks up from their games of catch, their sunbathing, their dogwalking, brows glistening on the frypan blacktop to offer condolences, silent or otherwise.
the man in front of our bus, one lense of his glasses wrapped with electrical tape, his son at his side mounted on a phonebook, seatbelt tight around him (country carseat) chuckles as i muse at the poor saps staged on the highway just badside of the accident, that empty plat of highway in sight, carnage at their feet, boxed in Until.

the path is cleared and the blood wiped clean and we move, again.

and i muse on my own accidents:

- falling from the tree in bellingham. it was summertime and the tree, it was rotten, root to dead old buds, and i climbed climbed and then fell (every branch on the way down) on my head, later to be positioned on the couch in the living room at a window that exposed that awful, conniving tree i'd fallen victim to.

- the beach on the oregon coast, where we rented a house for a week in june, when school let out. the "mish-mash" house. kool-aid smiles and Us3 "green onions". we ran on the beach, and eager for the flying, soaring just-beyond-my-reach frisbee, back-pedal, back-pedal, Turn into a mound of sand--indistinguishable from the rest--that stopped me, pulled me violently to the ground whereupon i fell on a stick (my sword...?)
my sight flashed yellow, then black. i spit sand, i saw sand, i bled from my eye. my eyelid, cut. if not for that initial impact of the bank of obtrusive sand, i would surely walk now with the insecurity of a barren equilibrium, and an eye patch.

- my first, of many, car wrecks. (i am Accident prone. I fear sometimes, for my cocky blunders and that they might cause my Untimely Departure.) there was a panic i developed young, in preschool, when my mother arrived so late there'd be a whole new batch of afternoon unknowns would arrive for playtime, naptime, lunchtime. a pain not to distant from pleasure, in my pelvis. a deep unsettling tickle that would cause me to push there on myself, knead like bread.
this was a panic i felt as i crawled out the passenger side window onto the roots of a tree, onto salal berries and how i looked down the steep bank, the cliff there, onto the beach and the cove and the quiet unperturbed lapping of the waves, the ringing in my ears, the engine still ticking. my brothers and i stood back from the car. (1979 subaru station wagon, maroon.) we saw the under wire, the twisted axles, the narrow V cut into the hood, the grill, by that simple, unmoved sapling.

- and now, hit by a car. fuck flatbush avenue. fuck whatever i've got that They attribute to youthful cockiness. "i'll live forever." fuck pretty corpses and burning out.
it would be a hot day. couldnt see The City from brooklyn for the smog at 9am. flatbush, a river thick with metal and gears and concrete and spinning rubber couldnt be more inviting. Take Me On, says the beast. With Relish, says i. the overhand brakes on my bike dont work, but are easy to reach. i've got no helmet on. i'm beating The River, i'm quick in the current. i see this jeep, facing the other way blinkerblinkerblinker, ready for that left turn. i've got a green and so does he. i take it. so does he, and he pumps the gas to pull him from the oncoming Rapids and i've got no recourse but to turn into him, broadside, bite the window, the wheel well and just spin. Spin. like you wind the camera too quick and it breaks, and i'm twisted up in the handlebars, my bag, the bike chain and my torn and achy little body.
i untangle. walk my bike to the curb. bystanders, and only one ventures to speak, are horrified. "that looked bad," she said. i hold up my arms, "am i bleeding?" she shakes her head.
my thigh twitches. trembles. i hope she doesnt see. put my hand there. my hand shakes. i get on the bike.
humbled by That River. tail between my legs. time to get a helmet, i think. there's only so much luck you get served up. and i doubt there's seconds.

2006-06-10T14:08:00.000-07:00

what follows is not an approximation of the events that took place on that recent night in the month of june, no, not approximation, but exactitude.

2006-06-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

(Saturday)
• Yahtzee
• A plant with lingering flowers that, if bloomed, might look like bats
• Square glasses and a bowl cut
• “shuh-howwza!”
• “Caliente,” my new bike
• wet bike seat, too wide
i. incurs sore ass
• metropolitan to north 6th, past Bedford
• hipster party, records, skipping needle
i.) konoko no. 1
ii.) Richard hell and the voidoids (scratched)
• Moustached ex-boyfriend
• “we’ve met before” (no handshake) “at the johnsons”
• Porno pics glues to glossy 8x10 classic car posters
• Sweaty blackshirt un-hipster, “I water-ski naked”
i.) “don’t you bounce around?”
ii.) “softened my knees, water up my asshole.”
a. “a colonic”
b. “made me wanna shit.”
• Moustached ex-boyfriend, cont’d.
i ) Watery-eyed stare
ii ) ‘trapped between door and stereo.’
a. Richard hell and the voidoids, scratched.
iii.) ‘I want nothing more than to leave.’
iv.) Shake hands with his wingman, Machiavelli.
a. Dirty, careless grin.
b. Limp, clammy hands. Mine.
• “Thank God Almighty, I’m Free at Last.”
• Caliente in circles, intersection of Whythe & 1st ave or so.
i.) see the lights across the river, of alphabet city, like orange glitter. The projects where they say, “don’t go there”.
• Ride away, let them fight.
• “South on Bedford?” shrugs, “yes…?”
• Bedford to Atlantic.
i.) tires are soft
ii.) brakes are weak, slow on the uptake
• The clock tower in brooklyn, my point of reference.
• Ooh, dean street. Take that route.
• Clock tower obscured.
• Ooh, the ghetto.
i.) My bladder is full.
ii.) My bladder hurts.
• Frightened piss in a street off Dean.
• “My bladder hurt, after all.”
• Ooh, the Ghetto, cont’d.
i.) ‘am I afraid?’
a. ‘no, just confused.’
ii.) ‘will this be the last they read about me?
iii.) ‘am I in queens, for chrissake?’
iv.) (message machine) “Hey Jeremy, it’s tim,” (cheerful, optimistic) “I’m in the ghetto, on my bike for the first time. I’m lost. On Atlantic, under the train. Do you know where I am?” (cheerful, maintained) (panic, tingles)
• Clock tower, re-emergent. In the wrong place.
• The gas attendant sleeps on the other side of the glass.
i.) I push the button. No response.
ii.) His eyelid opens, slow.
iii.) “prospect park?”
iv.) he points down Atlantic.
• I fear my tire will flat.
• Finally, Atlantic to Union, then 6th, then 7th.
i.) bodega
a. 2 beers, Budweiser. Bottles.
b. 1 pack cigarettes.
c. Cold sweat subsides.
• Finally, home.
i.) Crazy Monica (neighbor, insensitive to time and space).
ii.) Shitty reggaeton.
iii.) Sleeplessness.
iv.) Porn.
v.) Exeunt Wakefulness.

TO BE CONTINUED: MOHAWK!

2006-06-02T12:35:00.000-07:00

In with a lion

2006-06-02T12:17:00.000-07:00

He sat in the corner, window to his left, an awfully painted mural to his right. Eight-fifteen in the pm in late may, so it was still light, but not much. The neon beer advertisement, then, was beginning to glow, and so affected his face in red. He was drunk by eight-fifteen almost every night and so neither of his sons, on either sides of him, were surprised that he talked now, like he would.
“Do you know the story of Daniel in the lion’s den?” he asked them, massaging his beard, pushing whiskers aside from his lips, and also the foam left by the beer.
They looked at each other, the brothers did, and that familiar grin passed over them.
“Back in old times, biblical times, the kings would throw these guys to the lions.”
“Slaves—“ the older son interrupted.
“—Slaves, yeah. They would be fed to the lions for sport. Well Daniel, he was tossed into the arena—“
“Coliseum—“ the older son interrupted again.
“Yeah, the coliseum. He was let in there, and he was not afraid to admit, then, his closeness with God. He said, ‘I am close with God.’ And he fought the lions and he wasn’t afraid. When I lost everything,”
And now he was talking about himself, “I was Daniel. I lost my land, you know when I got caught smoking pot, and then this thing with the neighbors happened.”
He gulped his beer. “Slow Bill Lucky, he kept a mason jar full of pot in his kitchen, in the cupboard. Everybody from Chuckanut Drive on out to Highway 2 knew it. Slow Bill was everybody’s favorite pickup smoke. And every time, with open arms, that guy would let you in, tug a few off. But one day, somebody took a handful and left a couple bucks in there. This wasn’t a community stash or anything, his private thing. So I’m walking up there, stop by his house; find a bunch of folks there. Laura, his wife, you know, Ruby’s mom, crazy bitch, and then Amy and Lyle were there, and Mitch and Ricky Stones. I walk in, and they’re thinking I did it. Laura was the only one who directly confronted me or anything, said, ‘Jim, did you take it?’
“They told me, somebody, who ever did it, left a couple bucks in the mason jar. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t even have two or three dollars to leave in that mason jar.’ Well they didn’t believe me, no way. And so I lost all my friends. Just that simple. They were my only friends in the world, and they just shut me out.”
He finished his beer, pointed at his pitcher and addressed the younger of the two sons.
“Do what you’re good at,” he said. The boy poured him a beer.
“So I haven’t got any friends, so I had to look to myself. And if you close your eyes, do you ever close your eyes? What do you see? Black right, but it’s not really black, but grey, and there’s all these points of light, all these stars. Well what I learned this one time from a marriage counselor—your mother and I went, ‘we have to say we tried’ I said and when we got there, she said, ‘no, wont do it’—this marriage counselor told me, you close your eyes. Put together all these points of light, into one. So I did it. She had me lay down and she got on top of me,”
The boys laughed. The older one said, “The marriage counselor?”
“This is the marriage counselor. She gets on top of me, pins my arms, tells me to close my eyes—“
“This is a therapist?”
“A marriage counselor in training. Then she says, ‘sigh really heavy four or five or seven times,’ and I did. She was really helping me.”
“Yeah she was.” Said the older boy.
“But she told me to close my eyes, to put those lights together like that. And you look really close, you know what you see?” The man leaned forward on the table, looked from one son to the other.
“You see a man. A human, standing there. Call it Jesus, call it what you want. This was myself, though, this was my friend. When all my other friends kicked me to the curb because they thought I took a handful of pot, left a couple bucks.”
“You know it’s somebody on the inside, one of those people in the room, when they just take a little, just a handful and leave—“
“—Like an insult”
“Yeah, like an insult, just a couple bucks.”
The father drank his beer again. “But I found myself. My friend there, when I focused like that, on those lights.”
The older boy looked at the younger one, pointed at the father’s empty pint. “Do what you’re good at,” he said.

2006-05-23T10:04:00.000-07:00

The Atlantic Glow

2006-05-23T09:27:00.000-07:00

the other morning: after a long night of work. driving home. cigarettes tasted awful by then. the breeze of the open window made it bearable. light had yet to break, but there was that stillness, that airy blue in the sky. streetlights soften, cars slow, drivers less aggressive. we drove neck and neck with a forest green saab and the bulky guido driver and his tiny, manicured girlfriend. they bounced to snare-tickled house music. i looked at jeremy. he tossed his cigarette onto the pavement, rolled up his window, gunned our banana van. chirped out. dusted the saab.
on atlantic, north of flatbush, we slowed behind an escalade, big and black. tinted windows, of course. it was stopped in the left hand turn lane, by the median. two women had gotten out. an ambulance screamed towards us, half a mile up atlantic. the light changed and we saw the man, dark and crumpled there out front of the escalade, bathed in green now. he was twisted like a spun top. the women paced on the median. the tall one held herself against the bumper, threw up. i took another cigarette.
found the lot. honked the horn. the attendant opened the gate. we coasted in, jeremy collected his things, and i hit the corner for a southbound cab.
I stood and waved. traffic is light on atlantic at quarter after five, friday morning.
a beat up white chevy mccrapmobile stopped on the other side. rust over the wheel wells. bumper hanging down, kissing the asphalt. the window rolled down. "need a taxi?"
this is in brooklyn, on atlantic avenue. little dicey. nothing around but storage units, parking garages and white castle.
this rangy black dude sticks his head out the window.
"need a taxi?"
i looked around. is he talking to me? I shrugged, "uhhh..."
"come on, man. i need the money."
jeremy had come out the lot; the gate trembled and groaned shut behind him. he saw the cab. looked at me. chuckled in the back of his throat.
i crossed the street, tentative. jeremy hopped in the front. i popped the passenger-side back door. before i could sit, the guy said, "hold on. got to get this shit out the way." moved aside a hard hat, a loaf of white bread, an assortment of tools.
"thanks for trusting me," he said. "what's yer names?"
"tim." "jeremy."
"timothy is my name. huh. but people call me blue."
"hey, blue."
we drove. the car smelled like sour milk, or more likely, pee.
he told us, when we passed prospect park, about the gay guy who'd just been beat to death there, and about his girlfriend, who was -- "look at that full moon -- CRAZY right now," and could he be our personal cab driver. "anywhere, anytime. in the city, out the city, what you need."
sure, we told him, give us your number.
"well, that's the thing. my phone broke. but you give me your numbers, tell me when yer gettin done with work, heh?"
we got to jeremy's house, dropped him, i hopped in the front. my knees pinched against the dash. stronger urine smell. should have stayed in back. he continued about that gay guy who got beat up in the park, "because cant people just let other ones do what they please? dont you think, they oughta do what they please? shit." hairs on the back of my neck stood up. i stopped him a block short of my house.
"here it is," i said. gave him twelve bucks. got out the car -- "oh, gimme your numbers."
"i'll give you jeremy's, he's the boss," i said.
he didnt have a pen. i had a sharpie. tore the back off the envelope my check rested in, which i was quick to tuck away. wrote the number.
"hey, you need anything. how bout a tool belt? need one of these? brand new."
"naw," i said, "think i'm set up for this job. thanks."
"it's real nice. brand new. cant ever have too many. good money, i'll give it to you real cheap. heh?"
"thanks blue." handed him the torn up slip of paper. with your old DC 413 number on the back. which i dont think works any more.
but, if old blue calls you, wants to take you for a ride, pick you up anywhere. holler.

With The Fishes.

2006-04-24T14:27:00.001-07:00

So my new job. Catherine Malandrino, a French clothing designer. Her SoHo store, the one I work at, is at the corner of Broome and Greene. I stand just inside two enormous bay windows; one window faces Broome, the other Greene. I wear white Converse All-Stars. I wear a form-fitting crew-cut, long sleeved, also white. Finally, the pants: white, straight cut, cotton. I have to wear white boxer briefs, or you'd see, upon a glance, my blue boxers and the blue dolphins printed there. Or, if I wasnt wearing any -- well.
My job is to stand just inside those big bay windows, a row of mannequins behind me draped in the season's latest, and usher in, or out, the patronage. Old ladies, young girls, single women Of A Certain Age. All rich. My job is to beat them to the door handle, pull it open before they get a chance, impress (somebody) with my speed, and greet them, either with a look or a word, to the little boutique.
A girl, 18, came in twice. Walnut hair, chopped bangs, hooked nose, round brown eyes. She stood still in front of the mirror as her friends commented on the dresses, straps or strapless, past her knees or above them, white, or black. And then she would turn, and her voice, husky and violent and short and rich, would command, dictate, diffuse any other opinion in the room. I watched her from the door, in the mirror. When she stood there, silent, at her most beautiful, that was when she saw me. As they left, the doors open to the cab they flagged, she turned back to me, phone to her ear, asked, "Sir, what time do you close?" I cleared my throat, "Seven," I said. She put the phone to her mouth, "They close at six," and smiled, held her eyes on me, stepped in the cab. This was the first time.
The sun cast just enough light on me from behind the buildings now, at five, for me to check my reflection in the bay window facing Greene. Should I stand with my hands in my pockets, or with my arms tucked behind me, one in my back pocket? Which pose looks more at ease, which is more SoHo? Should I stand up straight or coolly slouch, let my belly kick out the front of my crewneck?
She returned, the young girl, but this time, with an older man. Her father. The same hooked nose. Rimless specs, white hair pushed straight back. He wore a quiet but respectable leather jacket, and a tasteful collared shirt. His lips, though, hinted at a sneer. Like he might cry or spit at any moment.
He sat, quickly, in a low, green, swivelled chair at the center of the boutique. She returned to the dressing room, to the pieces she'd held aside, and, one by one, appeared to him as he spun the chair and tossed aside the pages to the fashion magazines on the coffee table, there. Each time she came from behind the white sheath of the dressing room, he would squint, sit back on the green chair, let the magazine collapse on his chest, and twist up his lower lip.
"What?" she'd say, and her shoulders would drop, and before he would utter a word (several times he didn't), she turned back, flung the curtain around her, and slipped into something else.
Finally, she appeared (for the third time) in a white dress, plunging neckline, gold straps, and sandals that clicked when she walked. She stood in front of the mirror, her father just behind her, slouched back on the chair. I caught her eyes again, in the mirror. She held my gaze. Her eyes, in that look, under whatever pressure, had the same, striking effect as her voice; I looked away.
Her father squinted, again. "A social is a respectable event," he told her.
"Fuck that. This is nothing," she said. "This is prude. I'll be like that girl with the big red A on her tits."
"Hester Prynne," He said, leafed through his magazine.
"Right," she said. "Believe me, dad, this is nothing."
Her father looked up. "You'll need a scarf or a sweater. Just a little something." He turned to the salesgirl, "Get her a little something. A little sweater, one that ties around. I don't care. Just something that covers her up...there."
The salesgirl opened a drawer somewhere, dug around, and found a sweater. The Girl With The Violent Voice let her weight fall on one foot, kicked the other out, rolled her eyes and wrapped herself in the sweater.
"Great. Yeah. Hey dad. Hey dad, wow. Fuck."
He snapped the magazine shut, dropped it on the table, turned to the cashier, "I'm done. She'll take what she's wearing."
She clicked across the floor. "She'll take the shoes, too," he said, and drew his wallet from his jacket.

I held the door as they approached. I sought eye contact. She rebuked me with a simple, unadorned, "Thanks." He did not look up as he left. I shut the door. Off the steps, on the sidewalk, not so much as a glance, and I was left in my tight whites, hands behind my back (decidedly, the Most Hot Pose), counting how many minutes I could stand without a single twitch, flinch, or muscle spasm. Four. Four minutes.