cut up

Soviet progress
measured by the ton
10 lb tampons
falling chandeliers

The girl and I make the corn bread. The lady made the beans. The four of us sit and eat and laugh at the boy’s awful jokes. I get to lay down with her, the lady, and wake up again, knowing that she loves me.

Whodunnit

11/8/14

I have a son. Who seems strange to me, a stranger even. I’m afraid I’m doing everything wrong. Or maybe not enough of anything as he disappears into his bedroom without saying goodnight. The boy doesn't ever ask for anything but I know he wants to go fishing.  On the surface our relationship, if a little awkward at times, seems relatively healthy. We talk and laugh and I pack his lunch in the morning. I’m interested in him, in what he has to say. I’m perplexed at how sharp he is, never fully comfortable or certain that he’s just a normal kid. I make sure he knows he is appreciated and as much as I can, that he is loved. And... here it goes. 

My father hauled miscellaneous dangerous goods from Columbus, Ohio to St. Louis, Missouri for Chief Freight Lines. His handle was "Short Ribs." Mine was "The Baseball Bandit."   The languorous threat of violence that pulsated from my Mom I could predict and avoid.  But it was a chore to solve for my Dad's random wrath. He split when I was in 5^th grade, a little younger than the boy is now.  I craved his attention and approval even more after he left and when he didn't deliver, I turned to the men that my mom began to date. It was a sickening lack of loyalty on my part, allowing strange young men to sit on the couch where my dad existed during his short stints at home, eating, snoring, catching up on General Hospital. 

Weekends I spent with step-mom. The aptly named Barb was a hard and loud woman who revealed to my mom, in our front  yard, her very special relationship to my father as he ducked into the passenger seat of her yellow Dodge Omni, the one with those bitchin' rear/side window louvers.  Dad and I watched her straddle behind her own son to commence the ritual brushing of his waist-length dark auburn hair, which would last through an entire Bugs Bunny/Road Runner show deep into the Saturday morning lineup. Butch ate cereal while being brushed,  disappearing now and then into the apartment complex to deliver tiny Ziploc cocaines.  

I was a whore. And it never paid off. My solicitations earned nothing. What a lost and ridiculous boy. I waited years before I unleashed the bitterness on my mom. When we were finally alone. When she had finally rid herself of one last disappointing man, I became the monster I should have been years before.

So I take the boy fishing.

The Baron

10/25/14

            Baron the barista thought he had won again. But you could forgive him this time. The girl had the persistent problem of losing track, of staring at objects not as they were traditionally, but differently, and intensely as impressions and shapes. Colors not animated by anything she would call human, but moving independently nonetheless.  She would obsess over these shapes: groups of things, patches of dead grass, building facades; but more often what caught her eye was the face. And so as she pays for her coffee, she looks at what is the upper right quadrant of the barista’s face, how it squinted like the squat penis of the chubby high school counselor she slept with in high school. And though her true senses fixate on the erotic patch of skin at the angle of his chin where there is no trace of stubble, her secondary senses, dulled by neglect; senses that compel us to  finally release the hand of the stranger we have just met—these senses quietly urged her to look away.  But she could not. And when the barista, who called himself The Baron, caught her stare, the electro-thump pumping through the cafe speakers became his  own personal soundtrack. It seeped into the foreground inspiring high pours and behind the back theatrics. He announced his drinks as if he were narrating a documentary.  The cashier placed change in her hand which reminded the girl vaguely of the world outside the world she existed in at this moment, which was populated explicitly by The Baron’s nose.  She dropped the change in her purse. Just one nose that provided enough canvas for an entirely new person, an additional face on The Baron’s face. Light struggled to escape the vacuum of its blown out pores. This was a living, breathing entity that deserved autonomy, independence, women’s suffrage. Revolutionary lines traced this appendage-creature like a Mexican mountain road.  The Baron pretended he was alone, a rebel working in the confines of a corporate structure, but her intense attention forced him to check his fly and thumb that nose like a feather weight boxer.  It moves, she said to herself, which broke the spell. The Baron called her latte.  The back of his neck tingled as he recited the exotic name that was written on the cup. He leaned toward and pointed to his ear.  “What’re you listening to?” She watched his two lips move underneath that nose and just a moment too late, nodded and said “Thanks.”     

Sir Sparky Kaspersky

10/24/14

            He stepped into the light. He stepped out into the light. He took another step. He stepped again. Counting his steps he began to walk. He chose a point in the distance, the tallest tree he could see, and walked toward the tree, hoping that when he arrived there would be some other concrete noun that would make sense as a new destination. Counting steps with the conversation looping in his head. When he arrived at the tree, nothing had changed. He looked around for another destination; the clouds ran over the sun, crushed Styrofoam pulsed like a beacon. It’s time to go back now she said, taking his hand, we’ll do it again tomorrow.

Belated Birthdays

10/19/14

perilous lives of uncles and aunts, 
glowing neon nostalgia, 
curvaceous and mean. 
they must go… 
good god, we all must, 
as the sno cone melts, 
Cornelio sputters
about there was a time,
and my narcoti-sized mind wades in the words and his breath.
We settle, 
nest 
within these tentacled sheets
where burglar bars threaten to burn us alive.
 my little girl struts in her mother’s shoes, 
and I pray she breaks every little heart that comes her way.  
mid-life with children. 
distance and death, 
promise of life,
fully baked 
angel food box cake, 
3 candles short
11 days late

Sounds Thinking

friction factors
interest rate translates commitment
Does your pain inflame nostalgia, confounded
nonproductive pump. stumbling self-consciousness,
when I begin to breed confidence I will sell it for a dollar
and the blue eyed dude, whose eyes are turning white, sends a picture that says 
wait. the refrigerator is leaking. the house is peeling
revealing 
your future. Look! 
a snail on a unicycle,
bats on big-wheels. innocent insects?  
at least a little of the life force underfoot,
(crunch, captain.)
honk bzz & beep real life; you go on without me.
Beyond my shoulder, I create anti-masterpieces. 

a simple challenge from C brings my fingers to keys,

makes my mind work again in the old fashion.
Sitting at my desk 90,000 dollars in debt 
wandering weather,
(it’s such a chocolate world)
wondering whether 
I will ever say oh,
that’s who I am.