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| fig.298.08) The bitch of my sleep, there ain't no one here with me. |
I wake in my limitless bed. Feeling thin and aggrieved, my punchy thoughts aswim in my eyes. A genius of tides is rolling on from my witless boots now hung above the board of the floor's long walk. "Yes, I'm chaff," speaking to the clown on my right. She's magnificent, so I name her nightingale and everything gets a little better. "Just hum and get through the book as quick as you can. Nothing else matters until the end. The very last frame of it, the one before you finally fall asleep, that's what you need. So hurry up."
Waking up again and I roll over. "I'll dine on the wine of today until it's fine as hell," I boast. "I might be a banquet of the bitter tidings, served up with the grim water of a wet woodland far to the north of these hills. I might as well be a survivor of threats that have gone unanswered in that sprawl. But I'm still opus, or at least the flavor of that device with its fullish body and dull finish. I might be cast off from a place and left spinning free, before the slap of surprise. Despite it all, I've still been fostered inside of a womb. I too am of the egg and the bypassing seed. I too have been lucky enough to grow and to later cough. Yes, I have also been shat from the end of a narrow and crooked bed and then spooned like I was a common American friend. I'm still lucky enough to count all three of my grandfathers on one hand, although sadly each of them has gone now."
In their lives, these men all had the chance to serve and they did so proudly in war of their day. Of their sons, two of my uncles served in a different war and a third served later when this country of ours was between active engagements. One of their daughters, my aunt also served her country with a long career that capitulated with the end of a much shorter war. My father however was given the choice to serve, he was still just a young teenager. He was then stationed briefly in Korea and finally completed three tours in Vietnam. When he got back home he was able to take advantage of his GI Bill. He completed an associates degree and became a firefighter and an EMT. He grew older and then retired and now he's passed too. That's when the broken anvil leaves and its like an angel in flight. It's as heavy as molasses is thick. Suddenly my hammer's over boot and happy as hell to be chasing down its own inertia.
"I was born to do this. I'm here for the job and I'm going to get paid," I say to the young woman standing across from me. Her suit's brown and stained with some soda pop, with some oil from the grinding machine out front and she also has some bits of popcorn nestled in the bun of her hair. She's disheveled and wary but she isn't slow. She looks at me once and it's like she understands Duchamp more fluently than ever.
At first, when I open my eye to her, I seem to be inside of a box and it feels like there's lead all around me. Enough so that even the superman could never see me in here. Not when I'm all alone and on this side of the desk. Not when I'm crying so much, trying to explain the relationship of painting as a craft to the umperkunst with all of its foreboding discomfit. I'm in a box and it has bars on the grated door and there is no phone in here. I don't know what to do. I've never had to sing like this for myself before. But I have a clapboard mind and it's buzzing with winter thrills behind these tears. I remind myself that I'm still here in the greater sense of things and that in the sense, I still have work to do. I am the highest of all maths to this moment.
There are some things things that are required when you're applying to either rule the world or win the lottery one step at a time. In order of importance they are, merlot on a stick, a new and fancy scarf, and finally, it's tickets to the circus. The long cool wire's an inch from the seam beside my short inside pocket, I laugh and talk about enlightenment and my age some more. Then I dance from my chair, twirling and spinning like a drunken hobo. Overcome, I beg and reel, "Don't you want to know, to go back and to take off all of your clothes? Don't you want to go home and quietly shed a tear for the men that will rape you and then blame you for their lost time? Don't you want to drink all alone and remember the names that you've already given to each of your broken bones for them? Don't you want to cry now? Don't you want to vote even more often than you very well should now?"
The crowd by the door is a mixed one. It's half rabbits and half centaurs. The pigeons will come later and then their dates, sometime after that. Everyone that's waiting here has a ticket in their hand. There are even a few winning smiles amidst the wave of small talk and gashy perfume. I'd like a sandwich now too. I'd like to sit with my head in someone's lap and lament these dark clouds. I'd like to hover over the state fairgrounds and piss on all of the popcorn that I can find there. But I'm a busy man and I have much too much business to be doing. Much more than any of these clowns that are holding open the doors. Much more than the overripe architecture of this or any other old movie palace that's been done up in greens and silver.
Curious house, something short and blue with its sweet lips tucked just inside the place. It's a house that has a crooked stair and a front door that creaks too. There's babies rolling in the dirt beside it and there's a truck within view. A cooler sits by the back door, it's been filled with toes and gibbon horns. It still smells of lost sex and cat shit mixed with flat beer. I remember its basement. It was another place that I'd play, I'd whisper inside of its dust where it was mostly dim. I lost my sex by the drain here. It rolled itself under the short brown table where it stayed to live forever, happily without me. This was such a curious place with it's cache of velveteen drapes cast under the crooked tree inside the backyard. It's here in the place of this ofteness where each of us grew like a stone. We learned to smoke weed and how many fingers would really fit. We learned to paint the faces of crones and to laugh at the cruelty of the spheres. I remember once, this was the place that we remembered that too.
Even though someone else thought of them first, the blasting caps that were resting on top of the pile of shingles were all mine. While the big fat juicy brain inside of the man by the door is just thinking that it's asking out loud, "Tickets to count, tickets to count please?" It's Tuesday so he's wearing his slow blue suit with its periwinkle tie that's stained with shit today. He's always reminding me of snow white and the adulterous princes that we used to talk about back at the bar. The man at the door finally packs up his suitcase and heads out for lunch as the rest of us twirl round and round, up towards the sky.
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