Last Words Like a Drying Crust

fig.zer0-dope) tic-tac emt vomit ace bandage limitation

"This is that slow fishing song I know. Floating backwards, I can hear it in my ears while a line squiggles its very long path of many adjacent rays that reach all the way out to the sun. Where the ocean can be heard like a slip of of fabric being ushered to the floor. I know this song like it's a bell inside of my hollow head, a miracle shouting for recognition or content that's for the sake of more content. Carrying on like this, in a row like they're hollow bones or the satellites of tiny teeth making up a circlet upon your brow by imitating all the damp glitter I've just swept from under our rug. My eyes are very alive when they see you. They're not just organs, they're goosed up on fear. They're cowboys looking to dance with the danger of their own angels under the gnarlish tree that's beside a four sided mule who's benaying or beneaping seems askew." I find myself singing this slow song from the riser built in front of the dusty clock by the door.

"Welcome back sweet April. Please, there's a moment of despair upon us," in her cloth coat she's smiling a little bit like a half glass of Cote DU Rhone, a little guilty, a little evil, a little lost on the dining room table after the party is over.

"You're an impractical meme and a toadstool's coping mechanism."

He's smoking an ancient Welsh sized cigarette. The powdery leavings of ash all down the front of his striped shirt are saying, "no, I'm a Beach Boy forever." That's when the zombie bit his leg.

He screams, "It must have sensed that I've been voting the straight tickets since '88 because I like centrists, a lot."

"You're a fool," she rifles through her purse hoping to find something that can stave off the inevitable corruption. Maybe there's a torch or a pitchfork she's forgotten about? Then like a band finding it's own name, she has a fuzzy gummy and two lozenges to offer. "But I like to play games where sometimes I bring the marbles to the table."

 

I'm early, sitting by that girl again. I'm trying to be very still. We're watching the drummer set up their kit and both of us have our knees between our hands. The girl has her tickets out on the table. You may have guessed that I'm invested, even if I've been a bit mysterious or obscured by the patterns that lurk underneath all of this weather we're sharing. I've made some noise for her, fat loops of static and feedback that could chew the whole leg off a goat in one go. But it's probably senseless, a charnel harvest under the buck moon we share. And it's this way every time, every time I get stuck in the ferns.

Here's another poem. This one I've stretched it up into the rafters, "this proud ostrich, plum scented manager of broken pencils and saddle oil, they should be Kool-Aid Drinker No.1. Their lines feel like mottled bruises. Throwing candles at the wall or listening for quiet farts during the orchestra until the whole things turned itself over, they'll try and try. The pillow supporting my head is white but the ashes that fill it's sham are not, they're wet. I remember hearing about your car, your face and the pleasant way that Kool-Aid Drinker No.1 walked away. But I also I remember the salad days with the clouds whose linings where full above the cars that I'd park out in front."

This shallow basement stage is like my own frame and these jeans feel thick. My swollen body is fighting to escape their grip. The light is very wet, it feels slippery on my face. Three faces look back at me from their table by the steps. When I see them, they're laughing at me and I die a little bit inside.

The girl is here again. She's also by the stairs, smoking at their table. Tonight her left hand is bandaged. All of her tickets are gone and she's crying some but trying hard to laugh with the others. I feel discouraged and a little angry when I see this. But I begin to recognize the dream of it and I want to go back home even more. I want to be at home practicing sex by myself, sitting on the couch and tossing tissues at our little TV but I can't.

That's when my poem ends. I close my book and slide it back into the pocket underneath the curve of my ass. I step down from the riser and walk across the room. I look at each one of them before asking if they're finally ready to order. The first one speaks up, saying she wants a tall glass of water. I laugh out loud. When the next one asks for an ice cold chardonnay and a very tall straw, I just spit at him. Our bar doesn't even have chardonnay, the sommelier can give him a swirl of 7-Up with some Lime Juice but that's not going to make him pretend any better.

"If I were you, I'd write this down. I'd put all of it and more into one of your books. One of the ones I've seen you assemble from pages of menus and the blue fliers that hang in the restroom. I'd write all of it down and then call it, Spring Time in the City of Trees."