cagey



another snow-blasted March

I'm out in my writing shed

chucking another wedge of oak

into that woodstove we bought

at the flea market last year,

then back to bang on the manual.

My burden is to be the transmitter



for whatever chords of memory

or nightmare chance to band

down and through. the green

magnetic vertigo of the frequency

is something I never question.

Neither ever did you. You're tearing up



Texas again now and I'm still here.

You call some nights from some bar

or some new guy's place. The price

of transmission is how cold-blooded

you've made me become. The long

distance helps to chill the platelets. At night I sit



on the roof here and sip cheap

brandy from the bottle, smoke cigarettes

I roll myself. Damn you, God, I think.

All the ponds are still capped with ice.

The table is buried in white pages covered



in letters like mites, skin fleas, all

the insanity of the transmission. You

wondered that half-year you were here

how we'd ever get rich. I said it'll be

no sweat for you once you get shut



of me. You just hunkered down into

that Martin dreadnought and scratched

out the transmission. No brains in it either.

Just blood and heart. You the purer cipher

but then here I am, yet plugged into the wavelength

albeit by a cheap brown extension cord.



Tomorrow I'm going to wake up on the floor

out here freezing, step out, piss on the cinderblocks,

and then make my way back to the black and white kitchen

with that creepy Crazy Kat clock you gave me

that Christmas. Fucker. He's in the transmission.



Bigger wavelength than ours too.

There's going to be a message on the machine.

It's going to be you and you're going to be in some

horrible trouble. I'm going to have to spend the afternoon

tuning up the '82 Ranger God help me and then hit the road.

I'm going to incur a huge credit debt just getting down there.



When I get down there I'm going to get into a fight with a boy in a bar

and crack his head with an ashtray and fuck up my right wrist all

to hell. There's going to be a gun at some point.

I'll be like, I just want to write.

It'll be just like a movie.



Nah. Fuck it. You go to hell. Fuck all of Texas,

get strung out and die. I'm throwing another oak in the stove.

Sing a pretty little tune.

Send it out there. I'll pick it up in the transmission.

I don't have time for this bullshit I have work to do