the fantasy game gets older and less personal. hey,

i used to seek the slanted light too as it fell through

industrial height plate glass and into 1000 square feet of vibrating

bronze .010 Dean Markeleys, the way that vibration looks there

close to where they say the heart beats, the way the black dust

smells on your calluses; hey, i used to seek those days,



the way you feel when you seep another song, got to sing it down into

some means of encapsulation to make it stick. hey no wonder be drunk

and high all the time, i can remember what it was like to be desperate:

cutting blade cutting into oneself cutting into one another and i am still

that way; it is my secret.



the past wipes you down i guess until the caul shifts and shimmers back

into paper blossoms or firewater or the water in your brain makes you speak

and say back to people of your own device, I love you now run fast

run burn down the house quick



so I can live I give you life

so can you give me life back



it is a lonely life fraught with regret

and go-forward spiral pennies thrown and blown down slantways in some swift October swimming pool:

sodden leaves, north Georgia, just go barefoot till Thanksgiving whoops:



it is a lonely life fraught with regret.



it is yours

and it is



mine

behavior chain

i.e. sink;



feel the other people in the grass.



hope: there's some,

field dog;



Now, burn it...

invisible writing how much of it can you really do plenty if you like to sleep all the dreams rush forward into the sound the sound the sound of blood and joints popping cracklong out into electric guitar freeze or the creaking wheel of the trashcart pushed past behind your seat like the creaking lie

and so break the seal of  another day

i used to eat the 4 a.m. despair

the computer has already ruined this moment but let me persist in it



sit here now and no hope of getting through to you

the hush of the night trucks moving past

sober now there is no pretend to do

you can write to fend off the past



saw her face from when we were 18 not in a dream this time, just waking, just lying awake, outside the blue fuzz that is night and the future that awaits or that is happening depending on your notion of destiny. then I creep quietly from your side, filch a tshirt from the bureau drawer, and move downstairs to liftweights at 4 a.m. trying the new. I wish it seemed old, wish I had that equity.



but i was telling you about the face of Delia from when we were 18 and how I saw her pale arch eyebrows hair brown so black but amber in October sun and her almond eyes hard black almonds, her cackle laugh and flattened vowels, the lisp of Chicago, all this back in 1990 when we were kids and the world felt safe



yes, I mean you didn't worry about getting blown up so much or witnessing the blowing (OK City was a foretaste, later)

but when I say safe I mean for instance I personally hadn't yet a clear conception, say, of the venality of New York City. And I mean the denizens



so, there I am, really an instant ago, trucks hush by, blue fuzz of night, your warm hair

next to my chest, but I am picturing Delia, from when we were 18, thinking off all the past

but no sense of loss; then as always I think of walking from the Mall, with Delia, the blue snow falling, we go through the field out by 45, her warm, our black coats, mittens, we felt pure as Indians



so there is the poem, as I thought, but then I thought no why can't I make them short stories and novels

crafted not in some precious college way but in the way I would craft them as I would craft them

and of course this, this no poem either, this just this, what you write at 5:23 a.m. when you get up thinking that you're not gonna stop drinking but that you have to control it or perish huh I mean or it will control youso be cool and dial down the ratio, Mammon, serve sobriety for the better tenth of the days



ah this isn't it at all this isn't what I'm going for at all

I wish I could just sit here and tell you all this now for as long as I felt like it reallyman

but here is the urgency pinching down and now I must leave you ah the day's sealed



but not dwindling. nothing dwindles.

so whatif that's a lie. I will talk to you

again

Rafe Dubious: He left his amp at the loading dock and careened off in that white Nova of his. I didn't feel it was my responsibility.



Going backwards, he'd just staged a regular freakout on my couch. Well. Said he'd seen all this going down in a dream before. Well now.



All that last part, from the girl, even still he can't get it right. He attributes it to RachelWhere, but he's confused. That girl from the Higlands was KateyRed. Get it straight, Crombosis!



He rearranged everything in my studio

He drew on the walls

and I responded. in small writing, up in a corner

by the ceiling, I wrote "You are not so much"



KateyRed. she'd come by. to talk to me. about something he'd said. and it didn't matter what. I told her it was a lie. It wasn't my responsibility



I don't know how I got in here. I'm no friend of his. Fuck this

****************************************************

KateyRed: A few days after the fucked up night that began in the Highlands, he called me. He sounded scared. He asked if I would like to go out for a drink. If I would be interested. I was flattered. I said yes.



I met him at Rafe's studio. He was by himself. He met me in the parking lot and walked me in. This was in early November. The air was cold and sweet. It was just getting dark. The sky was turning purple.



He was a character. He was wearing a dark green dress shirt untucked, and jeans. And beat up dusty black leather harness boots. His hair - you can tell it'd been long and he'd chopped it back with scissors himself. He looked like a vagabond. Not a hipster. A vagabond.



I sat on the couch in the studio again. We talked. When he talked it was always something of the confessional. It warranted some friendliness. I smiled. He talked and talked. Then he played me a song he said he'd written that day. This was the whole reason for us sitting here, I could see. It was a ballad in G. His guitar playing was crude yet evocative. I told him I liked his song. I told him his voice sounded very...warm. I said let's get out of here.



We went to the bar with the wood floors and ship knick-knackery on the walls. We drank any number of Bass Ales. We smoked cigarettes. There were some friends of my ex-boyfriend at the bar. This I alluded to in my sidelong way. We were both buzzed. He got up and sat down again next to me on the bench on my side. It was a silly and awkward thing to do. I said let's get out of here. I said let's go to my place. I was driving, and I drove us back there.



Once inside we had glasses of wine. I gave him the tour. Even up the spiral staircase. He looked unsure in my bedroom. We went back downstairs. We listened to an old record by the Police. He sat very close to me and spoke quietly by my ear. I could feel his breath on my hair. I sat very still. He moved back and apologized. I said do you want to go out on the roof.



He stopped me in the doorway and looked very intense. He said some things I did not understand, could not have understood. Too much interior monologue leaking out. I got scared. I did not like it.



We went out on the roof though. It was very chilly. We talked some more and laughed at silly harmless things, goofs. I don't think he knew my heart wasn't in it.



I knew of course at the bottom of things he wanted what all guys want. I'd given that too many times before I felt.



Later in the car he told me that's all Rafe wanted, anyway. From me. I said well he's not going to. he can't have it.



But then later I confronted Rafe and he told me Cromby was not well in the head, and maybe dangerous. My source information seemed to corroborate this



I was very distraught when I left the studio after speaking to Rafe. As I was leaving I saw Cromby coming in. I stopped him and said, "You lied to me." He said, "No." And covered his face and went backwards.



Rafe was right there. He escorted Cromby in through the loading dock. What the fuck. Again I was scared, but more than that angry. I sped away. I just wanted to get out of there.



A few days later Cromby called my just before Thanksgiving. I wanted it to stop. I was tired of their bullshit. I wanted him to go away. And that is what I told him

shit haven't lifted weights it's edging up to a month now and think I might be losing it, strength seeping out of me. man, if I was only ripped up like my dog and as fast as he who is a 68 lb. black German Shepherd they'd shower me with money honey and I'd be intimate with your saliva



reeling this out from my cubichell because idiots are on vacation this week and as such me here now considering staging a diveout around noon. just got a call from my old fieldbrother lettin me know fishin could indeed have been on the agenda today but it was an elusive plan have to wait till tomorrow I hope



(the diveout however is a nascent plan devoutly held)



have been having precious little fun lately. my neighbor hates my dog. i live right on top of the fucker. he stands on his deck and glares at my girlfriend. mind you, we are considerate as can be with the pooch and barking ie not letting the occurrence obtrude or prolong. never mind, the issue is that the dude is a type A anal retentive fucker and those people well they're out there and they are your enemy.



the canine hating and the glaring is becoming oppressive. i hate to admit it. it is really a small thing. it's brought out the old me: last night I muttered "cocksucker" just beneath the audible, lit a butt like throwing down my muddy glove and gave that fucker a hard look. bitch was watering his lawn. what a picayune nightmare. i don't suppose he heard me not necessary just wanted to give him the diorama: the hate is mutual, you douchebag. you want brotherly love you got the wrong drone, Chad



troubles at home last night half-drunk and not in fact yelling I told her I was pretty much sick of the constant tension whining complaining. leave it to me to lather up a passive aggressive. I'm like nutrition for unhappiness. she wants to move. we've been looking. met with the realtor. what a pain in the ass. i could in fact move. our house ain't that great. wonder what i'd be doing if I was single. never had much luck single either. i'm sure I'd be in bars? maybe not. maybe not now.



anyway, all 4 of you, now you can see why I don't usually do the regular thing here. Que pinchi pene. Now back to our irregularly scheduled mania.

RachelWhere: rejoice in poverty? he sure did.



let's see I met him in a bar in Virginia Highlands. I was there with my sister for the dancing. he

was sitting in a booth with this boy who I knew from around the Five Points named Rafe Dubious.

Rafe was an artist and had his work hanging in this one place off Ponce they were formal works with figures and they were quite quite good but he'd that summer gone abstract



I didn't care for that I was a vetrinary technician with long dark red hair. I was the type to make allusions to all the fucked up things I'd done in my past but I was a clean girl now or trying to be. my rooms had a gothic thing going with black wrought iron skull candles and witch pictures but they were clean quarters indeed. there was a spiral staircase. my bedspread was floral and bright. I live there with my sister. she was a blonde girl short and compact while I was tall and thin and had hips like a mantis. she wasn't my sister at all but that's what I told Cromby to give you an idea how I valued him. that night in the Highlands I had gone there for the dancing. Rafe D. and Cromby were holed up in a booth over pitcher of beer and arguing. About their band. Rafe wanted a saxophone in there. Cromby wanted to be Chris Cornell. It was Rafe who brought us in to sit down. Both of them were a couple of glib characters. Rafe was oilslick sexy and Cromby was sloppy and surly in a sweet way. Guess who I was attracted to. Rafe said Cromby's kind of a light drunk and Cromby said No I'm not in a way that told you he so was. Well, maybe not that bad. I don't know what happened to my not sister but it was late real late finally and we were all shit drunk and carefree in the way that you really can get to be in summer in Atlanta and we dumped ourselves into Cromby's white Nova and Cromby drove us back to the studio. The studio of Rafe in this semirenowned band practice space a big white washed brick old warehouse space where you weren't supposed to live just play music but it was shady and Rafe lived there anyway for painting studio purposes first and also the band stuff. Cromby had a key and had been sleeping on the couch occasionally with the understanding that is was to be Stealth. and what I noticed about Cromby driving and here is where I gained a certain respect for him was that even though he was completely loaded he was indeed a very very careful and inscrutably cautious drunk driver. so there was something. well the boys took me back to the studio and plugged in their guitars and proceeded to play me a song they had written together, worked up out of an old song of each of theirs. it was no better or worse than a million songs of its kind written by a million dudes of their precise ilk. i appeared flattered in the way girls such as I can but we were still drinking beer and smoking Camels. it was the kind of good time you can have at 3:30 in the morning. then we were all drunk and lying on the couch cushions Rafe had put on the floor. both of them started then to give me a backrub. Rafe put his hand in my shirt. I stopped things there. We all slept drunk on the floor. at least that is what Cromby thought happened



hey what do you know there is more to this anecdote. I will be back but I better let MercyGraft chiaroscuro you in on some ancillaries