(Led Zeppelin III is a boon on a foggy morning in late December)
(telephone poles string by greyly at the roadside)
(This is going to be a tough winter for ice fishing if we don't get a cold snap,
a long one,
and fast)
(discipline
of any kind
can
suffice)
TODAY'S THOUGHTS
1. feel like dog crap, lightly warmed in microwave. feel like man pressing cook button.
zen
2. sleet and freezing piss....sleet and freezing piss
3. big huge box truck bombing along behind me in the bad weather a few feet from my rear bumper, why is your driver such a tool?
4. why did I just eat that candy bar (miniature as it may've been)
I am flying over green rolling fields of grass and moving men playing a game like golf but more mixed, as with horses and telepathy
always fly so high and fast and each time a lesser sense of falling
I roared back down and then I was in Riley's basement, scanning buds;
he wasn't there: I was thinking of pinching some, I had the green dust on my fingertips and felt guilty, for I was certainly going to steal
then I was out in his driveway roping my truck into the back of his; someone needed one for some errand; I was roping round the back wheels, a terrible job
then I was back in NYC some bullshit job taking measurements with napkins
amongst the coiffed and dressed,
blah blah blah
I got fired on the spot for standing faking work by a tall model looking douche of a guy he said
your breath is not the greatest
I said your fucking shirt is untucked in back
I said if you're kicking me out of here at least have the courtesy to direct me toward the exit
I came in here from on high in the air on like floor 27 and had a hard time in a gray stairway coming down to this job
he took me down, I followed him, then I said, you're like [some movie star] except with no talent
he said, you know what makes this job so miserable
it's guys like you
there was a cute young girl sitting at the bottom of the stairs
from earlier that day
talldick and her exchanged a little look and laugh about me, the Asshole,
I looked back at tall and said, "You're a shiteating monster cockface who's gonna die in a burning wreck in the desert if my head has anything to say about it; I don't even know what you
represent
then I turned to the cute bobbed young girl with the magic smile and she holding a baby and I said,
but yours is a beautiful child
and I exited back on the the street of my nightmare NYC which dont even hold a candle to the reality of that nightmare
(of this I'm certain)
I am not a ball of holy fire yet.
I need ore. I need stumps to cut off and to hew from them my sick sculptures. If I face it I bet I could bet on that shit. I need to codify my own personal details.
Here's the ugly beersoaked entrails of the idea: the idea is true.
wise another drunk winter another wise winter another cold drunk
or drink like a gentleman
I could fuck you now bitch hard for a hour: I said that to the green winter sky. I am the ether of lost friends whipping white on the roadway. I am still out of control. This'll all get on the Internet because I'm the whip, the whip, already
Mott:
confused
erratic
tired
in a hurry
wanting a cigarette
wanting to get wrecked
wanting immortality
wanting all possibilities
gray
gray
gray
like today
like the ocean
like steel
like the color my hair will be
gray like wolves
simple creatures
to be is to do
wanting sustenance
wanting all possibilities
wanting to get wrecked
wanting
I leap up and start running but I'm running too fast and too suddenly and my legs give way and then I am on the floor with my legs kicking wildly and in terror I begin to shout and bray, emitting a nasal scream screaming hep hep HEP NO NO NOOOOOOOO
it would be OK if it was a dream but it was not OK for a person just on their way to take a piss and then perhaps a drink from the water bubbler
(what was going to happen was the narrator who is not right in the head - not sure if he's actually retarded or just very mentally ill -
chapter 2 of this story is where the narrator takes a long bus ride to a strange city
and gets off the bus and starts putting on an elaborate act of mental retardation;
trying, in fact, to be institutionalized;
Chapter 3 is where he is finally institutionalized and then tries to convince his captors that the retardation is reversing itself;
Chapter 4 is where his bluff is called and he is semi-publicly excoriated in the hospital lobby;
Chapter 5 is where he hops another bus and moves on to another town, where he solicits a prostitute and gets her and himself terribly drunk and in trouble. This narrator always has money because of his mysteriously received monthly "Estate check" which is another story
What was going to happen was the narrator, who is not right in the head - not sure if he's actually retarded or just very mentally ill - finally gets to the basement, where he's hidden a blue thermal long underwear suit (top and bottom) and a red bandana mask
which he wears do-rag style, except pulled down over his eyes with eyeholes cut out. And a red cape worn draped from his neck, made from a huge piece of heavy bright red canvas stolen off a roll from the hatchback of Mrs. Healy's sister-in-law (when that lady was parked in the
driveway.) OK,
the narrator has a superhero outfit hidden downstairs, and his goal is to outfit himself and run out to the plane crash in the field by the highway.
Jim has some drunken hijinks in there.
Abdul is a mystery. can you see
why I'm not finishing this one? or maybe I will. who
gives a fuck?)
Mrs. Healy keeps the basement door locked to keep transient former borders from breaking into the house.
Two summers ago a heroin addict and former boarder known only as Shane jimmed open the rear bulkhead, thereby gaining entry to the house wherein he ran from room to room brandishing Mrs. Healy's butcher's cleaver (the one she used and still uses to hack up the chicken and beef parts for the Sunday stew) and demanding payment.
I lost about $50 in that raid. I would have lost more but I hadn't yet cashed my Estate check from that month.
Now the basement door stays locked as does the bulkhead.
Mrs. Healy has two keys. One she keeps hidden, the other she loans out to the boarders she trusts - Jim, Abdul, and me. None of us are especially trustworthy. But we have lived here the longest. Mainly deaf and wholly mute, Mrs. Healy has come to depend on us.
There was a plane crash out in the field by the highway yesterday morning. I saw it happen. The plane circled and went down fast. Then from my bedroom window I could see a pillar of white smoke rising on the pale day.
I hurried downstairs. In the kitchen, Mrs. Healy was cooking eggs for Jim and Abdul, two of the other boarders. Abdul was drinking coffee and reading a newspaper and jiggling his knee. Jim was pouring from an eighth bottle of Popov into a glass of orange juice. The radio on the counter next to the toaster was playing 1030 WBZ Weather On The Sixes.
"Mrs. Healy," I said, "Can I get the key to the basement?"
She continued to cook the eggs, working them in the pan with the spatula.
"Mrs. Healy," I said.
"Her hearing aids have apparently failed her this morning," said Abdul, turning a page of his paper. The paper this morning was the Boston Globe. Abdul occasionally lifted one from one of the neighborhood's curb boxes, on the way back in from one of his nightly peregrinations.
Jim sipped his screwdriver and looked at the floor at my feet. "I have the key," he said.
"I need it," I said.
Jim looked at me. "After my eggs."
"I need it now," I said.
The phone rings. I pick up.
"Why can't you simply drop the pose?" a voice insists.
I dissolve into mist for more than a minute.
Lucky for me the phone don't clatter off my desk when it fall. The phone instead drops rather inaudibly to the carpet.
When I phase back in
the cushion of my seat is moist and there's a beery odor.
I pick the receiver up off the carpet and listen.
"I'm still here," says the voice.
I hang up.
Go back
to work, but
it's no use. I start writing poems about mutations for the rest of the day
when the novel (s) come
they'll be everything that should've
happened and
everything that did;
everything I wanted, didn't have; everything
I did; everything I dreaded, everything
I loved,
everything I feared; what I still
fear; things far &
near; things I should have said;
what I did; what I almost did; what
I shouldn't have yeh
it'll be like masturbating, but in the end:
glory
(best part of all this statement is no one can say no and I
won't)
from now on I mail it in
seems like it's all gone. whatever magic was, gone; whatever's left, missing
that idling spark, a
map of a mind, my mind, my heart
magic. huh. a propensity for what's trite. music is a better analogy.
notes, accumulating notes,
what's missing is what was, before, a persona
what's left is not much of rage or striving; at least
I hope; best to take note from the Way which says
the wheel with 30 spokes is useful only in the empty space at center.
this page is that empty space; no, I am;
and if that were true; but
I still want it both ways. I cant lie; that's
what else you need
to know
just got back and I am back from where I've never been before and I've never been here more dog is barking marking time spent but not lent
the ring is the thing motherfuckers the ring is the thing
the ring
makes the past last makes the past fast come back with no hurt but alert save yourself I say from the past ten years
and ideas are never so filed when styled upon a fold such as this
dna.3 - one day you will feel me
The word can't contain everything that I feel and want to share.
I've got to figure out sound files to give it to you motherfuckers
no tomatoes left so I reckin better go get my guitar
and I would if onlyto share it with you
but that aint gonna happen today without no easy way to make happen so better to maintain and sit writing notes to myself and to health and to mental health
dna.2
sad that it came to one thing and happy that it came to another sad the thing that is no thing that is something waiting to be something and happy, the part of life you nourish, like a tree. and more this tree requireth more and more I shall give it and when the herb stirreth the herb maintain
I always know when I get back to myself because I feel myself whole. running through from past up till now. bad past and good. then you get this resolve like, every future from now on is going to make good past. then you think about writers as opposed to actors and athletes and other perennial human spectors and dreams and wonders and you reckon writing is a wise thing yes and a choice
'cept for I'm
[Johnny Damon ties score at one David Ortiz picking up his 114th RBI; 1 -1 Sox Tigers----------Here's Manny]
tides. current. digital hands. i got a fast dashbox don't make me spit at you
man
beep beep mmm beep beep YEAH
I never even much liked that song. But what an album it come from
I write it as code. My yard is like a prison, with freedom, plenty of it, and so: like the world
yikes this blog is a dead thing. but since it contains what I write, better leave it. I frankly don't have the inclination to start another blog, with new HTML, bells and whistles. no
the man came into the classroom and said now I'm going to show you the right way to write, sons of new england, clans of new hampshire
Listen:
or better,
Attend:
(but first: crack another beer:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
gray white is the day another page from my historyanother day of mystery and no mystery inasmuch as it's one of mydays
Aki
I hated all of them for what the man had done to me and I hated myself and when I saw how easily you killed them I felt a bright hope that you would then kill me. You were carrying me like a bride and your breath smelled like trash on a beach. There were crows in the tree and the horrible mangy black wolf dog was down and barking when you carried me out the door. I didn’t know why you wouldn’t kill me and send me down to Hell to wait for you there. I began to struggle and bray and tear at my hair and throat, wanting you to understand how badly I wanted to be killed. The black dog’s yellow fangs were slick and moving fast in the fading red light. My head was pounding. Your hands oily wet like the floor of a swamp. The black dog was barking and it was a terrible hot sound, the first I’d ever heard. You commanded him to stop, a low terrible snake sound to your voice. The fear clenched my buttocks and raced up my bottom and I felt the urine rush out of me and heard it on the ground. The black dog ceased to bark and I heard the wind, heard the emptiness of the world and you breathing it in. It was like being born. Your oily hands, cool and murderous but not for me not for me you had not come for me. I wanted to make you promise to kill me and take me back to Hell with you when you went back but I didn’t have words then. Only later would I learn that in a world full of demons you were not one.
Red
All I had eaten for many days was grass but at the final moment the grass had gone with the heat and what small bitter fruits had fallen from the tree I had eaten and these had ruined my insides. He toed me away from the tree and my eyes were open, the red sky moving over them.
I felt like water indeed watching Him walk up the road. Felt cooler and cooler with his each passing step. But at the touch of his boot the pain flared back into me as though the dust beneath me were knives. The collar of pain where the chain had buried flashed, my eyes turned back on. I snarled, I reared up.
And He smiled.
And when He knelt to cup his hand to my face I was going to bite and tear but He smelled like water and there was water in His palm. I lapped, and there was always water there.
I drank and there was no more pain. With His other hand he pinched the chain and the chain snapped and fell away, and as He drew the chain from out beneath the folded mass of rotten skin and muscle, there was no pain, but fresh blood spilled, and it was my blood. I kept drinking His water hand and as he passed the other hand around the collar my pain went away.
I buried my head into the crook of his arm and I smelled Him.
His teeth and eyes were gold when He stood up, and the fur on his head and around his face was black like mine. The red sky wreathed his head. He growled out long and low and my belly thrilled. Though I was hungry and desperate for meat. My belly thrilled.
When he stepped off the hill and started making his way down to the house was when I realized I could smell and see, better than before. I couldn’t remember much. I needed meat. I stared after him as he went in the house. I stood by the tree, the broken chain at my feet.
I waited. I looked after him.
Then I heard breaking sounds coming from the house, and I heard the shout of the one who had chained me, who had almost killed me, and I tasted again the arm of the boy his son who I’d bitten.
That boy now hung in the tree.
I fired myself down the hill.. I must follow Him.
He was there carrying with him the crying girl with the orange hair. I barked and she cringed and He said to stop so I did. She was fighting Him.
I wondered about his water hand. Then I went in the house. The floor was slick with the blood of the man who’d chained me. He was just barely dead and smelled just like before.
He was barely dead. I left it there.
Aki
You came on a night late in August. The twilight and heat faded from the air, replaced by cold air moving in from the ocean. The red sky died out into darkness over the fields, stretching still in its thick immensity to that ocean I’d never seen but which I vowed to see someday before I died.
I lay upstairs on burlap covering a filthy mattress, itching from bug bites and bleeding again in my crotch. The one window hung open allowing the night wind through because Carl had smashed through the window after I had bitten him.
It must be characteristic of our age for victims to develop a sense of humor even in the midst of abuse. Degradation is not always abuse. I frankly supplemented my rent with carnal favors. I had been beaten before by men and was not especially afraid of anything they might do to me. And so I had bitten Carl hard on his scrotum as he was filming and had laughed as he went pirouetting through the window, hitting it with his hairy shoulder, breaking it. There was glass on the floor. The thick warm air went over me, over the top of my collarbone filthy and over the tops of my freckled thighs. With my orange hair, Asiatic eyes and thick bones, I could only ever imagine what was thought of me, a girl.
I remembered that young me. I could remember feeling pure.
After that however I saw the men look at me as sexual and I didn’t care for them. I saw animals. I didn’t care for them.
I wish I could’ve stayed with that family up north at the edge of the mountains. Their house so unlike these rooms of depravity and stupidity and filming. Carl in his camoflage. The old lady smoking, watchful, watching him, me, watching the window, sitting, staring.
I awoke to the dry flaking face of the old lady smoking in the space in my bedroom door and saw glass fear in her eye and felt cold beneath the flat pale skin of my stomach. The smoking lady’s mouth a dark hole moving, informing. I turned my head to look out the window.
Red sky. The white ocean miles distant. Cool breeze.
Then rough bitch palms on both of my wrists, pulling me like anchor rope, up from filthy bed. She threw me down the stairs. On the way down I cracked my head on the banister and it felt like a drill bit in my temple and the drill bit was your finger as you caught me.
I turned to look up the stairs as you held me in your hot arms, up the short narrow stairs to see her face and neck, veins small erupting, her yellow teeth flashing in the dim orange of the fire you’d set. I couldn’t hear for all the screaming and barking but the force of her gesticulation caused me to turn in your arms and look left. You’d slit Carl’s throat and his head hung off. I saw his crushed ribcage and a dark pool at his feet.
You clamped your black hand over my mouth and drew me to you. I shut up. The old woman threw herself down the stairs and crashed into your hand. She fell to the stairs and did not move. Then we were out side and I saw the the boy hanging in the tree, his shadow against the red sky.
And you held me. I felt you wanted me to see what you’d wrought.
Aki
The only thing I can’t understand is how could you use my ovaries like pebbles in your mouth. Something to suckle while you waited for more apt sustenance. I admit I am not so young anymore but still I am all I have in this world. But in the event you are not the Devil (or even if you are), this is what I would like to know: How was I for you?
Red
I was almost gone when He came. The only way I could lay comfortably was on my side with my head resting at the foot of the apple tree on the scrubby hill back in the field. The tree they’d chained me to. They never unchained me since I bit the boy’s arm. The chain, tied and knotted, became part of my neck; it burned through my coat and buried in my flesh.
The pain in my neck and head was all that was left. I lay and my eyes felt huge as the red sky. That night the clouds fell in my eyes and I was awake dreaming that I was floating in cool water, a red misty stream.
I died when I felt His boot, the toe of it nudging my belly. It did not hurt.
cromby don't die
cromby don't fade
cromby ain't
going away
the cromby aspect is an aspect of wrecked
of decked
an aspect of luck of a Ford truck
of a fuck of an Aw Shucks sensibility
this is nothing
this is something
this is weed smoke in a can
the thoughts of a man
shit. fuck. drink. buck
nothing here but hands
positivity pulls you through
it's all cause I don't want this blog to die
there's too many blogs now and this is not too much
but cromby don't die cromby's crutch is cromby's
much
exposition; cromby's position
is
drunk funk better than no funk
better than no drunk better than
no post better than no post hey
even if this was ur-John Donne or ur
ah
I'm done:
those who know me: I embrace you,
I will never let you down.
it hurts it hurts and I drink to you and laugh because this hurt is nothing:
It's the end of the world
everyday
homeless song
G-D-Em / C-G-D
I'm going away. Where
I'm going, can't say now
for sure. But I'll be riding
someday in those fields
in the sky.
C-G-C-D-Em-C-G-D
I'm not drunk.
No, I aint going insane.
Forget that,
I'm going away.
You can say what you want
You can say what you want
about me:
Forget it, I'm going away.
G-D-Em / C-G-D
I used to be a king.
Courtesans kissed my rings
and my cloak.
You'd
better write home soon -
they're worried about you
C-G-C-D-Em / Em-C-G-D
Do you care that I'm drunk?
Guess what: I'm going insane.
But forget that, I'm going away
You can say what you want
You can say what you want
about me:
Forget it, I'm going away.
- bridge -
When you gonna write home?
When you gonna ride home?
Are you gonna ride home soon?
Yeah, I'm gonna write home
Yeah, I'm gonna ride home
Baby gotta get home
soon....
-guitar solo-
-repeat chorus-
Jeet Kun Do
Never had a bloody nose: you
never did. The world's a big
playground, yours, huh?
No difference in the poe moe
you fuckin hoe moe. Boy: see?
Who else would call you that?
Your Dad might not. I see:
Each now. Paralyzed. Join
the club. Walk on. Digital
itch. For fucking sure,
fella. Call me Bud. They
know me everywhere. I got
new form and no one gives a fuck.
So: form. Fuck bitterness.
Unfettered
mind. Hah. This isn't the poem I meant
to write, but it is. Sieved through
winter hands, not so broken. Anymore
Ask any stranger.
Tight, my page, I'll show you sometime:
for you,
yours, erstwhile sins,
mine:
Admit.
I say it to me,
I say it to
you.
You think I'm joking, and always
have
They Know Me Everywhere
5.
The first thing Billy thought he'd better do was calm the fuck down but that only took about a minute. Then he went and got a glass and drank 2 big glasses of water. Then he went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, showered. Got dressed. He swept the broken glass from his bed and from the floor around his bed and dumped it in the trash. He stripped the blankets and sheets from his bed and balled them into the laundry hamper. Then he went under the sink, found a roll of duct tape and two heavy-duty black plastic garbage bags. He removed the broken pane from the window, lowered the screen, and patched back the cold with the bag and and the tape. He hoped for no more break-ins.
He carried the broken window outside around in back of the trailer and leaned it against his shed. There he observed the shallow imprints of his brother's boots, filling with falling snow, leading back through the other yards and into the tree line.
Fine.
He went back inside and filled the tea-kettle, turned on the stove, made a cup of instant coffee. He left it black. He stood at the kitchen window sipping it, gazing out into the falling snow at Buddy's diminishing boot-track, feeling terribly calm, wanting a cigarette badly. He'd have to buy a pack. He'd picked the wrong lifetime to quit. Everything was so fucked up. He felt himself beginning to cut loose from caring.
He picked up the phone and started to call in sick for work, then thought: Fuck it. They were going to fire him anyway. He'd better find Buddy quick though. His brother was crazy but not stupid. Well, he couldn't even call Buddy crazy anymore. He knew people thought he, Billy, was crazy. Crazy was an inaccurate description: they'd had a bad upbringing. They'd both almost turned out OK. Maybe all this was just a phase they were going through.
Fuck it.
He felt himself again cutting loose from it all. Emily. Those kids. Buddy. Emily. Emily
He finished his coffee, went in and took a seat on the couch. All was silent. He engaged his thoughts of suicide again, left them. He thought about Emily, about the times, years ago, before any pregnancy, when she'd bring home another girl. Images of that naked past warped like a hunger now in his mind: sounds and smells and feelings, girls' names, candles burning, girls' hair moving beneath him, across him, too much of it. All of that dead ambigous past with its dead hopes and dead promises came warping back through his blood now. He could feel his heart beating.
He lowered his jeans, masturbated, ended up coming all over the fresh flannel shirt he'd put on. There was a lot. He'd have to change the shirt now. He sat there with his shrinking dick in his hand wondering if this tendency toward ruination of his might be genetic.
What a fucking cop-out.
As he cleaned up and put himself back together he could feel himself again cutting loose from everything and dropping from society, becoming his brother, essentially. He felt no anger. This scared him, because ordinarily, if he were right, he'd have wanted to kill Buddy - not be him. He'd never looked up to his older brother. Quite the contrary.
An image came into his mind of himself in his truck with Led Zeppelin on the radio and him on the hunt for weed, pussy, and alcohol: it seemed real palatable. They were going to fire him anyway. Maybe even prosecute.
Maybe he'd run into Buddy and kill him and then himself.
I better go get me some smokes, he thought, before I really do lose my fucking mind and do something else stupid...
and to think, I'm a father? A cop?
With bare realization he cut loose from it right then, finally, because it was all so ridiculous. Before he'd become an affront, last of all, to himself, he'd cut loose. Whatever he was, he was not to be taken lightly.
He stepped out of the trailer into the rest of his days.
Cryptic Alone In A Sad White Room
A long time or what seems like a long time ago I used to want nothing more than to sit and sing songs for you all night till daybreak
But that’s over forever. All I want to do now is sit with you all night beneath
the red moon bipolar
the flecked spill of eternity
red green and purple
the black stars waiting as do we
for the gods to sing, for the Aliens to come, for
the imprint in your blood when I touch you,
for the imprint in mine
when yours
sings into
mine
(no daybreak required)
To see you once is to love you once maybe twice but then to never see you again
Just like the Aliens when they come with their gifts of strange human longevity and then
I end up the world’s oldest man still in his thirties riding a gray horse, winding up into the dark cold and snow-streaked hills away from the killing sea
With the Internet and this dysfunctional parent age long gone and dead, I think aboriginally:
I wonder where she is now
(this is all pretty junior high school but I swear:
if I ever see you, I’ll kiss you, sure,
you know who you are
and I bet you
let me
They Know Me Everywhere
4.
He trudged up the steep bank of the river and across a short stand of woods, crunching through the frozen snow, crunching over sticks and small frozen trees and plants. He stepped out finally onto the frozen dirt path which was actually two narrow paths worn down to dirt and rocks by years and years of rolling tire treads. The sleet had shifted into a fine fast moving veil of snow, and it was so cold the snow seemed to shimmer like flecks of mica in the pale light of noon. The sky was a sheet of white.
He felt with his cut and and bruised right hand into the pocket of his corduroys to withdraw Billy's credit card. His hand stung in the cold light wind and snow. His blood had crusted dark red over a pair of short, deep, gashes in his knuckles. His right hand hurt like hell, his wrist was beginning to throb with a deep, ringing intensity. Pausing by the side of the path he sucked on the knuckles for a few seconds to get the taste of his own blood in his mouth, the warm coppery taste of it which somehow served to hearten him. When he removed his hand from his mouth the cold snow immediately pricked hard and bright at wound and it was a clean feeling, the cleanest he'd had in a while, in fact. He looked down at Billy's credit card, flipped it over, contemplated his brother's tightly scrawled signature on the back.
He would have to move quickly. Now there's a thought. For a dead man I've suddenly got a strange sense of urgency.
But I guess you're not dead till you're dead and till then you're still alive and living
He wondered if Billy was out and hunting for him yet because sooner or later he would be and he, Buddy, again surprised himself by feeling a deep abdominal flutter of fear at the terrible, perhaps mortal, beating or worse that he'd let himself in for now at the hands of his brother as a result of his actions of last night. As a result, in fact, his actions of now. For the first time since the end of the last long cold sleeting night of misery had passed he considered now the legal ramifications of what he’d done: breaking and entering, felony theft, and who knows what else in the book they'd throw at someone reckless enough to have absconded with a state trooper's, even a soon to be ex-state trooper's, service weapon.
fuck man I am fucked
and then he got a whiff of smoke odor off of someone's camp fire tracing out through the fine crystalline mist of the increasing snow and with that whiff the cold fear in the pit of his belly merged with another sensation now emerging from the back of his skull, from (it felt like) the base of his brain: a shivering, warm, creeping feeling like slender electrical fingers massaging his skull, filling him now with the old familiar upswinging feelings of strength and euphoria, of loquaciousness and capability. He knew what this was and what it meant and it did not matter because he would be a dead man soon but he was still a bit away from it, after all. And maybe, just maybe, there was a chance.
And then before the mask of the feeling could lead him to thoughts of the boy and of Emily he better get on my horse now began to walk quick now down the bipartite path of the frozen dirt tracks and toward where he thought he could see now the thin white smoke drifting from whosever fire it was. Yes, the smoke was coming from the old railroad bridge abutment down the road about 300 yards. He meant to see who and what it might be and he had the feeling now he used to get so long ago after he'd ditched school and had smoked out and gotten high, a centered feeling where only the present mattered, where all hopes and all dreams and all contentment resided in the present, in the right here, right now, the right exactly now
He knew he had to move fast though. He'd have to keep to the woods as much as possible. He'd have to think about borrowing a vehicle. And first and foremost he'd have to take care of his hand - as he trudged along down the track it began to throb mightily in the cold air. There was the drugstore and gas station nearby. He’d pick himself up a knit hat and some mittens. Then he'd go have himself some drinks and a meal and a cigarette afterwards before they'd get him. Or before Billy got to him. It was all the same now. No, he'd have himself a laugh or two and he'd maybe find someone at some bar to hear him out a bit and of course he already had his motel room, the gun in the drawer next to the bed where he planned to end it himself if someone didn't end it for him first. But never mind that for now. He'd have his drinks and his meal and his smoke, and who knows, maybe even -
He stepped up the three enormous, riven, snow-covered granite steps of the bridge abutment which was to their boy's minds when they'd played there as kids like some sort of barbarian fortress and there she sat in front of the small fire she'd built with sticks and some bunched up newsprint.
She sat with her knees close together, warming her dark thin hands. In the white snowing air the paint on her bitten fingernails he could see had faded to a coral color, pinkish, still faintly iridescent. She wore a gold turtleneck sweater under a short, brown leather coat. She wore what appeared be a man's khaki casual pants and they were filthy and noticably ripped at the pocket and rolled at the cuffs. Her purse, large and shapeless and of a nondescript navy blue color, sat on its side at her feet, leaning casually against the stone as though she were a woman waiting at a bus station. He observed the black patent leather tips of her boots which she warmed very close to the small guttering flames and the sharp, thin, scuffed down heels grinding into the stone below the bottom of the trousers.
She wore a maroon beret-style cap pulled down over her ears. Oily, velveteen black locks of hair peeked out from beneath the beret to brush against her the tight, faintly rouged skin of her high cheekbones. The cold seemed to put upon her tawny skin a gray veneer and she was shivering. Her full, symmetrical lips were dry and flaking beneath the faintest plum hue of lipstick mostly long gone, but her green eyes were hard and resplendent and glaring from within their artfully drawn edging of mascara and beneath her immaculately arched eyebrows. He could see, even beneath the beret, that she possessed one of the most intricately lined and complex foreheads he'd ever observed on a woman.
He stood there at the top of the steps, aware that he gaped, quickly trying to compose his features.
"Hi," he said.
She glared at him. She began to shiver. Her breath plumed thinly.
"Your hand..." she said, gesturing. Her voice was a low rasp.
He saw that his blood was streaming openly now down across his fingers and that it had stained his corduroys and their gray cuffs and in fact that it had seeped very slightly into the thin snow scrim covering the rock beneath his feet.
"I know," he said, "I cut it last night. I was,” He took a breath, forced himself to speak slowly and evenly, “I was at my brother's place when I cut it."
She did something with her mouth that caused her eyes to flatten out. The tense, hunted quality of her expression leaked away in that instant leaving only flat boredom in her eyes now and a dreadful weariness. Her eyes slid to the left and she looked balefully out at the brown cold slow-moving river which was just beginning to freeze.
"Oh. Well." She sighed. "That's too bad. You should be more careful"
Use your head, he thought, yeah right, he thought, Use your head, use your head, use your god damned head
"Listen," he said, "If you don't mind my taking a seat here for a bit, I'll help build that fire up for you."
She said nothing. She continued to look out at the river. With the cold now, seated on the bare stone as she was, her shivering was making a fast progression into shuddering.
"It's cold," he said, "I wouldn't mind sitting here with you and getting warm for a bit."
Her hard green eyes quickly came back to his.
"What are you going to, gather more sticks or something?" Her teeth chattered. She softened her tone slightly. "I think I can gather more sticks myself. It is cold, but I think you'd better not. I think you'd better," and she paused now, gesturing again with one long index finger, "I think you'd better worry about giving some attention to that hand instead. You're really bleeding. You're going to get an infection."
He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. "Yeah, well, you're right. But that's exactly what I'm going to do. Look, I'm just on my way up to the gas station now to wash up and then to the drugstore to get some stuff to clean and bandage this thing. Then I thought I could get us a little food and something to drink and if I can get my hands on a bottle of lighter fluid, then we can build this thing up a bit and really get warm here for a minute."
She stared at him.
"Don’t worry, I've got the money.”
"Do you smoke?" she said, speaking up fully for the first time. Her raspy voice was deep for a woman's and there was a strange, bluesy warmth at its edge.
He laughed suddenly, quick and low, four or five chuckles, and for the first time in a long, long time he felt and sounded to himself like the old Buddy. Yes, for one split second there he felt his life creeping back to him. I better not think about it
"Right- or left-handed?"
He thought she almost smiled.
"Well," she said, "This is a very generous offer."
"Alright, then." He blew into his hands. The snow was falling softly now in large flakes and there was no wind. The sky had darkened to a light, pigeon gray. "I'll head out. What do you smoke?"
"Salem Lights if they have them. But anything will do. This is really nice of you. You don't have to do this."
"I want to. Like I said, it'd be nice to sit and get warm for a bit. What would you like to drink?"
"Since you're asking, I would just about kill for a beer right about now."
"Any particular kind?"
"Bud is fine."
No, not quite, he thought. But shit, they know me everywhere
"Sounds good," he said. "I'll see if they have some wine too. I could really go for a nice bit of red wine."
"Mmmm," she purred. "You're reading my mind." She smiled at him now, full on. She really let him have it with the high beams. It was glorious. Heavenly. To be smiled at in such a way, by a beautiful stranger. It was better than any sex.
Don’t think about it!
"I'll be right back," he said.
Walking up the road in the falling snow, he wondered if she'd be there when he returned.
He hoped she would be.
He felt like his luck might be turning.
don't kid yourself
Then there was a commotion of footsteps in the woods just to his right and the cold blue fear came back rippling out from his belly, an electrical current into his spine
not yet now Billy you bastard not yet I'll kill you if you fuck this one up for me again you fucking cunt bastard
He cut quick to the right, out of view, and crouched behind the thick trunk of a pine, waiting to see who or what it was coming toward him.
They Know Me Everywhere
3.
Emily:
Try not to hate. Hating him won't help me. But I wish this anger
would subside
seated in rented townhouse condominium with cup of black tea and Camel cigarattes (for outside use only and remember smoke only seldom) seated in a beat up third hand chair (one of three) before a beat up third hand kitchen table procured at dump swap shop, seated with cup of black instant tea gazing out sliding glass door, gazing, wiped out tired, zoning out gazing at the snow and sleet mixture falling on the white ledge embankment that sloped down before and into oak and pine woods. Her 2 boys Nate and Mike aged 6 and 8 seated on the couch in the living room beyond watching a kid show on a color TV that has followed her everywhere now since her first, Mike, was born.
Nate with his once flaxen red hair now shading to a darker auburn hue, his bright hazel eyes and his father's curious monkey mouth. And sweet Mike with his secret black eyes and Billy's pale skin and Billy's sinewy catlike lanky coiled way too. Yes, she could see that
stealing an afternoon in the snow here because she can't reach Billy doesn't really care either this time really because of this angry (hateful) feeling that creeps in now creeps in always there some days more than others but especially now because Billy had come to her club last night and he was drinking and lurking and his black eyes had that flashing scaly look and as she finished one dance she quickly put her things back on and stepped quickly saying nothing to anyone, yes, she just about raced back to the DJ booth and said very seriously to Big Chuck who was yukking it up back there with Kris the DJ over their smokes and black coffees, she said to Big Chuck quickly and very seriously grabbing his big forearm and looking straight in his blue eyes, Chuck, Billy is here and I don't like how he looks. You better watch it.
And Chuck nodded now, not grinning through his huge wiry beard and she saw in his watery blue eyes that he understood her and she was glad that he was a good guy and not stupid because, of course, there had been a last time, and a time before that with old Billy Buck, who was tougher to tangle with because he was after all The Law, but also and more importantly a good and trusted friend to some
but then when she came out of the booth Billy was gone and it was just the darkened room with its colored lights and shadows and the endless thumping rap music and rock music and the drab guys with their drinks and their stares and their hairdos, cigarettes, egos, guilt, decadency, and their laughs a minute and in many cases their tawdry hopes, their lusting and their desire for her, toward her, near her, for what they thought she could do or worse should do for them with them to them
she had had her bright day full of hope and danger and lust and alcohol and drugs and it was gone. things had shaded blackly and she wished and dreamed sometimes that her life and her pain were melodrama, fire and blood, instead of this constant aching of quiet gray picayune tragedy, the mundane gritting machination of her own private pain all shot through this smallish city, taken hold and not letting go
The boys had been wanting a dog lately. And she wants to get them one. But how can they make that work? How could she make it work, fogged in as she was by the quiet, persistent madness of others so often thrust upon her – but oh and by whom? Or did she do it to herself, mainly, as she sometimes believed? Was there a ratio to whose fault it all was?
She could honestly say she wished she'd never known either of them. Never met them. She could remember the days before she'd ever heard of this used up dishwater town, ever knew of it, when her life was different her own fate still open. But those days were long gone now. But who I am isn't
the angry hating feeling had waned and now suddenly surged into wringing painful tears and she sat weeping, straining to be quiet about it, there at the table. I don't want them to see me, she thought, swallowing, suppressing any sniveling, peeking toward the couch where the boys sat in front of their shows inert, transfixed. still innocent.
She got herself under control. There were a lot of ways she knew how to be and one of the more useful ones was to be fucking tough as nails
She would have to call her mother to see if her mother could take the boys tonight. Clearly Billy was off now too. She reflected that there was really no difference between the two them, Billy and Buddy, despite what you saw on the outside.
She then thought that she could really use a drink and that she just might have one tonight. Then she thought
but I better not because then in that case I am just like them too
That is what she thought, and she saw that it was so.
She thought that she could really use a drink and then she thought that she just might have one tonight, just one, and of course she knew that she wouldn't because the two young ones were hers and hers only and they were innocent and she wanted them to be so. She was hanging on to herself now for them alone and only for them.
She knew Big Chuck had dogs.
Turning a page in her mind, she thought she’d have to have a conversation with him about that tonight.
It was good bye but
I was immediately reincarnated
as a virus
that wiped out half the species
and too as a radio wave in the resultant mass slaughter
straight cutting. fresh game.
face shots
on every fiend.
Hands black,
blasted.
Where’s my chrysalis world now?
tell me quick before the bilious shattering rain
dissolves my
anthill
away side
he left the game
misunderstood
what else could he do?
so he warped back feral:
red eyes,
glinting canine
night mouth
and a few years passed.
enough time for them old lives
to pass till some new
nightmare dropped fallow.
of his, into hers.
My courtesan
I have the gift of gab &
mad intercalary hands
glad sad mad bad:
mainly,
had to have
I aint never lose the taste of gash
when it runs so innocent
and has
up till now.
Right?
They Know Me Everywhere
2.
cold cold in the feet a creeping cold cold creeping feeling in his feet sneaking up his leg cold
and wet a hard cold sleet like tiny arrows ringing and zinging
Billy Tate woke and opened his eyes. His hangover was a Newton's Cradle with 80 lb. lead
spheres smashing against his temples, his head comprising the central globe.
He was lying at a skewed angle upon his bed clad only his briefs and a thin flannel shirt with
2 buttons remaining. The window, smashed, had arranged itself into a blanket of shards
strewn across his bare legs. The thin white drapes billowed out toward him with the wind,
which gusted at intervals to rattle the aluminium sides of the trailer.
The sky was white iron and sleeting upon his lower extremity.
He felt or tried to feel with his mind backwards along the tether of the recent past leading back to last night beyond the whiteout blizzard of alcohol that had finally put him down.
ah shit Buddy what did you do?
Then catapaulting himself in a panic up off the bed unconsciously brushing with both his hands the window shards from his thighs and splintering his palms with glass needles in the process no matter he stepped then ran in his bare feet across the broken glass and into the front room where the TV played and blared incomprehensibly bright images and loud screaming and laughing and his things had been turned over and stomped on. furniture had been toppled: newspapers magazines and bottles and clothes littered the floor as did his greens and grays his shoes his hat his belt his badge his holster
oh fuck
what Buddy had done was break in and ransack and where the fuck is my gun?
blind panic now on his knees sifting through the wreck of his things. he had lost a lot this past year: lost Emily, lost the boys,
and now he was going to lose his mind
because what Buddy had done was break in and steal his service revolver while he, Billy, lay passed out blacked out drunk on the bed
oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck
a whole universe of new possibilities opened up now and not one of them didn't seem like black and killing disaster, not a one
he thought: this is gonna end like Cain and fucking Abel. I wonder: which one am I?
They Know Me Everywhere
1.
the unerring brittle snow falling
away and down, the mass of it, fractious
cilia from a wavering, autistic God
It wasn't always this way
bipolar weather patterns, too much
warmth of winter makes for sickness. a suitcase waits
in a motel drawer. Bud Tate stands among the ruined oaks and pines in his Goodwill
Nikes and grey corduroys too small. Him: lingering by the frozen scrim of stream,
watching the clear water percolate
beneath brittle ice blue and viscous
the water flowing around and by the small hillock island with its frozen ruined trees and passing out into the river at large
medium sized river
named for some Indians
all the lives spent in this valley
all the hundreds and hundreds of years gone by
with another hundred or perhaps 2 to come
Bud picks a Basic one of 3 remaining from the soft pack in his pocket and lights it and there is ice on his beard and his heart is empty
I come back
the hardened hand my
hardened hand: where did I
put it? I put it in the freezer
where it froze on the Stoli. I
put it in a hole up on Naticook
Pond where a scrim froze
around it. broke my skin
and drew blood as I drew out
a Perch
every road in this town: a
cooling board for dreams
put to rest. yet all ghosts remain.
they live and breathe and walk
like me. I can't stop listening
nor doing their bidding
the Chinese bartender
slipped the info to me, scrawled on a
square napkin: all gone friends
were imaginary and
New York City
is Hell
I said OK young fella
now fire me up another Fogcutter:
I got miles more to go
and it's a far cry
till dark
