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 make some obvious remarks



autobiographical

confessional

but half made up



or else you make it all up



it don't matter



just dream your dream

so others can dream it again too

with their own visuals



it's been said before

over and over and over again



because it's true, and it's also

all you have to do

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

Been reading the stories of Raymond Carver again lately: http://www.whitman.edu/english/carver/carver.cgi

1. http://misterw.home.mindspring.com/index2.html



2. He is captivated by power and brilliance, so the Rat will always fall for the irresistible Monkey. He agrees with the clever Monkey's way of doing things and the Monkey, on the other hand, will be overjoyed to find the Rat on his own cunning wavelength.



3. http://www.thefengshuiconsultancy.co.uk/zodiac/year-Rat.htm



4. The Rat will be enchanted by his ingenuity. They will recognize each other by the dollar signs in their eyes.



5. http://www.thefengshuiconsultancy.co.uk/zodiac/year-monkey.htm