The fruits of my mind come from such sorry soil...
Clods of regret and roots tangled in secrecy are home and heart
to my wanton longing.
A Longing that threatens to inspire me forever
with cherries that blossom in the too-soon midnights of November.
That infinite pain.
The breathing ache.
These living haunts are what guide my arms to find you,
my budding muse.
To sit beneath the tree my wanting has planted
and bathe in the shade of written sensation.
The evenings are like bashful lovers to me,
under gentle shade and rosy cheeks
they cover up and crawl away
and I smile at each passing
like one smiles at
a clumsy child.
Though I am kept by the apple in every wolf's eye,
the evenings are so terribly lonely.
The satellite in my pocket
may as well be a thimble
for all the good it does;
the blank walls echo my own lonesome thoughts
and he is not here.
It cannot be put more simply.
My stubborn brain recalls this very hour,
his prominence and linen trails.
His nonflammable kisses
hula hooping the thin ring of bright white skin around my finger.
"Forever", he'd said
yet forever it's been.
In the stillness of it all,
I have kept count
of every absent moment.
In the stillness,
that maddening quiet,
I have kept everything just as he has left it.
With my brain sitting fidgety by a blinking prompt
and my heart
much further still.
Oh, deadbolt.
All of three inches long
with a pleasing THUNK
every night I realize
no one else is coming home.
With every slow, memory-laden thrust,
he’d put his mouth to my ear.
In hoarse and heavy sighs,
he’d say things like,
“Nobody feels like you. Nobody. Nobody.”
And oh, here was his favorite,
“Tell me how much you missed me, Ortega.
Tell me how much you want me.”
He wasn’t a total creep.
I don’t mean to make him out that way.
His junk was smaller than the average trunk
and he often needed reassurance
to Keep Up the good work.
Besides, there I was, a dollop of soggy wallop,
handling his strange cock
like a goddamn Life Straw.
Who was I to rain on his mildly needy parade?
“I missed you so much, baby. I always want you so fucking much.”
I didn’t have to be very creative.
Every so often, I’d experience a moment of sobriety
and I’d say things like, “Deeper. God, please, deeper.”
Frustrated, he’d pound away like a madman
and I’d chuckle to myself
until the moment passed.
It wasn’t a terrible way to spend the night.
Cloaked in his worked on arms.
In truth, I really did miss him, sometimes.
We’d dated each other for most of my young life
and continued to validate each other
long after.
"This is really good stuff. Hard to find, too."
My good friend handed me the suspiciously clean bottle
and motioned towards the other two.
"You can get em pretty cheap, if you know where to look."
Feigning wonder,
I inspected the bottle I'd been handed
with obviously ignorant eyes.
MESSINA HOF
CABERNET FRANC
PRIVATE RESERVE
I didn't know anything about fine wines,
but I had a sneaking suspicion that anything sold in a 3-pack
probably didn't sneak out of Italy's backyard.
Brimming with leisurely freedom,
he took a seat on the balcony
and fired up a cigar.
I always hated that cat piss smell
but few could argue with a man That comfortable.
I handed the bottle back to him.
He fished around in his pockets for a minute
and his shit-eatin grin soon nixed the "eatin grin".
"Shit! I forgot my corkscrew. Have you got one?"
Knowing damn well I didn't,
I took a lazy look through my patio screen into the kitchen.
"No. No, I don't guess I do. It's alright though. Let me have the bottle."
With annoying hesitation, he handed it to me.
"You're not going to break it, are you?"
I took off my shoe and placed the wine bottle inside.
I motioned for him to move aside and began
gently
pounding away at the wall.
With each assertive FUMP,
the cork popped out a little more.
FUMPFUMPFUMPFUMP
The cork was now almost completely out of the bottle.
I removed the cork by hand and handed the Value Brand back to him.
"There's more than one way to shave a pussy!" I grinned.
"Cat, Brit. Jesus."
"Why the hell would I shave a cat?"
"No. You Skin the cat."
"What kind of sick bastard skins cats?"
We drank in silence the rest of the afternoon.
It was probably better that way.
The bartender took my glass out of the microwave
and poured my usual.
Using my index finger,
I poked two holes and drew a curve in the foam.
"So, I'm single now. Crazy, right?"
He started to tell me about his collapse with his gal
and how uncomfortable working with her was.
He was nice. I liked listening to him talk.
Unlike most people caught up in a story,
he didn't use his hands much.
His face never really moved, either.
His voice, though. He had a cartoon voice
that reminded me of streamers I had on a bike once.
"But do you wanna know the worst part?"
The holes and curve were now a well-defined smiley face
sunken into the head of my best pal.
"What's that?"
With a glint in his eyes, he leaned across the bar and whispered,
"I've completely fallen for someone else."
I didn't like drinking until the smiley face disappeared.
It tended to take longer than I cared for
but it'd be murder, otherwise.
I looked up from my brew and into his young face.
He wasn't even twenty-one yet
and here he was, madly in love for the umpteenth time in his life.
"I tell you, kid. If young love could be bottled and sold,
people would trade clean water for it."
Prematurely, I bid my happy friend adieu and took a good long swig.
I loved the contrasting temperatures of the warmth on my lips
versus the cold in my hand.
"You got that right. Have you got time to talk for a little bit?
I'm curious to see if you can guess who it is."
"I'm heading into work in just a little bit."
He cocked his eyebrow and looked back at the tap
as though he suddenly couldn't remember how the drink got poured
in the first place.
He shrugged and wandered off.
Bars are too quiet on Sunday mornings.
I looked down at my beer
but my jolly neighbor was gone.
It was a lesson in patience
among things.
As I held out my tongue against the thickness of the aroma,
he repeated himself
a bit more sternly.
"I don't want to end up in your goddamn poetry."
They say that smells and taste are linked, somehow.
Well, I'm here to tell you
that even with the pungent swirl of
carpet cleaner and aftershave,
all I could taste
were his fruity Central Market beers.
"Friend, you're entirely too average to end up in any poem of mine,
but if you keep this chatty bullshit up, I'll waste an entire poem on you.
And it'll be famous. Your mediocrity will be famous."
Well.
I'm sure I don't need to tell you
how the rest of the evening went.
there's so much packed between those salted puffs
of selectively attentive corn husks
the search for oil is never-ending
so on nights like this
when I have done everything on the list
to stop the W from standing on its
stubborn head
and turning its values
into a needless equation for those in love enough
to solve it
when I have done everything to prevent the squeak
yet still
it rings out like the cry
of a newborn child
who cannot understand how many dreams
he has aborted
on nights like this
I am fucking useless
my body deflates
and I am not so brave
and as your truck fades into the promise
of a lubricated evening
I can only hope
that you'll be okay
The level has dipped below the label now.
Obscene abbreviations get trampled underfoot
like droppings at a Cowtown Parade
and somewhere
amidst this viscous mixture of
hashtags, heartaches and hard ons
is a poem written
especially for you.
You haven't got the ear to hear.
Your oblong mind
tends to spiral out of view
the longer I try and hold you still.
This poem is written for you, I say.
While you exercise your grown man rights
and shiver beneath the central breeze
I am here, punching holes in my tongue
wishing you liked me better.
You may not be able to understand this now
but I wrote this poem just for you
and the worst part about what has to come next
is that you'll tell me to do
what you always do.
Go Long, you'll say.
And I will.
So long.
I don't generally care to hang around
after the heated negotiations between Rock and Scissors,
but having been friends with this fellow for so long,
I didn't mind him wanting to smear a little queer
on the evening.
I traced my finger over the new tattoo on his chest
and wondered if I'd still be tracing it
after ol' Liberty had begun to rust.
"So you never told me what brought this on..." he said,
putting his hand over mine
and using it to scratch himself.
I began to pull away but
given all the disgusting things we had done to each other
just moments prior,
I decided to let my distaste for the gesture slide.
"What makes you think there's a reason more particular
than I'd gone on longer than I care to between orgasms?"
He scoffed and dropped my hand.
"Because I didn't give you one."
Well. He had me there.
"Is it so beyond the realm of belief that I happen to enjoy
trading tits for tats with you?"
"I guess...", he said through a long stretch.
I could feel his muscles tighten and, for a moment,
I'd totally forgotten who had given me the shaft
before my good friend was kind enough to give me his.
"Well, I don't know about you," he groaned, "but I'm ready to pass out.
You're welcome to crash here, if you want."
He adjusted so that I could rest in the crook of his arm.
For all the emotional things he never was when we were together,
he sure had spooning down to a science.
I opened my mouth to tell him I couldn't stay
but I remembered all at once
why I was really there.
There was a wet sack of potatoes in my apartment
stinking to high heaven
and blaming the dog.
An aging loaf of soggy bread
who preferred that I fuck anydamnbody
if it would get me off
his wood barrel back.
Without a word, I leaned over and turned off his bedside lamp.
The glow of his alarm clock seemed to solidify my actions.
He grabbed my hips
and molded himself to me
so that we were skin on skin
all the way down to my toes.
It had been a great many number of years
since we'd lain together like this.
The words that came out of his mouth
were almost as surprising as the words that came out of mine.
With the rocksteady knock
of a wooden metronome,
I sway to the beat
as I hold my bottle over the sink.
"It'll save dishes-", I think,
as I hold the pursed lips of the full bottle of wine
to the gaping and empty mouth
at the bottom of the chrome.
Carefully, I transfer fuel
from vessel to vessel.
Crudely, I imagine cream filling
and hungry tongues.
I get most of the bottle in before something breaks my concentration.
A ring from my phone
whose voice I'd forgotten.
An 800 number
looking for Nicholas Tijerina.
I spill the would-be backwash
and fill the slender neck
with water.
The first three swigs are disgusting
and seem to want what everyone wants.
The head of one
Mr. Nicholas Tijerina.
I never cared to listen to them bicker.
As they argued on opposite ends of the room,
I blew over the top of my brand new bottle,
chugging away until I found a note I could live with.
"You're fucking crazy, do you know that?
I don't know any other sane guy who would put up
with your shit."
I knew a couple.
Karen had been fucking them for months now.
I wasn't going to chime in, though.
Not until I got the wa-wa-waves out.
Elliott stood up and walked over to the piano.
He always drove his point home
by improvising a song
about how useless Karen was
and she would usually return the favor
on her ugly acoustic guitar.
It wasn't often that I sided with Elliott,
but in this instance, I'd caught just enough of their bullshit
to be able to pick his side.
I spit my mouthful back into my bottle
and waited for him to plop down on the bench.
He began banging away on the keys
PLINK PLUNK PLANK PLUNK PLINK
She took a quarter from her pocket
and began assaulting her strings.
BLUM BLUM BLAHM BLAHM
BLOO BLAH BLEE BLEE
He found a chord shape he liked
and I chugged and blew
until I found the harmony.
I couldn't hear what they were saying
over my own deafening fascination
but I remember thinking,
"I hope he stops soon..."
Like the Buddha who reluctantly finds himself each morning,
I am doomed to shed my moods.
More than that, they are stripped from me.
Layers upon layers of maternal dreams
and written whims stack
unevenly,
forming a sort of Dupable Colossus
where eyes and mind used to be.
A mountain mined by careless strangers.
The same strangers who once loved me enough
to give me a name.
Knowing nothing of space,
I focus on time.
What will it matter that I died out of love?
Do the hulkish hands of eternity really know the difference?
Is God so romantic?
Does the Wheel of Reincarnation hate butterfly kisses
as much as I like to say I do?
Come, find me.
Or don't.
You will likely be shed either way.
See how circumstance has shaped me.
Hidden horrors coveted corners of my youth like One who cheats at cards;
nightmares flooded our shallow reunions
and the dove pervert itself in shame.
See how the grass pokes through the snow,
trampled, frozen to the core,
but Rising. Growing. Leaning into tomorrow's morning.
Oh, heavy toll of learning!
The cloud became grey and swollen with confessions.
In adolescence, I discovered the mind
whistling a brassy tune. Words took shape beneath my heart.
My stupid, uninteresting heart.
Whistles became hums became softness became death bells.
The grass no longer needed permission.
It grew uncontrollably, forming an uneven mound on the face of my earth.
In adulthood, men have made earnest attempts at cultivating
the Unkempt Acre.
And some I had the pleasure of loving.
See how love has shaped me.
Unpunished crimes and a Hulking Tweety Bird
had calloused me to amorous whispers.
I had an ear to hear but no limbs to touch.
The height of love but not the Weight.
No, this weight came in the third year
and I thrust myself under it's Proof.
I had the words, I had the song,
I had lofty puffs of Manageable Castings taking their place beside the sun.
What word could come close to it's innocence?
How does one paint Taste?
But if Love was great, then heartbreak was Greater.
The flatness of my Greens became riddled with bunkers.
Chunks of missing earth,
divot
pivot
pivot
divot.
So was and has been the injurious pattern.
Today, nothing is new.
The land is unrecognizable
(except by those responsible).
Today, more than ever,
words take shape beneath my heart.
My stupid, uninteresting heart.
An abnormally thick layer
of laminated lime juice
has brought stinging attention
to where my lines are drawn.
The Kegs at the bar
make their way to the stage
and unbutton his eyes
with their elasti-tops.
Their hips strike a deal
with Newton's unarguables
and, for him, sway like
post-taser cows.
These are things
I typically ignore.
But there's a fight in my beer
that begs for any good reason -
a wandering hand, a blatant gaze,
a rogue gust of nipples -
Any good reason
to smear that oil
and paint a new face
out of Bud's Best Buds....
You Kegs are where I draw the line
And Soap
is all you're good for.
I must apologize for my uselessness.
The slow growing moss that lays thick on your stones
gives glowing green proof that I have stolen your rolling hours.
Like a shake unto an etch-a-sketch,
the careful parallels disband,
becoming tiny and unrecognizable.
So much until you are forced to forget them.
I must apologize for my craziness.
My flickering invented eggshells
like a 60's telephone switchboard.
More wastes of your time.
An assault on all your pigments.
I have done nothing for any of you,
whom I have loved.
Though you've all given me
something to write Home about.
There is a look of desperation in his eyes.
Even now, they are the frantic arms of Going Blind athletes,
clawing at every image
bringing them to his lips
and swallowing hard.
His Thirst for them is ravenous.
A misguided desire to be the last thing they see
before we all go blind
and our mouths become what guides us.
At any given time in these bars that I frequent,
I stand to learn much more
than any intellectual could possibly Hope
to fill my lungs with.
Moral code.
Social etiquette.
Flirty faux pas.
The bartender at my favorite haunt intrigues me very much.
He pours my beer and,
as though I'd asked,
as though I'd pried,
tells me the story of his first game of Chicken.
"This kid's dick was enormous. I'm not joking.
We stood there for 20 minutes and I could just Feel myself
getting smaller by comparison."
Most everything he says
lands squarely on the bar in front of me
and, as I smile at their abundance,
they begin to sublimate into the the ping of my mirror's pong.
Fucking is very easy and very boring.
Drinking is about the same.
I do it for the same reasons anybody else does, I guess.
Because I have no dependents.
Because I Have independence.
I am lonely and stubborn
and increasingly abstract.
And drunk.
Mostly, I'm just drunk.
As though it mattered,
as though he were Real,
he applied himself in cutesy clumps
with the wooden end of a palette knife.
He pronounced "cavalry" as "calvary"
and ran down a shortlist
of every girl who'd even been bothered
by the petiteness of his hands.
"A girl like me could feel like a champ in those."
I held up my hand to his.
Eclipse.
"A man like you could feel the same."
The next scene played out
like a crudely drawn flipbook (aqui>alli> alla)
and the last thing I'd said
is the last thing I'll say:
"There were two chances of me getting out of this alive -
Slim and None. And I think, you beautiful cartoon,
Slim just went out the window."
Ah, it is nights like this that
the ornate frame of your
sanguine disposition
cracks and saturates itself
with the oils of less learned hands.
Like a newly birthed aquarium fish,
I unwittingly explore
the transparent borders
of your affections;
breathing clumps of table salt,
I make Certain
the difference:
Rubber ships with plastic sails,
Neon treasures and
bleached white sand.
Not at all
the infinite ocean
that has claimed so many poets past.
Rather, a self-important shark tank
full of drowning ants.
A caustic kiss.
A lazy eye.
A baby bird afraid of heights.
Indeed, the thinness of your blood
is echoed in the telling walls
(rhythmic assurances
that you're quite alright
are unmistakable this time of night).
Indeed, indeed!
Your bifurcated predilections
no longer need my
ass-istance.
Let us put all loving aside.
Let the words turn back into dreams and let the dreams find
sure footing in our sober minds.
All I want is to Know you, friend.
To know you in the way shoving strangers know each other.
It is, after all, so basic -
throwing stones and shooting ears.
Though we lack the ability,
the opportunity sits like a golden goose atop a mound of still-being-written eggs.
Perhaps I am alone in this...
after all,
your window sill has been imprinted into my hands for over a year now.
"What good could come of it?"
I suppose you're right.
What good could come of closing this gap?
Reuniting lost halves of one mind?
Finishing a sentence the other had started?
Nothing!
We'd succeed only in Knowing It All,
and nobody wants that.
Forget I asked.
We are of the same mold,
halved and awaiting the hardening fire of matrimony.
We are the same under the sun,
and so much in love
under the rug.
What I want resembles a voice with the weight of raw marble
crooning into an old microphone,
slow and steady
like the Trinity before springtime.
I crave the recognition of myself in someone else,
to find someone with the same torments and demons
clawing at the same signs for addition hung around our necks.
My music...
My writing...
I want someone who doesn't need me to explain it to them.
Someone with the magic decoder ring already in Babelish bloom.
Someone who understands when I say, "I desperately need to remember this."
And you are not him, love of mine.
You are not him.
Everyone is out tonight.
Holding someone they love
or want to fuck.
Gulping liquids that make conversation easier.
Stumbling through stories that aren't as funny the second time.
They don't know what they're celebrating
but they know I'm an asshole.
"You should have come out, Brit."
"You never hang out, Brit."
I've grown so goddamn tired
of drinking and fucking
and telling the same damn stories
to the same damn people.
I'm ready to be buried, friends.
In sand, that is.
Just sand.