Reflections of a Thirty-five year old Character Actor (a found poem)
I think, even though it's so awful
My first crush was probably on Hot Lips.
But do you want to know,
Seriously --
What was my porn?
Barnum and Bailey's Circus program.
A creepy lady.
And I --
six years old.
She was all sequined,
total camel toe,
some retarded hat,
a whip.
I remember looking at her
literally bossing around poodles --
rainbow-colored poodles.
"That's incredible."
It was an awakening moment
when I was a kid.
Hot Lips, in short order from there.
(thanks to JT, MLP, and Bust)
--
To e.s.
They said you were doing so well.
You showed up once, a few months before.
The same as you ever were
Shy-smiling with your hair in your eyes
Wearing that poor-fitting white suit.
White -- or more like cream?
It was an ancient, pitiful suit;
worn in the pants and knees
Jen bet Charlie that you'd split a seam
the way you sat hunched over your guitar
on the ratty carpet of Dan's apartment.
They said you were depressed,
as clinical as it sounds.
You didn't leave your apartment for a week.
When you did something else lingered in the air
amidst the cigarette dust.
Sara suggested we start checking all the familiar spots
between your fingers and toes;
like a criminal.
You put away your white suit and funny checkered tie;
the Converse stayed until the very end.
It was the last sight of you:
those knotted laces and the canvas fray.
That was the day that music died
There are no levees in Texas.
At least not where I live.
There as cheap wine though
Crumpled cigarettes, and a couple of your tapes, too.
No one spoke when you started playing again.
We tried to find a meaning in the lines;
some grand farewell or fuck you to the world.
We tried to find signs of life with all its meaning
to try and make sense of our own, existing confusion.
The next day, your mom came over to say hello.
Tucked over her arm was that white suit in a plastic bag.
I tried not to see the similarities between it
and you in the morning after
the EMTs wheeled you down the stairs.
She told me you had always been a good boy, a smart boy.
That it wasn't your fault, some failing of her own.
After she left we thought back to that night --
No one could have ever guessed that the stitches split would be yours.
Two stab wounds in the chest:
because it's one for the money,
two for the show.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Monday, April 23, 2007
7:30 AM
I sing to the motherfucking body electric, you think as you hit your third mile. By now, all you're running on is your will not to go home. There's something frightening about expectations -- his and yours. You don't know how you'll feel when you see him still tucked up in your bed, asleep like a child. He was right, he does look like a painting. A Klimt, he's lost in his hair and tipped in gold leaf. A Picasso, he has more angles than you can count. It takes you a moment to see him as he is. A Van Gogh, the bedsheets are swirled with the motions that your bodies made together. You don't know how you'll feel when you come home and he's gone. It's not an anonymous no-name encounter like everyone thinks you're only capable of because you're young, you're handsome, and well, most of all, because you're a man, too. You think this all as you hit your third mile because it just happens to be the first good weather day of the year and that may or may not be a fateful coincidence. March fourteenth, two-thousand whatever.
It'll take another two miles for you to give up the guise and go home to face whatever it is that you have waiting for you there. It'll take another mile for you to acknowledge that a part of you secretly hopes he'll still be there. Right now, you're just coasting along on aching legs with a hangover between your ears and sweat crawling down your spine. It feels like a finger. Tickling, trickling. You should have stayed in bed.
It was dark when you woke up for your morning run. Five a.m. comes early regardless of circumstances hinged to the hour before or after. It was dark and you were scared of the body that wrapped around you like a vice. He had that wonderful slippery, sleep quality that makes everything softer. The wrap of his biceps, the sour of his sweat. He had flopped onto his back, arms spread and waiting. He smacked on the dialogue of his dreams, but none of it was coherent. A foreshortened Christ figure, hands dangling off the bed and feet twitching together. You drew the sheets back over his waist for modesty's sake and kicked yourself for it. What's the point? What is ever the point though? You question this every day because you are a well-oiled machine that runs on necessity. Want is a foreign concept. Even now, after you've processed want into being, you wonder if it's worth it or if you are on the slippery slope towards wasting precious time and energy. You worry about the future because for once, there's something on the radar that might just stick.
Is this what you really want? And need -- How about it? It's been years since you've needed somebody. You've done just fine on your own and its dangerous to add in that variable of another body... No, another person with wants and motivations. Another person who you know needs movement and the constant rotation of new things to see and do. Can you possibly sustain the interest of someone like him? If you can't, how will you handle not being that shiny new thing? Will you throw a tantrum and dissolve into a pathetic mess like before? You don't want to think about it, but you've been here before.
That's when you realize that you've detoured and left the shaded overhang of the park. Your apartment is in the distance and you imagine you see his blinking white body flickering in movement from the window. A lighthouse signal. There are rocks everywhere and you're going to need it as you ease around mothers with their three wheeled jogging strollers and newly brought out patio furniture. You smell morning smells. Fresh coffee. The sugary tang of doughnuts and other breakfast pastries. Diesel fuel from the rumbling garbage trucks. Sweat.
You stop only to unlock your door and fling it open. He's standing in the middle of your kitchen, sheepish and holding a mug. In your absence, he's showered and figured out the mechanics of your coffee maker. He's wearing one of your striped towels like he belongs. Maybe he does. You look just as caught as him, red cheeked and trembling with the lack of movement.
"I can't survive without a cup of coffee and a shower," he explains. It's the small things that keep him going, you realize. Your theories and concerns begin to receed to basic, more manageable ideas. He is young and bright in his towel. His smile wraps around the coffee cup. It is inquisitive and twitching with a private joke.
"Good morning," you said and the words don't quite fit. Still, they're there and they're all you've got to offer.
It'll take another two miles for you to give up the guise and go home to face whatever it is that you have waiting for you there. It'll take another mile for you to acknowledge that a part of you secretly hopes he'll still be there. Right now, you're just coasting along on aching legs with a hangover between your ears and sweat crawling down your spine. It feels like a finger. Tickling, trickling. You should have stayed in bed.
It was dark when you woke up for your morning run. Five a.m. comes early regardless of circumstances hinged to the hour before or after. It was dark and you were scared of the body that wrapped around you like a vice. He had that wonderful slippery, sleep quality that makes everything softer. The wrap of his biceps, the sour of his sweat. He had flopped onto his back, arms spread and waiting. He smacked on the dialogue of his dreams, but none of it was coherent. A foreshortened Christ figure, hands dangling off the bed and feet twitching together. You drew the sheets back over his waist for modesty's sake and kicked yourself for it. What's the point? What is ever the point though? You question this every day because you are a well-oiled machine that runs on necessity. Want is a foreign concept. Even now, after you've processed want into being, you wonder if it's worth it or if you are on the slippery slope towards wasting precious time and energy. You worry about the future because for once, there's something on the radar that might just stick.
Is this what you really want? And need -- How about it? It's been years since you've needed somebody. You've done just fine on your own and its dangerous to add in that variable of another body... No, another person with wants and motivations. Another person who you know needs movement and the constant rotation of new things to see and do. Can you possibly sustain the interest of someone like him? If you can't, how will you handle not being that shiny new thing? Will you throw a tantrum and dissolve into a pathetic mess like before? You don't want to think about it, but you've been here before.
That's when you realize that you've detoured and left the shaded overhang of the park. Your apartment is in the distance and you imagine you see his blinking white body flickering in movement from the window. A lighthouse signal. There are rocks everywhere and you're going to need it as you ease around mothers with their three wheeled jogging strollers and newly brought out patio furniture. You smell morning smells. Fresh coffee. The sugary tang of doughnuts and other breakfast pastries. Diesel fuel from the rumbling garbage trucks. Sweat.
You stop only to unlock your door and fling it open. He's standing in the middle of your kitchen, sheepish and holding a mug. In your absence, he's showered and figured out the mechanics of your coffee maker. He's wearing one of your striped towels like he belongs. Maybe he does. You look just as caught as him, red cheeked and trembling with the lack of movement.
"I can't survive without a cup of coffee and a shower," he explains. It's the small things that keep him going, you realize. Your theories and concerns begin to receed to basic, more manageable ideas. He is young and bright in his towel. His smile wraps around the coffee cup. It is inquisitive and twitching with a private joke.
"Good morning," you said and the words don't quite fit. Still, they're there and they're all you've got to offer.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
( alt: we do not know all we know)
It’s not an unusual event to walk into a bookstore with no exact purpose other than to browse and pick up a book off the New Release table. People gravitate towards the new, intriguingly packaged novels and sift through them for the synopsis or some line that strikes. It’s easy. There’s no motivation or goal other than to view. Then it happens all of a sudden and it feels like magic. You find yourself holding a book that must be bought. There’s no telling what it will be – an attractive book cover, a perfect sentence, a compelling storyline – but you’re hooked and the book is quickly bought and packaged in a plastic bag.
Sometimes you even have no clue what the book is about or who the author is.
was: annales nomadique, a novel of internet.
I didn’t know if the book was a novel or a volume of poetry. It wasn’t until I began it that I realized it was a literal novel of internet. The reader is thrust into an informational sea and left to pick out points of interest and knowing. Its a great, episodic mismash of language and culture, story and slogan. There are bits of dialogue, of information, and blink-and-you –miss-it narrative. The book is almost visual as its read. One can see all the color and shape succinctly described within the text. Rather than write something of my own, I’m going to share the best thing I’ve read all week:
I’m going to tell you what happened, eh? Bobbie gets it into his head to go out in a girl’s dress over Doc Martens 8-eye Union Jack top cap black high boots on the second day of the Stampede, promenading through the pancake breakfast with a white Smithbuilt on his head, and everyone is laughing and giving him the high sign or the finger, eh, but all in good spirits, when out of nowhere this weekend cowboy sticks him once in the gut with a shiv and runs away through the crowd, people running after him, leaving Bobbie clutching himself and looking embarrassed about how the blood’s spreading through his fingers and across the belly of his chemise like a dark crimson azalea. RCMP guy comes back winded from running but with the cowboy in cuffs and asks, is this him? Bobbie cannot say by then so they roll him away on a gurney but just when they’re closing the doors this girl jumps in saying she’s his wife and plops down in the jumpseat next to him, and when he gets out two days later after observation they move in together, just like that; she’s the sticker’s by now ex-girlfriend, see, and she tells Bobbie the way she sees it is she owes him her love because of what her boyfriend has done, and they live with each other for three years like that until she has a baby, then they get married and have two more kids, and she still tells him how sexy he looked that morning in that dress and with the garnet feather on his hat and how the scar is like a ruby under the skin of his guts. (was, Michael Joyce)
Sometimes you even have no clue what the book is about or who the author is.
was: annales nomadique, a novel of internet.
I didn’t know if the book was a novel or a volume of poetry. It wasn’t until I began it that I realized it was a literal novel of internet. The reader is thrust into an informational sea and left to pick out points of interest and knowing. Its a great, episodic mismash of language and culture, story and slogan. There are bits of dialogue, of information, and blink-and-you –miss-it narrative. The book is almost visual as its read. One can see all the color and shape succinctly described within the text. Rather than write something of my own, I’m going to share the best thing I’ve read all week:
I’m going to tell you what happened, eh? Bobbie gets it into his head to go out in a girl’s dress over Doc Martens 8-eye Union Jack top cap black high boots on the second day of the Stampede, promenading through the pancake breakfast with a white Smithbuilt on his head, and everyone is laughing and giving him the high sign or the finger, eh, but all in good spirits, when out of nowhere this weekend cowboy sticks him once in the gut with a shiv and runs away through the crowd, people running after him, leaving Bobbie clutching himself and looking embarrassed about how the blood’s spreading through his fingers and across the belly of his chemise like a dark crimson azalea. RCMP guy comes back winded from running but with the cowboy in cuffs and asks, is this him? Bobbie cannot say by then so they roll him away on a gurney but just when they’re closing the doors this girl jumps in saying she’s his wife and plops down in the jumpseat next to him, and when he gets out two days later after observation they move in together, just like that; she’s the sticker’s by now ex-girlfriend, see, and she tells Bobbie the way she sees it is she owes him her love because of what her boyfriend has done, and they live with each other for three years like that until she has a baby, then they get married and have two more kids, and she still tells him how sexy he looked that morning in that dress and with the garnet feather on his hat and how the scar is like a ruby under the skin of his guts. (was, Michael Joyce)
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Part II
Paris.
Aemilia felt her nose pressed to some proverbial glass. She was the outsider looking in. This was her routine. Every Friday evening, the close collective would gather inside the neighborhood pub and occupy a corner booth. Bodies spilled out from the vinyl seat covers and filled loose chairs. A smoke screen quickly built up from cheap cigarettes with their quick burning paper and ash spittle.
“She’s apolitical,” Claude said with a hand pointing to her. “I don’t know how you can be with someone so indifferent. No offense, Aemilia.”
“None taken. And it’s complacent. I’m complacent,” she said through a thin grin. It was the worst response that she could have given. Adam’s arm was oppressive in its pull across her shoulders.
“Don’t listen to him. He wants to fight. Always with the fighting,” Adam snorted with a shake of his head. He said nothing about his girlfriend’s lack of ambition. It was better not thought of. His drive was to create. The sight of her kneading bread and sweating over the large industrial oven was enough to reassure him that maybe, in her own way, there was a form of the same want within her.
Claude was not so easily convinced. He could see past the flour in her hair and burns over her forearms to know where she came from. Aemilia was little Marie Antoinette. Fragile. Decorative. Slouching back in the booth, he sucked hard on the filter. “Maybe,” he said in a rush of gray smoke. “Maybe I just look at people like your girlfriend in wonder and think: You! How can it be that it is you who is on my back every day? Helpless as a baby. Complacent.”
“No one is on your back,” Adam groaned. He leaned in close and buried his nose against Aemilia’s ear. Arms wrapped her up and he felt her rigidity. It was his defense that seemed to string her tight. He watched the transformation in the glass that stood across from them. “Should we go? Let’s go.”
“I’m leaving. Next week. I’m going to visit my parents.”
Adam’s features creased with surprise. It was news to him. He stared at her and made no attempt to feign indifference or knowing. Aemilia took his pause to slide out of the booth and step over the tangle of bodies. He followed quickly after with coltish legs and jerky movements. He tripped over a bag, but caught up with her at the door. “When were you going to tell me?”
“I’m leaving Tuesday?”
“And it’s Friday! Do you have your plane tickets?” He opened the door for her and watched her slip out. Her head nodded. Yes, of course she had her tickets. “I’ll drive you.”
“Louis said he would.”
“Why are you doing this? Are you leaving because of me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aemilia said. Her tone was measured and decided. It was enough to make even him convince himself that every word she ever said was true.
Aemilia felt her nose pressed to some proverbial glass. She was the outsider looking in. This was her routine. Every Friday evening, the close collective would gather inside the neighborhood pub and occupy a corner booth. Bodies spilled out from the vinyl seat covers and filled loose chairs. A smoke screen quickly built up from cheap cigarettes with their quick burning paper and ash spittle.
“She’s apolitical,” Claude said with a hand pointing to her. “I don’t know how you can be with someone so indifferent. No offense, Aemilia.”
“None taken. And it’s complacent. I’m complacent,” she said through a thin grin. It was the worst response that she could have given. Adam’s arm was oppressive in its pull across her shoulders.
“Don’t listen to him. He wants to fight. Always with the fighting,” Adam snorted with a shake of his head. He said nothing about his girlfriend’s lack of ambition. It was better not thought of. His drive was to create. The sight of her kneading bread and sweating over the large industrial oven was enough to reassure him that maybe, in her own way, there was a form of the same want within her.
Claude was not so easily convinced. He could see past the flour in her hair and burns over her forearms to know where she came from. Aemilia was little Marie Antoinette. Fragile. Decorative. Slouching back in the booth, he sucked hard on the filter. “Maybe,” he said in a rush of gray smoke. “Maybe I just look at people like your girlfriend in wonder and think: You! How can it be that it is you who is on my back every day? Helpless as a baby. Complacent.”
“No one is on your back,” Adam groaned. He leaned in close and buried his nose against Aemilia’s ear. Arms wrapped her up and he felt her rigidity. It was his defense that seemed to string her tight. He watched the transformation in the glass that stood across from them. “Should we go? Let’s go.”
“I’m leaving. Next week. I’m going to visit my parents.”
Adam’s features creased with surprise. It was news to him. He stared at her and made no attempt to feign indifference or knowing. Aemilia took his pause to slide out of the booth and step over the tangle of bodies. He followed quickly after with coltish legs and jerky movements. He tripped over a bag, but caught up with her at the door. “When were you going to tell me?”
“I’m leaving Tuesday?”
“And it’s Friday! Do you have your plane tickets?” He opened the door for her and watched her slip out. Her head nodded. Yes, of course she had her tickets. “I’ll drive you.”
“Louis said he would.”
“Why are you doing this? Are you leaving because of me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aemilia said. Her tone was measured and decided. It was enough to make even him convince himself that every word she ever said was true.
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