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forgive the paragraphs but i was in a prosey mood--
salvation is a team sport
-------------------------
i never understood the part about sin-- i wasn't about that, so much as the forgiveness idea, and i think someone put two and two together and came up with a pretty staggering sum. we are all broken, sure, but we are all so holy. no one wants to talk about that part as much. and i never understood why they make me out so scary, so dry. i'm a nice guy, got a sense of humor even. once i came back as a little baby chicken jesus, and sang a while. that saved a whole diner. you never can tell about salvation.
you gotta be really rich to buy the whole dinger
--------------------------------------------------------------------
she got pieces of it, sure, here and there-- the chrome fenders at a porch sale, the white walls from a flea market. her dad gave her the engine; the rest had long been parted out. an old boyfriend threw in a doggy-style "form over function" windshield. she had the map too, little colored pins flagging out a route through beautiful dangerous back roads. but you
couldn't call it a road trip yet.
i never get credit for the good things i do in dreams
------------------------------------------------------------------------
sometimes i am flying, and maybe i am trying to teach nena. but she says i am bossing her. sometimes i open those doors into those rooms in my house, the ones i didn't know about, and go deeper and deeper and find tons of really great stuff, but it just raises my real estate taxes. sometimes i save the world, wearing nothing but a chimera spandex suit and lousiana hot sauce toenail polish, but all i hear about is supermansupermansuperman.
some side effects may occur
---------------------------
life is a cherry pie, and you are a greedy, greedy girl, face smeared red like you have slaughtered a bear and feasted on it, raw, in the forest. there are clouds gathering, dark and angry anscestors, shocked at how little the family line has evolved. you wipe your chin on your sleeve and lower your face, not in shame, but toward the pie.
what's you real haircolor
---------
and who's your daddy, and is he rich, is he rich like me? i can take you back to your stolen roots-- hop in, don't worry, i'm licensed. look at this road, slick like a river, and you just waiting to swim upstream.
susan's resolution
-------------------
she was a teacher, but she figured out she didn't like kids really, she just liked stacks of books, and new pencils and the smell of chalkboards, so she fixed up her basement to look that way. every day for three months she sat there, writing equations like: s=w-l where w is woman and l is livelihood.
after a while she missed her paycheck, so she got a job at a cell phone store. she never looked back.
from here to duluth
-------------------
i'm a stranger to myself, so i travel. once in a while i bump into someone familiar. a smile i think i recognize, eyes like mine. in duluth they have a coffeeshop where the waitresses all dress like your mother. i'll get there tomorrow afternoon. i have a few questions to ask.
x-mas in hua hin
----------------
it was christmas in hua hin and the food was real good; they had phad thai with tofu, carved of sandlewood. sorry, john. but the real thing was: eye contact, bright and shiny so i could hardly stand it, and teeth big and shiny too, everyone smiling. no room for melancholy, people people everywhere, alters spilling fruit and flowers. i could breathe deep there, first time since the towers fell and everything went dusty. i'm coming home soon. i'll bring the shine with me.
stupid shuckers
---------------
my best job was detassling corn, best cos i could do it, and i don't do much else good, like spell or speak or even think. i got an eye for it. my hands flew like god, and i danced the rows, king of my own tiny village.
Overt Cooperations
---------------------
unnaturally kind, lena gave the shirt off her back. barebreasted, she nursed hungry passersby. arrested, she told bedtime stories to the old whores at precinct 6. for 12 magic nights no one complained at lights out.
a fall dream
this is not the name of this bar
-----------------------------------
that's what the sign said. the
one above the open red enamel door.
it was painted in black gothic
letters, with gilt flourishes,
and i stood beneath it, puzzling
the why of half-open doors
that seem to lead to nowhere, or
at least to places of self-denial.
inside, just three customers
arranged themselves on precarious
stools; two stared at the wall
and drank deliberately. one
prodded ice with a brittle mermaid
and glared at my indecision. from
the tinny jukebox, ella sang about
an old devil moon, while the keep
swiped a rag against the long slide
of counter, over and over
as if polishing up a old lie.
it seemed pointless to enter; why
go to a place so certain about its
own ambiguity? but it was hot,
the indian summer hunkering down,
so i dug for bills and headed on in.
the keep winked at me and handed my
glass, didn't wait for
my order: "we only serve bourbon
here; despite what some think, the
owner has little imagination." i
sat for hours, til the sun no longer
lit the dust motes and contrails of
stale cigarette smoke, wondering
why we sit so edgy in our lives.
a conversation with the mermaid man
proved littled solace: "i don't come
here to understand. i come here to
delay understanding." the jukebox
wailed hank, wailed johnnie, wailed
frank and mel. tired of sitting, i
took the rag from the unresisting hands
of the keep. "i'll take over a while."
he smiled, and headed out the red red
door, into the dark and secret streets.
laying on my back with the
sky for a cover
watching the cnn
satellites hover
watching for bears
eating some crow
there's no place
there's no place
like home you know
the canyon moon's
as bright as a dime
the best thing about the river
is there is no time
except time to work
and time to play
time to row the boat
time to hit the hay
a metor splits
the sky in two
i promised myself i
won't think of you
won't think of tomorrow
won't think of the past
won't think of the time
we said goodbye last
the moon travels sky
like a boat on the sea
never goes down
just shines on me
shines on me
and shines on the part
where the pieces hold a minute
before falling apart
staring at stars
means something's bright
laying still, i can feel
things may work out right
the river night air
feels so so oh
there's no place
there's no place
like home you know
(elsemore in)
"Turn that off!" Dan says to Flo behind the bar. "I can't stand to watch a man cry."
"Whaddya think he meant?" says Marv. While God spoke, he'd given his foot and the cigarette machine a break, but now he's winding up for another go.
Bob is back too, hoping the poetry threat is over, and wondering how the latest development will affect his chances of getting with Flo.
God looks up from his weeping, wipes some snot and tears with the sleeve of his robe, and says, "Bob, it'll be cold day in hell." Then there's static for a few seconds and when the picture comes back its Dan Rather in the newsroom. Flo turns it off quick.
"What was that last thing he said?" Bob asks.
"Don't fucking kill eachother." says Flo.
"No, right after that, just before the picture went out?"
"That was it, don't fucking kill eachother. Don't you get it?" She tops off his bourbon, and he stumbles trying to say never mind and thank you at the same time.
Dan says, "Dju notice there ain't been no shark attacks since September 11th?"
Dan is used to being ignored.
A man wedges himself between Bob and Dan to reach into the counter jar of pickled eggs. His hand is large, stained through to the bone with various automotive fluids. Bob watches, fascinated, as the man applies the squeeze test to several eggs before he selects one and then winces as he pulls his hand and the egg out through the tight
opening of the jar with an obscene squishing pop noise. Bob notices that the hand that was in the jar is slightly cleaner than the other one, which is used to toss 50 cents on Flo's counter.
Flo says, to no one in particular, "I didn't sleep well last night, strange dreams."
"I dreamed that I was at picnic, or it might have been a cookout. My friends were there. Lots of them. We're having a really good time. Dancing, eating, singing. Just being together. Then someone says, look up in the sky, oh my god. We all look up, and this big eagle is flying over. Flying slowly over."
"Sounds cool," says Bob, who usually avoids dream talk, but hasn't had much else to go on with Flo.
"But this eagle had something in its talons. It was a BABY! A human baby! In a diaper, crying for its momma. A boy, I think it was."
"They'll do that," says Dan.
"And we all felt so helpless, was the thing. Nobody could think of anything to do that might save that baby. Horribly, terribly, helpless. All of us."
Dan says, "Yeah, the best that baby could hope for is that eagle would take it home and try to raise it as one of its own. Even then, it would be pretty much fucked the first time it tried to fly."
"It was all so real," says Flo.
--------------
(lunaboca in)
Pickled egg man, silent til now, looks up expectantly at Flo. "Whaddaya think happens next?"
He wipes a piece of yolk off his chin and waits for her response. She stares at him. "No, really, you woke up, right? But if ya hadn't, whaddaya think happens, to the baby, to the people at the picnic?"
Flo continues making the same useless circles with the counter-rag, looks up at the sky, as if the eagle might still be circling there. "I dunno. It wasn't going to be good. No one could enjoy the picnic anymore. We knew
things were out of our control, and we didn't know what was coming, but we knew things were different now." She reaches for the Pall Malls, taps the box against the counter, extracts one, lights it. She leans over, so close to the Egg Man she could lick the piece of yolk he missed right off his chin. "What do you think happens?"
"Beats me. But I used to always dream I was flying. Not like that baby, no eagle. Once, twice a month I would come home so tired I couldn't remember my name, stumble into bed, and have these dreams. Where I'd be walking along and remember I didn't need to walk, because I could fly. So I'd sort of will myself off the ground. Everybody was always real surprised to see me do it. Thinking like I didn't have it in me. I wasn't smug about it. I always felt real calm, real right up there in the air. Give me another of them eggs, will ya?"
Flo looked interested. She gave him the egg, never breaking eye contact. Bob thinks: Shit, why didn't I think to tell a flying dream. Never had one, one good reason. She probably wouldn't want to hear about my recurring tax audit nightmare. Marv, seeing Flo's distraction, grabs her Pall Malls and lights up. He's a Camel man himself, but difficult times call for difficult sacrifice. He wanders over to the jukebox, which has grown silent, and plugs in the cigarette money. "This Magic Moment" leaks into the bar. Dan, at a loss for how to add to the vignette, picks up the "Portland Hilton" ballpoint pen and begins to write a poem on a napkin.
Alice says, "When I die I want to hear that hymn--you know the one, o Jesus I have promised"??? but I don't, and neither does she, and since dying looks like it's getting pretty friendly, I walk the halls of the Beaufort County Home, and look for a song for my mother-in-law???s funeral. Alice suggests Stella: "She knows everything, or thinks she does," Alice says, in her powdery sigh of a voice, and sure enough, Stella thinks she does. But she doesn't after all, so Stella sends us to Lillian, whose voice is like a ghost of a bird, and who can't remember, and who "doesn't love the Lord like I should; maybe you should try Emma. She's devout". So we do, and Emma remembers all the words, "but I don't have any breath in me uh-tall anymore, so go ask Lucille, she can pick it out on the piano". But Lucille has had visitors, and she is wore out, and looks it, disappearing into her sheets like water in sand. We give up. I go back to Alice and sing what I think may be the tune, and she smiles but shakes her head, and then there is Stella, in the hall with a portable phone, beaming like she's just found Jesus, which is not exactly the case. What she's found is her friend Evangeline, who apologizes for her voice, "because I am old as paper now, and just rose from my nap" but she's wrong, her voice is like glass, like honey, through the phone lines. She sings clear enough both Alice and I can hear her: "Oh Jesus I have promised/ to serve you all my days/ be thou forever with me--" she sings, and her song is a prayer that carries Alice to sleep, a soft place where she is gathered up and comforted.
some people are front door people
and some are back porch.
summers on it are good for
sipping whiskey from aluminium
tumblers, colored soft blue,
and green. there's a storm coming
if you're lucky, and it will
settle down the dust,
and your restless, restless heart.
a game of continuing a story. this one went nowhere fast. but I like it anyway--
lunaboca wrote:
Margaret sat on the hard plastic bench at the depot, studying her ticket as if it held the answers to some final exam. She wore an incongruous puffy down coat over her thin cotton dress. It was Tuesday, it was raining, and she had three more hours to wait. A Jethro Tull song blasted from the boombox of the boy next to her: "Skating on the thin ice of a new day". She looked at the gray enamel painted concrete floor, at her feet. Both were dirty.
Morgen added:
She'd left in such a hurry, as soon as she saw an opening, that all she'd brought with her were her memories--and even those were frayed. Six o'clock. She realized she was hungry, hadn't eaten anything to speak of for a couple of days now. She dug in her coat pocket, down through the hole into the lining, and finally fingered an old cough drop. Carefully she peeled off the sticky wrapper, placed in on her tongue, and swished around the cherry and menthol a bit before she swallowed. St. Louis seemed a long way off.
A couple of days later, Elsemore penned:
The boy with the boombox removed a flattened pack of Camels from the pocket of his jeans jacket, took out a bent cigarette, then held the pack in front of Margaret, his face holding no readable expression.
She said, "No, thank you", and he put the pack back in his pocket without a shrug or nod. Margaret examined his face while he searched for matches in the various pockets of his jacket. She guessed he was
probably close to Ella's age. Or seventeen, like Ella would have been. If he found the matches, Margaret decided, she would ask him for a cigarette after all. But he patted his jacket all over one more time, then gave up without displaying any annoyance, and put the unlit cigarette in his mouth. When he looked up, Margaret quickly resumed her examination of her bus ticket. The boombox was playing Bungle in the Jungle. She thought of a word her grandmother used to say quite often. Indeed.
three torturous days later, lunaboca continued:
The three hours passed like three days. Three sticky days. She watched the boy a while. she stretched and strolled the tiny cement porch of the depot, she stared at the gray sky from the gray window of the gray building. The boombox laid down its sorry soundtrack. The boy sometimes sang along. His voice was thin and clear, like glass. Occasionally he looked at her, still deadpan. She felt she should say something to him, but every time she began to open her mouth, he
would close his eyes, or look away, or get up to bum matches. She wished he'd offer her a cigarette now. The taste of the coughdrop still lingered. Maybe tobacco would be an improvement.
"Prepare for arrival, St. Louis Star" said a voice over the crackling loudspeaker. Why, she had no idea. The whole station wasn't much bigger than a living room, and the man behind the counter could have easily been heard without amplification. But she liked hearing it announced, and the sound of the train coming in, and her heart sped up some. The boy reached down, punched off the radio, looked her
hard in the eye. "You better get on." His spoken voice, unlike his singing tone, was deeper, almost husky, like he'd just woken. "Aren't you?", Margaret asked. "Oh sure," he said, "but it looked like you were thinking of chickening out." He winked. He didn't smile. Picking up the boombox and a beat duffel bag, he headed to the now-stopped train. Margaret looked around, shrugged, picked up her suitcase and followed.
nenawena chimed in the next day:
Following hard, Margaret steps on the back of his shoe. Enough to pull it off, revealing a worn-down heel and sufficient dirt. Without hesitation she slips into the first seat trying to conceal her embarrassment and neediness that balled her up against the window seat. A left-behind corduroy shirt pulls her further in to the corner and with her strokes on the soft lines she falls in surrender to the dream..........
From: luna boca
Date: two days later
Subject: "MOVE THE PLOT OR WE OFF HER" threatens writer terrorist group
AP WIRE----TOLEDO---
In the latest development of the very slow moving Margaret Plot Line, MilkBootBaby terrorist/artist "Gippy" announced via untraceable fax she planned to "have Margaret permanently downsized if I don't see some major plot development by Wednesday noon". The renegade former member of the Voodoo Pins Bowling League says she speaks for many in the underground. "I log in, this chick ain't moved off the platform in what, three days. Now she's sleeping in the coach car. I say someone better stick in a porno dream, a few interesting characters, or hey, how bout some PLOT for chrissakes-- or the little mousy gal bites it." "Gippy" and unnamed other members of MilkBootBaby are implicated in similar character assassinations in the recent past. "Yeah, you bet we did 'em", an unrepentant Gippy told this reporter. "I don't get why people get upset, though. It's not exactly a murder. It's a mercy killing." At press time, Margaret was sleeping and unavailable for interview. A fellow passenger identified as "Boombox Boy" refused comment.
---
this drew out long silent winslow, who said:
-----
Date: that day
Subject: Margaret Does Dallas
Margaret was just slipping into a dream, a gauzy world inhabited by Dick Clark, old grammar school teachers, strangers she had once stood next to in check-out lines, and her estranged parents when she was
awakened by the violent retort of a gunshot. Her eyes snapped open to see 2 men standing at the head of her car, big imposing men with swarthy skin, dark beards, and enigmatic smiles who stood holding
their automatic weapons before their chests with both hands. Hairy hands with rings.
They laughed. They kicked at the scattered pieces of boom box that lay at their feet, victim of their bullet of introduction. Although Margaret was scared and confused (how in the world can you hijack a train?), she also had to admit to herself a shocking realization; these men were the _sexiest_ hunks of unwashed male flesh she had ever laid eyes on.
---
this inspired sistergamer evelyn to jump in, only moments later:
---
Subject: frantic gunmen
Margaret's eyes snatched some intimacy from those of the smaller bandito. They exchanged a pleading that hung confused in the air.
The boombox boy was injured and although she was concerned for the boy's welfare, and although the situation pierced her with a keen knowing of how close is the boundary between life and death, Margaret felt some layers of tension release. She could feel Ella's smile on the side of her neck.
"Everybody freeze," the larger, hairier of the two gunmen shouted. "We're looking for a red duffle bag."
Margaret focused her peripheral vision on the beat duffle bag under the boy's seat. Pieces of the boom box obscured it from view.
The gunmens' feet echoed above the sound of the train as they hastily moved around the car. It was clear that they were frantic.
------
despite this dramatic turn of events,
alas, a whole week passed silently, then finally:
From: lunaboca
Subject: TRAIN WRECK--NO SURVIVIORS
and that was the end of that.
t??m?? on
t??m?? on minun ruumiini,
we are ruined men
ottakaa ja sy??k????
weary and spoiled
t??m?? on minun hattuni,
we are hard men
ottakaa ja
ruined and
painakaa p????h??nne
comfortably clothed
ja heitt??k???? naulakkoon,
and murmuring prayers,
t??m?? on minun taloni,
we are lonely men
ottakaa ja asukaa
ruined and peaceful
ja purkakaa,
and dreaming,
t??m?? on minun matkani
we are wistful men
ottakaa ja kulkekaa
ruined and naked
ja erotkaa ja palatkaa,
and sensual and sleeping,
t??m?? on minun toistoni,
we are stoic men,
ottakaa ja toistakaa
ruined and singing
ja jatkakaa,
and thinking,
t??m?? on minun t??m??ni,
we are restless men,
ottakaa t??m?? t??m??
ruined we are we are
ja pureskelkaa ja nielk????
and petrified and tremulous
ja sylkek????
and trembling
ja t??m??tk????
and being
elsemore wrote:
Worm to Bird
-------
Bird was feeling kind of high
like birds so often do.
Little worm, he said, I got to say
I've got it all over you!
Nobody called Charlie Parker Worm,
now that would be absurd.
People came, he jazzed their world
and the name they called was Bird.
When Bob Marley opened his window up
to let out a little smoke
no little worms was sittin' there,
twas 3 birds and that's no joke.
When boys get their first guitar and amp
they don't know such a word as can't
But their first chords aren't to Freeworm,
No! It's Freebird, by Ronnie VanZant.
My friend, sighed worm, was great indeed
what all them people done.
But just one thing in common now -
They worm food every one!
flo replies:
worm talks back
---------
'sides, said worm, the things i do
is not all chitter-chatter
screechy up in trees and such--
yourself i think you flatter--
you dig me? says the long thin one
'cos many people do--
i'm part of the movement underground
i'm hipper by far than you.
i make the earth move
i eat it raw
and earth's the richer for it
i put the outside in
and inside out
it's dirty and i adore it
you yak the yak and wing along
i'm cool and slide away
i'm at my best in the jazzy moonlight
you only hang by day
so talk your nonsense what you will
us beat ones say the least
that way we hear you coming
and don't become your feast
psalm to for dee three
i lured in a sleep-bard
i shelved his wand
he read to me, pills, water--
slipped me some keen disaster
then ignored me, bold.
he believed me, then read the riot act.
it was a clam bake.
yet when i balked at his folly, the swell of his chest
he cheered me, the weevil.
so bow out quickly:
thy potions, this wrath affront me.
i repaired to mable's before three
and made presents of anemones.
i appointed old fred to toil
--the company's slowest.
burley, goodness he's earthy, and swallows feed
all the way from the house.
and i feel swell, though the louse is a bore forever
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