future king

sometimes i want to go to sleep and wake up back home
on any old thursday
in the middle of the summer
turn on the radio
and listen for the weather;
because i am supposed
to play ball
in the afternoon
but the morning is humid
and smells like thunder.

in other news, the cat keeps talking to me tonight. run into the room. slide across the floor. let out his trademark "meeeeeeeewwwwwww" with a low, irritated glance. run out of the room. find small objects and put them in my shoes. just my shoes. nobody elses. i mew back, and he runs over to me, nuzzles my arm, and purrs like a race car. i love him for it. sir lancelot buddy, future king of the critters.

...supposed to be

I just want to be a country-bar guitarist who drinks too much whiskey and sleeps in the back of his truck. The simple life. I want the smoke to be so thick that I can't see them from the stage. Ghosts that rise from glowing ends of cigarettes, the place smells like chocolate, tobacco, and spilled drinks.

(The neighbor has turned her cat into a dragon. I don't ask questions, and I am not surprised at the midnight crashes and roars. It can't be much bigger than a dog, but I have no idea how quickly it might grow. I don't think she has any idea, either, because she keeps asking me if the landlord has been around lately, and if he's asked about her cat. He hasn't, and I don't think he will. You don't fuck around with an old lady who has a dragon.)

I just want a heavy white mug filled with diner coffee and a waitress who got up too early and stayed up too late. Her story is written in her eyes with green ink. She has callouses on her fingers. "You played good last night," she says. "I couldn't see you through the smoke," I say. "That's the way I like it," she says. I leave her all of the cash in my wallet and the lyrics to an Acuff-Rose song. I can still taste the cold edge of the mug, and the bitter coffee. I smile.

When he woke up, he found it hanging on the wall of his small apartment. He didn't gasp, and didn't whisper to god, and didn't stare. He made a pot of coffee, and sat down on the floor, across from the painting. It wasn't there they night before, of that much he was certain. He was also sure that no one could have put it there while he was asleep. He had only been in the city for a few days, he didn't speak the language, and the one key to his apartment was in the pocket of the jeans he had slept in. It was some sort of masterpiece, he was fairly certain of that. The paint was old, but thick, and it moved when he looked closely, like waves, and never stayed in the same place for more than a few seconds. It should have looked out of place there, on his wall, surrounded by piles of paperbacks and 78s, but it didn't. In fact, he decided quickly that he rather liked it, and that he was not going to tell anyone about it. That night, he fell asleep on the floor across from the painting. He dreamed that someone was knocking on the door. He awoke to find a young lady sitting, cross-legged, beneath the painting. She had been watching him sleep. The color in her eyes moved like the color in the painting. "Hello," she said. "I like this place."

music can't hold my hand

tip rhythm
on its side
and out comes crashing
deep drums
and cymbals shining
like god eyes
and the darkness
ain't so dark
and you ain't so lonesome
but maybe it's not a hand to hold
and it ain't what you want to be told
but once you close those eyes
your dreams are all that matter.

an unbelievable story

"I've done it," the old lady said, coming out of her front door. I had just gone out to check the mail. She had deep scratches across her cheek, and she was tired in her eyes. Her bones creaked as she pointed one long finger straight at me, turned her hand over, and beckoned me inside. Her apartment was a cave, ficus and wandering jews and night blooming jasmine clawing at the door, darker and darker the farther in you looked. We had often wondered how many rooms, and in what order they were arranged. And certainly there were shelves and shelves of strange objects- "Come and see what I have done," she said. She brushed at the cuts on her face. She smiled a strange, sweet smile. There was a light deep within her cave, and I stepped towards it. A sweet smell invited me to take a second step. It was ginger and cinnamon, smokey and fresh, very old and very new. The walls were indeed steeped in shelves. Green eyes caught the light. A very small wooden man on an upper shelf with emeralds behind his wire glasses winked at me, and rapped me on the head with his can. "Go on in," he said. "You won't believe what you are about to see!" He sat upon a stack of books stacked sideways, and appeared to always be on the edge, teetering above the herringbone floor. "Danton," she said and flicked at him with a short white stick. "He never shuts up."
"Look over there," he said, pointing at a darkened corner of the entry. "Look, look! Watch carefully, now-" He paused, took a deep breath, and rapped his cane on the cover of his book bench. Very little happened. "He's still learning," she said. "He's so old, I hope he gets it before-"
"Wait, wait!" he yelped. "Something is happening!" And indeed it was. The dark corner was no longer so dark, had gone from pitch black to a muddled grey, and a shape began to grow. It was a cube, but elongated. A tank. A fish tank. A red stone within began to glow. "I've done it! I've done it!" Danton stood on his books, rocked back and forth, and leaped into the air. "Danton!" she cried as he flipped head over heels, "You've done nothing but illuminate! You've done nothing!" He crashed onto his back, and the books went flying. "Look what you've done!" Danton rolled upright, and stared at the old lady. It was a fierce, intense stare. Perhaps they were lovers once. "Look. What. I. Have. Done." he said. She stared back, and readied her white stick. As she lowered it to his nose, the red stone burst fiercely bright, and filled the room with a warm light. "Holy shit," I said. But it was too late. The old lady had already turned Danton back into wood, clothes and all. The stone continued to glow. The old lady picked Danton up, re-stacked his book, and set him upon them. "We'll have no trouble from him for awhile," she said. Within in the tank, something had begun to stir.

tuesday gets roughed up

the bed is pages and pages
and red pens
and cups of coffee

it is too hot for coffee
but it is too slow
to think without it

the cat likes to walk on the pages
(that come easily
sometimes
without thought
but other times
like wisdom teeth
cracked and pulled
from their comfortable places
in my jaw)
in some way
his paws give life to the words
and if he disapproves
he lets me know
by licking them
until they blur.

The only way I have of explaining is by absorbing everything around me- the sound the fan makes during it's relentless oscillations (maybe it wants to be set free. or at least turned off)
the jacaranda trees the come to life unexpectedly and put me to peaceful happy sleep with their scent, the simple, edged rhythms of every song I've heard today, and the desire to put it all together in one single, understandable cluster of words. So here it is:

it is easy to love the sound a guitar makes
but
difficult to explain why
it makes the sound it does.
Is that my job?

the same moon as rostand

in a used-book store in san diego:

a tattered old copy of cyrano de bergerac
some pages gone completely
but the important ones
there
(aren't they all important?)
and i read it
and read it
and read it
and spoke through the rhymes
like a spinning wheel
on an airplane landed upside down

and i promise
i'll speak only in verse
and put twelve syllables in every line i write
and you'll fall asleep to the sound of my voice
under the same moon as rostand

books

from a used bookstore in Eau Claire:

san francisco mime troupe: the first ten years
footlights on the prairie: repertory theatre in the rural united states, 1900-1950

i want to go back for:
my life in the russian theatre
a history of the federal theatre project
an early biography of bert williams

apparently, someone had collected all of these relatively rare theatre books as they were being discarded (discarded!) from state universities. somehow, they ended up at this bookstore. and then i ended up there, looking for something completely different. there were many others, too many to list and too many to take home in my suitcase.

discarded
i only read books
that have already been read
no strangers to
hands and eyes
bent pages
and scribbled margin notes
sideways and upside down
we are all
discarded books
shelves and shelves within us
dirty thumbs and broken spines
organized in our own ways
subjects printed by hand
on white slips of paper
stuck between
vonnegut
and
alexie
to seperate
stories
from
poetry

but you still have to look
because the book
that you need
that you've been needing
for all of your life
is already there-
not under the right subject
and not legible
and sometimes not in english
between
a volume of the bronte sisters
and a misplaced collection
of r. crumb
a bedroom of pages
like skin
inked with letters
spilling the secrets of
the ground beneath our feet.