Texas Plates

Another long day. Nothing to mull over, or try to fix, just a long day. The sun set hours ago and nothing will be better today then this tall can I am holding.

I can see your skin between your shirt and your jeans; enough to put my hands on, to push them up towards your breasts if we are pressed full against each other in the corner of a dirty club/bar/parking lot/bed.

But I'm behind you in line at AM/PM. You almost drop your H&M sweater three times while trying to pay for your cigarettes. Camel Crushes... You say them like you've never bought them, like some poor kid outside has enough money for them but not the dignity to get Newports and save the difference for booze.

But you never drop the sweater. Because if you did I would totally pick it up. And you look briefly at me; me and my can of beer. I smile. You don't. Or might.

I'd ask your name but forget and the whole non-exchange would be ruined.

So take your Texas plates and drive out of my life.

This hasn't gone where it was supposed to. Parts are true. Parts are lies. Parts are shit. I'm just working on getting things out of my head. I need space for new things. Let us try this again. From somewhere else.

Your clutch purse holds very little space for

the 8 quarters

I am going to use to buy this beer that will just put me more into the spot in my head where

I

forget to tell you that

I would have probably thought that

you were beautiful had

I not been so concerned with if

you were going to drop that sweater and if

I was going to pick it up.

There. That is a little better.

Time to close the window

For the second time today I opened this thing and let it sit here.

I don't have anything to say.

Maybe tomorrow.

My own bearded lady

The only explanation for

that can of man's shaving cream sitting so

proud

on your shower ledge is

that you are a bearded lady.

That's why you are always

first up

naked in the dark

growing your hair out

and so proud of that flannel.

Or you are fucking someone else.

death and my feet still on the carpet.

1.

Two weeks late the phone rings and I think I hear

tears or mine just start to fill that spot in sound

where you know there should be sound but something involved just cannot hold their end

of the bargin that is grief

and news

and condolences

and a map to someplace where it makes sense.

I fall back on the shit couch made to a bed and let me feet hang from the end and they didn't quite touch.

2.

Me.

Bill.

Smirnoff.

Tonic.

This is what you drank.

This is what you had me make you.

When I couldn't have a voice.

When I couldn't have a space.

When I had to wrap my own presents.

Those fucking overalls never fit and it wasn't your fault and that was how it had to be.

That wasn't your fault.

This wasn't your fault.

But I sat there with my best friend and toasted and drank to a man fifteen years gone.

I let my feet hang from the end of the barstool and they didn't quite touch.

3.

Random bathroom before a set of songs I felt I had to rip my skin open to get out, I'm pissing and breaking pills in half for time and chasing with beer and I get in front of a mic and sing about how all of this won't ever fucking work and you smile from wherever you are. You always smiled from that chair that you needed help out of and you fell from and yelled and screamed and cried and lost something that you could never get back. I could map that room. All I wanted was that fireplace to burn. Something. It never happened. I walked out on the deck and looked into yards of families that were what television said families were and I hated them and now I know my family was it. My family was life. Me wedged in one of those chairs, feet hanging from the edge, not quite touching.

4.

Fuck

your

middle

name

if all you ever need is

pussy

pills

and booze.

5.

You were the ultimate Booth.

Your son and grandson rolled into some sort of superhuman with shaky steps and strong opinions.

I admire your taste

I admire your swing

I admire your contentment.

But that was after the clubs, the cigarettes, the pussy, the booze, the service, the wives, the crazy secret foreign country marriages, the surveys, the second (first) family, the lies, the damage and then finally the three times I saw you a year.

What I really admire was the way you pointed, while holding your vodka drink, at whatever was wrong.

You always meant those points.

And I always mean to keep my feet where they reach.

They are mostly gone. 1 & 2.

1.

Some television with knobs

two

sits in the corner and protects me

from the poodle that is going to attack while

I dig my nails into a carpet that runs

under a wall and into a house where

I

Alone

decide I need pink chalk bullshit medicine for my tummy

and the oozy insides of some long prickly leaf to dull the burn on my skin from being outside

chasing cars

little girls in skirts

and this boy who has a toy I want

and a nest of wasps that some poor kid would die from fucking with in the movies.

Don't make fucking eye contact with the poodle.

Steal the soap from under the sink and pour it into the gas tank of my lawnmower

cuz we all need some goddamn bubbles

and that girl in the blue skirt will only look at me then.

Blonde hair.

Big grin.

Boy muscles.

Pushes that lawnmower so fast the bubbles don't even fucking show up.

The blue skirt girl doesn't either.

She is mostly gone.

They are mostly gone.

2.

"What about your frustration levels?"

Buy a lunch you can't afford and steal

french fries from a guy you admire for reasons you will never

admit or understand but appreciate that his plan is a plan and your plan is not dying.

"Or you'll have an emotional breakdown..."

Let tears well up enough that if you didn't have glasses on someone would ask about them.

The glasses, of course. Not the tears.

Keep the glasses.

Avoid the questions.

"We're good on trips, right"

There was a video of a river from really high up with no sound.

Be that river.

Be that video.

Be that answer to the question that says which person you know will be the mostly like to..

"You call at the worst times."

You can count on your arm the things left from that very first

house,

You.

Some combination of money, love, cat poison, personal safety, old age, the environment, social improvement systems and your own bullshit ideals leave just you.

That house is mostly gone.

You are mostly gone.

A New Month

It is 6 in the morning. There is some sort of snoop dogg joke that fits in here, but it's not worth it. 

There are friends on a couch, maybe the angriest man I know, and this woman who wants nothing but to take care of him. I admire them both, for different reasons, and some of the same. 

There is this other man sleeping in a chair that used to be his. But he owes another guy money so it sits more than a hundred miles away. He used to nurse in this chair. Now he snores every twenty minutes. 

There is a birthday boy, officially joked about being a man now. And there is the woman he spends most of his time with. She is crying. Apparently things aren't the way they are supposed to be. 

I don't care. 

I sit on a chair without a back. The sun is rising outside. I can't sleep. I don't want to. I've spent hours waiting for fights to break out. For things to happen that someone regrets for seconds. For things we, myself included, blow up to be better, more interesting, more exciting, more important then they actually are. 

And that is my life. 

When you write, or blog, if you will, for so many years you forget that the only things that make you different are the words describing what happens. I'm loud. I'm obnoxious. If you know me you know what I did last night. 

But sometimes I want to be quiet. I don't want to be the couple in the other room. I don't want to be the guy with the emo heart exploding. I don't want to cry in public. 

Because it's hard to be on the otherside of that door. It's hard to sit on this chair and hear walls being destroyed or built up. It's hard to listen. It's hard to be. 

I'm going outside. I'm going to watch the sunrise and figure out how to make it through the rest of Wednesday. 

I'm not sad. 

I'm not lonely. 

I'm not warm. 

I'm not content.