Yellow and White Balloons

My car wasn't starting. So I cancelled everything. I was glad to be rid of all those plans. I walked east on Glen, past the car dealership and the church bell that had been being replaced the last two days. I picked out the cheapest schnapps at Sam's to tied me over till I got to Jesse's. I stopped at the park for a smoke in some shade. I hadn't broke a sweat in three or four weeks. The other Jesse was laying in a patch of dandelions. She always looked up at the sky. And she would use her hand as a visor over her eyes. She bit her bottom lip too. We used to share some friends. I lost all their numbers. I'm confident to say they lost mine too. They had all left and I thought Jesse had too. She wanted to know if I had a knife; she was going to go pop all the balloons down the street but left hers at home. I gave her the pocket knife I found camping five or six years ago. That day comes back to me every few months. But I don't miss Jesse. And I don't miss my knife. Or the park. Or Sam's. Or that car. But I miss those balloons. The car dealership never replaced them. It closed down two months later. I stopped carrying knives. And drinking schnapps. And day dreaming about old friends. I just want to see all those yellow and white balloons float away again.

Tuesday

Some paint had splattered onto my face. It must have been three days old. Some had fallen off in bed, wrapped up in five sheets to make up for the missing comforter. The box with all the other bedding was in the other truck. Which was with the new roommate crossing one of the Dakotas. I deleted the message before the details were processed. The gist stayed on my shoulders for weeks.

I've painted the mailbox three times already. In third grade I heard an Indian girl talk about how the color of your mailbox related to the type of mail you would receive. Past due notices and invitations to salvation piled up. I changed the color and they kept coming. But Yellow brought a garden catalog. And Blue a book about map collecting. I left the notices to pile on the ground and stacked the invitations on the wiper of my cars windshield. After the garden was planted, and the pictures of maps used to label the flowers and vegetables I painted the mailbox gold.

stacks of paper

The yard was big. Then they took a chunk out of it. And surrounded fence with single-family homes. They left the chunk there though. Eventually it would be shaped and decorated and admired. But for months it was dirt. And some of those days it was mud. Mud that caked my skin, covered my eyes, and kept me from slipping away.

The room was small. They painted it colors and made sure it would stay. There were locks on the doors, doors for the closets, spaces under the beds, but those things soon stopped working. I cut little notches into the carpet in a corner of the room. And everyday they sewed it back together and took a picture.

It was boxes. Then it was bags. Then it was trunks. And cases. And casts. And books. And characters that were supposed to be apart of your life. The bags turned into baggies. The boxes turned into coffins. The books turned into stacks of paper.

So I building a home of things I know. I brought a window to look out of and a mirror to look into. There is a door knocker to replace the bell. There are no doors. The floors are made from the wooden shelves that held books, cups, records, and trophies. The one set of curtains is from the map of the world my grandparents used to have. It is going to have a fireplace fueled by pictures I haven't yet thrown away. And a bar.

fingersteps

It is probably some minor chord. That is how all those start. The ones you pick third for the jukebox. There is the long one that has a funk bass line that you pick first so you have a good soundtrack for picking the rest. Then there is the second one. Which is the one you really mean. It is loud. It is mean. It is sloppy. It hasn't showered. It hates at least one of it's parents if not both. It is broke. It smells like the bathroom back there late Tuesday morning. It drinks coffee from the day before and smokes the butts of cigarettes from the neighbor's lawn. It is just there. And most of the time we are lucky it even showed up. It is you. In a song. Then there is the third one. With the minor chord. That one is the real you. But you don't tell them. You just let it play while you do a shot and that woman in the corner counts to ten.

second or third hand

I keep drug addict hours. When the sun is out my eyes are blank, half-grey, and surrounded with sweat. My nails are kept long to remind myself I am scratching at the surface. My fourth or fifth borrowed car collects parking tickets in front of my building. I found myself standing alone on the corner two nights ago. The power was out so I could see the stars for the first time; the first time from this spot. I yelled and shook and surprised a stranger that wasn't there when I opened my eyes. I take my glasses off when I smoke those menthols my roommates scatter around. I trace a tag on the ground with one of my bare toes, skipping over the a in the middle. The money is all gone. Yawns bookend floods of creativity and resentment. I find churches to say I used to visit, forge receipts for tithes I make in my head, and keep the pastor's card in my wallet. My phone battery dies every twenty minutes. That is why I keep missing these calls. I write the phone number to the house I grew up in on all these liquor store receipts and but them in a green whiskey bottle.The hall closet holds a wedding dress and two vacuum cleaners. They have all been used once. Waves of sleep crash into the building. Sometimes I can stay up long enough to catch the last light go out. Then the hallway is dark. All of my furniture comes from a sober living house a few blocks over. It all has to be changed when they get a new addict. The manager gives me a heads up of what will be on the curb when. I got a necklace that way once. It was taped to the underside of a desk. It has the name of a gentleman on it. I got his desk when he couldn't take it anymore and stood on his chair with rope. I didn't get his chair. I have my own.

10 things about this night

that song we used to sing
about those records she all scratched
played on my tape deck
for the first time
since I had all those records shipped down south to someone else's she


these little notes
i keep pulling out of my pockets
scratched onto pieces of receipt from taco bell
never feel like money but i keep holding my breath


i turned my bed into a desk
my desk into a tv stand for a coworker
my coworker into a pusher


my pupils are growing sensitive to the florescent lights in my house
in that they consider 
the feelings
fears
and shadows
those lights cast on all they see


when i
walk into
my house
with a bag that is brown
i feel
like that
kid from
parenthood
with all the porno tapes


instead of the beer in the freezer being left in for too long
i drank it warm


i told myself
TEN
before you go to bed
and that was hours ago


the skin is all back
on the tips of my fingers
in case you were wondering


standing in the desert
is only worthwhile
to see all the stars that remind me of her freckles


i used to write this
to the melodies of songs
that i did not write
but claimed as my own
sloppy handwritten thoughts on suicide

Couple Skate

Randy is over there, by the bathroom. You can hear him knocking his bottle against the wall. Some kid just asked him what it was like when flannel was cool the first time. He keeps kicking the ground with his boot and asking the kid if he had ever heard why it rains all the time in Seattle. The kid repeats he doesn't know shit about the rain or Seattle or why they go together; he just wants to know what it feels like to be old. But he draws out the O for way too long. And Randy chuckles, he isn't that old, but it was great to always be warm, to always be prepared to chop down some tree or pose with some paper towels. Randy's voice sounds the same as it did back then. I remember laying in the bed of his truck one night in his back yard. He barely smoked the cigarette in his hand. He was counting the number of times he had said Truman that day. Randy had given a tour of the school to out of state prospective students and kept pointing out the spots that the old president used to smoke at. Truman didn't go to our school and he probably didn't smoke. Randy just wanted to give these kids something special to tell their parents about. A girl joins the kid and Randy now. They all look at me and shout something I can't make out. I'm picturing what it would look like to recreate the cover of that first Clash record with them. The girl walks up and says Randy told her I knew a guy who could help her out with this problem she has. I'd ask what it is but I can feel her staring at my hands so I don't bother.

Mission

A few blocks away, over on Mission, there is a liquor store called Don's. It is ran by a man named Randy. I walk over there whenever the president speaks on television. Randy has a small TV set behind the counter and he puts the speech on it for me. I get a Styrofoam cup from next to the soda fountain and dump Christian Brothers into it. Randy doesn't like it when I drink in the store but he turns his head when the president is on TV. Sean sits outside chain smoking and drinking Old Crow. I get tired of hearing the same things so I sit on the curb with Sean drinking during the applause and laughing at the kid begging for change.

glendale

There is this tall building on the way into Glendale. I saw a gentleman fall from it tonight. It is the one on the right. The tall one. Before Glendale College. Before Glendale Blvd. Before the Glendale Freeway. Before the Glendale Medical Center. Before all of that there is the tall building I saw the man fall from.

The song on the radio kept telling me that life went on, long after the thrill of living is gone.

I heard a rumor, that up there on some desk, there is a note that explains all of this. Personally, I am hoping it is just a highlighted paragraph from a book a lover gave him a couple of decades ago. That would keep with the theme, the motif, and the whole motivation of the evening.

His coffee is still hot. There are little lines of steam forming some sort of tower to heaven, or at least someplace with more room to breathe. The picture frames have all been put face down. No witnesses. No explaining. He took his second favorite pen with him; no reason to keep everything nice to himself.

A red light blinks on his phone. On. Off. On. Off. On. Off. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

He left his shoes. Light brown. Untied. In a drawer in his desk. That desk with the note, or the page from the book, or the matchbook with the phone number inside; whatever it was that we decided explained all of this. In that desk, where the folders alphabetized by last names used to sit, that is where his untied light brown business shoes stay. The left heel is worn more than the right.

He must have something wrong with his legs.

Otherwise he would have jumped.

But I am glad he didn't If he had jumped, instead of falling, I might not have seen him.

I might have kept driving home, to lay in my empty bed, to trace a route on a map, to start a book I started a hundred times.

Instead I turned the stereo up, stopped for dinner, a beer, and sent kisses from my lips into the air, that they might find the perfect cheek to land on, to keep safe somewhere else.

chasing god

It is somewhere between 6 and 7 am on a Monday. I don't know. The clock in my car isn't working. I mean it works. It keeps time. Some time. But not here. I haven't bothered to change it. If it is wrong and I am late somewhere then I am late. Fuck it. Because I can't rely on my internal clock. I've thrown that off balance with pills, lines and stories that make me blush.

It is 6:34 am. Monday morning. I am driving east on the 101. There are clouds all above me. I am covered. But there are two spots, two holes far off in the sky that push me back to looking at the cover of my bible studies book in sixth grade.

See, god gets two things. He gets sun rays. And he gets early morning orange.

At least from me, that is what he gets...

Fuck you and the blog you rode in on...

(What do you want to know about? The weeks of quiet? The changes of opinion? The new drugs? And where they come from? Some pussy? Or no pussy? Or why it is suddenly pussy? Is that it? Or is it the new towns? Or the new beds? Or the conversations I keep all to myself? Do you want to hear about the jokes that didn't work, the faces that don't show, or the corners that now make up my days? Well fuck you.)

I borrowed a lamp from my old roommate. We haven't talked in weeks. And the lamp has one working bulb, out of the three, that I use at night while writing. I gave up cigarettes for a lay a while back. But she doesn't know anymore so I'm back to smoking. I pulled a fan from my trunk. It has been hot as shit the last three days. So I use the fan to blow smoke out of my window. My new roommates don't know. Most nights I leave the living room without saying a word. I retreat to my room. Some nights I wrap a belt around my neck to make sure I cum. Some nights I watch Japanese wrestling matches from the early 90's. The last few nights I use my phone to bore someone to death, or sleep, and jerk off to compilation videos of blonde women blowing black men.

I sleep for minutes at a time. When I am not asleep I am grinding my teeth, counting sirens outside of my window, and praying for some stray bullet to find my heart.

Because everyone needs an unexpected funeral.

I think of stories to write, anecdotes to explain away the last few paragraphs.

But that doesn't really bother me anymore.

beat

Once a week I wake up in the middle of a carnival. There are twinkle lights and dreams of elephants. A couple of times small bits of neon snuck out of their hiding spots to sing me to sleep. But I needed more than that. A clenched jaw and racing mind don't make a tired man. And still all those mornings I woke in that carnival. It used to still be dark; the sun not making any effort to get itself out of bed. Now the sun beats me to the punch. I heard it was to help the farmers. How? The sun still beats down on their crops and it still beats down on our souls. I lay beaten, exhausted, worn out but aware of her routine. Our routine. I shut off five alarms. One is actually a stand alone clock. It confuses parts of me they still exist. She climbs down from one carnival to another. I know if she will shower based on the numbers at the end of the stand alone clock. If she does I grab a bit more sleep and wait for the next step. Makeup. Or a hair appliance. Or scrubs. Or sneaky kisses on my sleeping forehead. I pretend to sleep but could draw from memory, with one eye, the curves highlighted by the matching underwear and her tendencies to stand on her toes. She says I keep her on her toes. She says it's good. Once or twice I've let her get to me and had to sneak out before the sun even had a plan to attack the east coast. I have no plan. I drink too much. I medicate too much. I worry too much. I lie too much. I fall to fast. I don't sleep enough. Not here at least. I've squeezed enough sand through my hands to know I can loose enough to build a beach. But I still keep one arm around her all night. If she slips away, I want to see it happen. I don't want miss it. Not again.

third time is the charm

Your mother called tonight. I couldn't care to drag myself out of bed. So I just rolled my naked body over and answered the phone. These calls always start out the same. She is bragging about some party, some man, or some place she went with her friends. They used to be my friends. But now it's just me in some room with a box full of dishes she was supposed to take last Christmas and a bed I bought to forget her. There are pictures and postcards for her in some drawer; I keep them there so I have an excuse to see her. But I never take them. And she never asks for them.

I didn't mean to laugh when we decided to kill you. If you read this then we didn't. Maybe we had a change of heart. Maybe we didn't have enough money. Maybe we sold you to the highest bidder.

I don't even know why I am telling you this. You don't exist. Or you do. But I don't care.

Because yesterday I walked out of work and it smelled like summer. It smelled like last year when I spent nights with either a beautiful artist, a soul sucking mother figure, or someone else. It was calm, still, warm, happy; the things I hadn't been until recently.

So I sucked in the smell and remembered how it felt to be in love, in awe, and in the grip of drugs.

And today it was sucked back out of me. Someone spun circles and crashed into a wall and as I drove by I saw the clouds of smoke leave their car.

And I knew I would die. And you would die. And me, and your mother, and those other women, and her friends, and my coworkers, and every other relationship I worked on for so long, they would all die too.

3:33 are you kidding me?

There was a band once, that I played bass in. The singer wrote this song that shared the title of this entry. He was up at some apartment that was either full of women, men, or both. He looked at the clock and couldn't believe the time.

This was almost 10 years ago.

I look at the time now and don't even think twice. I'm drunk or high or both. I'm working on finding a bed, finding a couch, or finding my own. Or either. I'm telling stories of lost friends, him, lost ways, mine, and lost hopes, ours.

The clock on the bookshelf is counting away my heartbeats; it's inching me closer to death. I leave and the counting stops. It moves to the next one in the room. Or the bookcase goes to a new apartment, a new room, a new hall. And that things holds books I've never read, from people I will never know, but leaves spots for the books that you gave back.

Those books sit on my counter and I have no space for them; I have no bookcase. But I'll keep them, and find a spot for them.

I got a new bookcase today.

I hope she has room for my books, my life, my shit, and me.

tiburon

Another mid-afternoon in some poorly lit watering hole. The sun shines under the door. Ray takes off his hat and props open the door with a barstool. This makes you feel less then you did. Someone in the corner is fishing for pills. Orange. The same color as Ray's beer, or what is left of it. The sweat on your glass keeps piling on. So you take the forty-three steps to another bar she has always wanted to go to. A farmhand sleeps in a recliner. Some lady stumbles and shows pictures of her family which might be missing, or she might just miss them. It's a blur of rum and cigarettes. You take her hand and lead her back to the first bar. Not the woman with the pictures, but the woman the small feet and a taste for vodka. You spin her once halfway between the two doors being held open. The sun reflects off the windshields of passing cars. You lead her inside and play a song she wants to hear. An old woman finds a place to hang her purse.

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.