Past is Fast

“Forget about it,” said Janine.

And he did. Fifteen years later.

The brood he’d stewed in the meantime was one hefty tomato.

“Fancy meeting you here.” It was Janine.

Ronald covered his ears, sat his coffee down, and ran out of the 7-11.

Throwing the car in drive, he propped his elbow on the passenger seat and cranked his head around. He ran into a car at the gas tank in front of him.

His stomach was a pit of empty space through which he could feel his soul sinking indefinitely. His mind wracked its various alternatives and an avenue through which to shift to any of them. No. And then the shock wore off.

“Oh my goodness.” His mouth was still open. He shook to and turned his collar up, looked for sunglasses. Nope. He stepped out to see. No one was in the other. The damage was slightly more than minimal and more then he’d expected, his mind still clinging to the last hope of no harm done.

There was sharp cursing and then, “Ronald!”

It was Janine.

How could he forget?

A Spring of Stank Autumn

Fallen got up and got cuppity cup. Who’s thirst was it anyway? You take the two dollars, divide it by anonymous, and no one gets parched anymore. Race ever won. Though. Haha. It is funny sometimes. You lay it flat it’s the ocean; the river in motion. How many times–

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

–do we rise from the bank bottom. Stank autumn. A burning leaves refocused, forged in the valley of the let’s thrice again–many times the charm–hobbling with arm open and heads on backward. Hark we are here and we dumb from the water. We birthed of the otter. We swim to the rim, but then what’s alma mater?

 

Glib.

Rib.

Eve has got dibs.

Fumble the wherewithal; cuddle the squid.

 

I would do it for forty dollars. Show me the gunny. Almost the win, but we did  it for honey.

 

Digging for gold and direction is buried.

 

Broth of Man

Francesca opted to not. She didn’t know what to when and who to how. And where? But she knew it was cool. So she said she’d have two, please. And opted all the hot ones.

“Oh and extra Jimbo on the side. The biggest, the bester and est.”

Whom and whose? Wither whence? Hup two-three-four. Hup two-three-four.

Stand up! In the name of sexual activities–prenuptial penile proclivities. Promiscuous perversions, you sweet and sour pussycatimus cantankeronomous. Rubber Rhinoceros. Grab the the bull by it’s hornblower, you pantomiminous polymered butter hole. Read em’ and weeps. Whip. Weeps harder! Buggard!

You sorry sack of seed something, summers after spring cling. You all the other instances of neosporin spleen steam.

Ouch.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight.

I counting all my dates. I sleep when eyes awake. I bitter sack and ice my back when runny tummy ache.

“Francesca, you too much TVs. You glue your eyes to your demise and grope the silver screen!”

“Aww moms–your probs! You Calvinistic sobs. Your mind should grow and wrap around the sheets of bob and bob.”

“Which way?”

The can! The can! The way the world began. We made ourselves and somethin’ else and blah blah–

Squeeze the hand

Broth of man

A Date

Her doormat said ‘Welcome’. To what? He wondered. Anything. Salts. Mice. Her daily doings of things. Did she spice up her food? What was her smell when there was no perfume? He knocked. Always, he erred on the side of too softly and he wondered if she’d heard, rocking back on his heels and exhaling, trying to look like he didn’t have a gun through the peephole. He didn’t have a gun, of course, but he wanted to look like he didn’t have one, too. They had only met once before and he was a little bold in asking to pick her up at her place, her apartment, this place where his welcome was preempted, pre-approved. It was five minutes away and ten to the coffee shop. They could walk, he’d said, and she said they would walk. After all, what’s a nice afternoon? And maybe that’s why she had allowed him to meet her. There was no car and she might have felt she could outrun him. Her legs were slender and her movements were very controlled. She looked capable of ducking from danger if evenly met, like she could hop a fence or two. Deerish.

She did not answer and Harold had to worry about seeming impatient or too timid. What if she happened to look out the window to see if she could catch him approaching? What a creep! Hatching his schemes as he stands on my doorstep, hadn’t he time at home, the insufferable fool. Oh no, mister! I forgot. I’m with my friends. Angela had a breakup and–well you know how things go.

He could knock again. Hold it, already! Who is this man that I come right to the doorstep for him? He’s right on time! Who expects a ready date on the dot? There are things to be done. There are necessities. Not this servant girl, Mr. King, sir. I don’t even feel like coffee. Just some water, thanks, and off home! It’s getting late. It’s my mother, you see. She’s over on Hammel and I’ve got to go. You know how these things go.

So he walked away. Where is he GOING, the LOAF! What am I? Barrel Bottoms? Did he get some HOT TEXT!? What? Does he need to pee? What a goph! What did he forget to let his parole officer know he was leaving the house? I don’t think so, you flake! I know how these things go!

He walked back and knocked again. He heard something. There was movement inside. He wondered if she owned cats, a rambunctious dog. He could be licked. He could be licked and laugh and pet dogs. They made it easy! He’s the good guy and that’s a good boy–that’s the spot, yeees, that’s the spot, you good boy! Maybe they could go to the dog park. He pictured himself bending down with a tennis ball, tossing it– overdressed for play, but they were having fun. What’s a grass stain anyway, when you’ve got a dog like this?

It was her. The doorknob–should he open the–

“Hi!”

“Hi, Marissa”

She opened the door and didn’t walk out. An invitation to him. Maybe this was done with frequency. After all, though she favored an attire more homely than most, she was not an unattractive woman. That was plain. It was written on the real side of her. Her smile and greeting and her true disregard for her motions themselves. They were of her and she whisked them about with complete trust and precision. Martin was different. Every movement pained up his spinal cord. He was rigid with exactly where to act and rest. She was fluid.  Maybe her homliness was a ruse. Maybe she lured and seduced. The ol’ bear trap. Quiet, unassuming men for her meat, her desire. They were timid, but, by jove! they got her off!

“Please don’t mind the place,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Martin looked around and saw a book open on the coffee table with some papers and there was a sweater draped over a chair of the dining table.

“What’s wrong with it?” he said.

She gave a light grufff, a feminine grunt of frazzle, letting her arms up and flap against her hips. It was stressing out, good natured and good enough to make him wonder where her trials were. Was he a relief or did he grate her? Where was she meaning to go and what were her troubles for?

“Oh, I threw some stuff in the hall closet when I heard you come. I forgot to not tell you it wasn’t like this a minute ago. Still kind of a mess”

“Fair enough,” he said. He smiled. She grabbed her purse. “Let’s go,” she said.

And they were off. It was just like that. The knock, the purse, the door. Why over complicate things? And now they were on a stroll. Officially. Walking beside each other–side-by-side beside–Martin weaving around poles and posts to give her room. The sky played nice and they talked openly. It turns out she loved this coffee shop. They wondered why they’d never seen each other there. She usually got to-go. Coffee and run. Martin would sit for hours with a window, a book, sometimes a laptop. She worked in finance for Ford and went to school. She would have herself bake and make beautiful things and as she talked, Martin imagined her flour covered arms working dough in the kitchen. He would taste her work and it would be exquisite. It would sweet and fill like the real sugar of her, he thought. Cakes, pastries–they would have tarts for breakfast on Saturdays.

Martin sold IT to businesses. He had trained to be technical right out of college, fresh off an English degree. It was all the same. It was money and there were words involved in some way. It wasn’t ideal. He would go to school too. He would write masterpieces over creamed cupcakes, powdered sugar. Together they could sweet the world and guide it.

Marissa walked up closer to the door and Martin reached to open it. Coffee. He wondered what the workers’ families said when they went home–pollinating java puffs, bringing hints of cream and a general sense of being pried awake. The place was empty. Every table to be had. The corner spot, the lovely coosh of the couch there, the low wooden table, a candle.

They sat down and he drank his coffee black. There was no steamed cream, no caramel in his fantasies, none of the sprinkled cinnamon, and he sat there, stared at this woman, and slowly filled his mouth with the hot, steaming milk of the earth.

 

I’m a Real Boy

What happens when the waters take me? The fluids. Just wet enough. When–ready! Like a sneeze. No, a rocket! 

Boooshhh!

Catch me. You can’t catch me. All you guys. My brothers. Where we find the–? What’s the winner get? We are exchanging! We are life. Rocket life!

All these sounds. Woosh! And these heart beatings. Liquid warmerings, running, gooshy–vibrato! The Airplane. Haha! I’m barrel rolls! I’m eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh! You take that and you catch my dusterings!

vvvvvvoooooooshhh!

Wahooo! HaHA! We’re cookin’ with fire now! Watch out for the wall! Left! Right! Left! Up! Move it!

Who’s the rotten egg? I am the first one. I am the king master manna! I can poke! I can poke poke poke! I can poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke–

Hey what’s a–

AYYYYYIIEEEEEE!!!

J&B Lawn Care Equipment Supply

Through the glare in his eyes and the horrible stench of the midday alley–hole of a meeting place–Benny squinted at the ghost of a man he had once known. “But you’re dead,” he said.

Jerry pulled a pack of cigarettes. It was full of feathers. He bit one and lit it with his flip-top, dropped the feather to the pavement. “The winds are changin’.”

Benny rubbed his eyes.

“You ever eat chicken wings, Benny?”

“Sure, I don’t know. Yeah.”

“There’s tiny bones and you just bite off the meat.”

“If you got somethin’ to say to me from the dead world, say it.”

“You can get them in buffalo, that’s spicy, whatever–hawaiian, cajun, garlic parmesean. For every mood there’s a flavor.”

“I know how to eat a damn chicken wing.”

“Bone in or bone out. It’s simple. One has bones, one is boneless. No bones. It’s like a chicken nugget, but better. It’s covered in sauce. And quality meat. Depending.”

The sheen of Jerry’s face–of his whole demeanor–flickered a rotten hue. A stench peaked and dissipated. The winds were changing. Benny could feel an electric screaming inside his lost friend, could feel the sizz-pop of sinews. Fire. The burning of an engine. Benny took a step back.

“I come from the harbor,” Jerry said. “Whatever. A fish family. My father was a clammer. And that’s where he met my mother. I didn’t eat chicken until I was fifteen years old, Benny. Fifteen. Eighty-five percent clams and then whatever’s in the river.”

“Yeah, I grew up in Brooklyn, so what?”

“I’m dead. I swallowed the bones. I don’t know what I’m doing here, but everything I do is weird. I’m dead. Or I was, you know?”

Jerry sputtered. His pallor spoke a fine film and specs of spittle flew without as he struggled with something inside him. He threw an open hand to an alley cat–

BAM! 

It turned into a lawnmower.

Benny started and stumbled back, arms waving, tripped over a trashbag and fell the bulk of his head smack onto a dumpster behind him. “What are you doin’?!”

Another cat, spooked out of it’s mind, bolted–reeewwrrr!—

BAM! It was a garden hose.

“You’re dead then you–!”

Another.

BAM! 

Weedeater string.

***

Benny woke up in the bed of a hotel room, a warm rag on his head. His friend was coming out of the bathroom. “Jerry?” He covered his face with his hands, “Those cats,” he said.

Jerry was sweating, staring intently. A wry smile and cough. Benny shook his head. His eyes regained their composure and his face began to embrace a note of higher calling. He pursed his lips and spoke.

 

“Do you know how many cats are in this city?”

 

Clank

They walk along the pier. The two of them. Hand outside of hand and mind with much of thought.

“Damnit, John.”

The gulls. The air–heavy and cold. The rotting wood–light and dying.

“The Children,” Alice says.

“Blight and crying.”

The sex. Yes. The everyday driving of motors. A herd with motive–how green the spleen.

 

He shrugs, “When in Rome.”

“You were never in Rome.”

He nods.

He brightens, “I was, uh–“, moves his hands so round and round, milling thought of air, “what do you call it–LUST! It was lust, Alice,” he says, “lustalice.”

Her glance is firm and sharply sideways, “You haven’t lustaliced in years, you dog.”

John Alfours, “Arf, Arf, Arf!”

The airplanes. The white cloud. The blue curtain of sky (behind of which the eye).

“A girth of woman’s thigh!” he says. Pants–“heh-a-heh-a-heh-a-heh!”

Alice turns to sea and crosses her arms to grab the bottoms of her sweater, bares her breasts.

Richard at the moons, “Arooo! Ar-ar-aroooooo!”

She slaps him hard across his tongued face.

“Dog!” she says.

 

They walk off the pier and turn to gaily skipping down the path. Hand outside of hand. Mind with much of thought.

John turns to her, “Of all the things, what do you think is your favorite?”

“Spoons,” she says.

They skips. John thinks.

“What a metallic answer,” he says.

 

 

Egesta

The water rushed. Carried him. Joe the water slide. The liquid luge. He did not wear his shirt anymore, like his elementary school pool days (such so delicate this button of bellyboy–his lifesecret) and his modesty ran behind him, shouting and waving flares down the tubeways (Iiiinoceeeence!). The great, orange circular tract bore him like medical wash, like expellent, his life shoot–injection spurring exit wounds, giving to get, good seed for a screaming, fresh-bloomed flowerbabe. Whooosh. A daylight to life. His feet first (doctor!). And Joe smiled in preparation of discharge (Earth to bathtowl, do you read me? Come in, bathtowel). And the slick, whipping whir of a way down now flushed with fresh air, a deep breath and the slapping sound of other fish–bubbled fizz spread bursting up. He twirled, open eyed and warble world. A calm, spin-glided flailing of new limbs in old water.

Joe resurfaces and Gina stands. Glistening. Marketing. Waiting–her modesty dead in a gutter somewhere (gavel bouncing–guilty!). She was a product of her livingroom, the brainchild prodigy of parental disconnect and cream-centered, cyclical music. Proud honor student of Disney channel teen suggestives and reality TV party girls that firebrand the slut ape straight there on his primal and sex-etched stomach. Siizzzzzzz-crckzzzzzlez.

And Gina ran ahead. Splashing and pulling bikini (Cerebrus) out the midst of her celebrated and vocal dichotomy (abandon all hope). The boy wanting, racing. Quite the scratch-post. Embraced. Hard up and rucking the rack sack for all the boys of come before and after.

As if he was only because he is and this moment made because it was.

Splash.

Excess and Laughter

And Timmer inquired: “Then please tell me sir–excuse me, sir–the proper etiquette for smultzing in the cabin’s boiler room.”

“You put it on your head!”

Excess and laughter.

Timmer’s face goes sour. Gets up. “You just right time. You just time, all of you. You’ll see! You’ll see old Timmer when the back door lies flat on ya skinknees. And the wholes all callin’ home ta fillin’ up yer daily karma starma with rancor rags at night. Spankerdoos. Scummo, skimmo, scumdub scrummo. Scrimma scumma yous.” He pointed his fingers with slight titilation, hip undulation, spook instigation. The witchcrafty move of ancient voodoo consternation.

“He turned us all to steam!”

Excess and laughter.

“I’m melting!”

Excess and laughter.

And Timmers, not quite yet ready to leave altogether, sat on the bench next to the beautiful lady statue and sulked into her stone-lace shoulder.

“Oh, Deliliah,” he said to himself and to her, “I’ve been cotton to an earthen tone, cuddle to a girly stone. Oh Delilah. My face is done with anguish and you are my only lonely throw-a-bone.”

Excess and laughter.

“Juhhhhhst look at em!”

 

And they took their liberties, each after the other in each their own turn. The peach of children spurned. Both adult and much unlearned. They put on their show:

Harry the Attorney honked his red-light horn the instant of green–Murp! Murp! “Go, you smelly schmucks! Two seconds to fecund me a hollllllla hatin’ rage!”

 

Jacob the Ballerina gave scolding looks to imaginary young mothers–“Oh if I ever. If I EVER! If I ever, never would have my children for lack of PerFECtion in my VAGinal regionistic regions.”

 

Larry the Restaurant Manager scoffed at sexual impediment as moral character builder–“It was just last week that I saw three penises over on Southbury St and they were the most natural things in the world. The most natural things in the whole boy world. Let ’em do their deedas, for the love of Old Jack Pete! My two girlfriends are just dyin’  to meet each other’s middles–down below the cumberbund for three quarters and a half (moan to all the wonderfuls)!”

 

Monica the Local Government Desk Clerk held her nose up to her lessers, which was everyone that ever existed–“They smell like pump and dumper. Where is my cream filling?! These people want to breathe the air in my space and I just hates the life out of ’em. Just look at my shoes. Just feel on my hair. You should not this and that and your children should only be such as so lucky to be as my children enrolled in the toppest, tippest schools and for worn the hoppest, hippest shoes. Unhand this world from filth of dirty hamster people that drive the roads and poop my pippy potty tops.”

 

Marco the Mailer, Jillian the Dragon Slayer, and Jim Bob the Door Knobber beat their heads all against the wooden wall to chant the chant, “I am center. I more money. I am center. I more money. I am center. I more money.” And cetera.

 

Jerome the Penny Minter foul noised and smelled the room, declaring to everyone that there was no God, “How in the smokin’ biscuit oven can one hand be SUPREME RULER over definite and expanding cosmos (all exactly calculated and all expertly proven by humankind) and people that so scientifically solve the ever-in-betweens and the never-in-bedont’s?”

 

And Lilly the Boonacycler spent the most of her time pissing on shoes and screaming death of chastity–“My pissed all screamin’ alla ya! Chastity is dead!”

 

And when Timmer left the room their souls all turned to flesh.

 

And living hurt like bleeding hell.

 

 

 

 

Westward Ho

Dandy looked across the plain. Westward drifters turnin’ Eastbound fast as they can. Spinning tight little circles–bodies in sharp cahoots. He started walking; Willy by his side. There was no reason for madness on a day like this, when the sky shinned bright like polished topaz, stretched and beaten to encase the world, to kiss the sea, to breathing free and–sffffffffff ah!–to come to me.

But the drifters–maniacs–puffed and hummed, spinning tight, their eyes bent on their path and their path bent to beaten down the earth and lay their bodies down to blessed numbness. They would go ’til they collapsed. Until the buzzards encroached upon their sweat seeeped skin and argued they were dead enough.

Dandy shot his rifle up into that sky. The drifters snapped and started West. They would not stop until something obstructed them, something like a fence, a boulder, the sea. There was a boat sponsored by the ACB and the coast guard would call and hopefully catch them before their muscles cramped or the sharks decided they were just about the bread enough.

Always west. Always west. Sometimes they would sense or feel something that would trip them up and turn them oil spill.

Almond eyes and cherry grins and there they go a spin again.