the loving-2

i can hear her. i. can feel her feet writhing through the blankets, toes battering against my calves and shins. debra uses her hands as battering rams against my arms and torso. i want to hold her through it all. i want to kiss her on the left cheek and whisper, 'all ok' into her ears. i want it to be ok, but she is going.

i tried once, when i was naive, to grab her to hold her, to try and soothe her. she screamed and launched herself from the bed. she muttered and spun towards the door but in the dark found a nightstand. she raced towards a freedom away from me only to trip only to moan and bleed in a tangled mass on the floor.

i never ask if she knows me. i don't want the answer. i know when the fog has settled in. debra has green eyes when clear and steel grey when confused. at night when she attacks, at night when she mutters and smashses against me i lay still, i absorb it, i try to slow my breath and become a ghost. try to become a piece of furniture that she can find some comfort in. she is old, we are old and tire easy.

i will sleep eventually. i will be rocked by her blows into sleep. the things we get used to, the things we accept by our loves or life partners. i will be rocked by my wife of thirty five years. i will be rocked until the fury is gone and we will sleep. her voice will still and her head will find my chest her breath painting my neck her saliva slowly staining my shirt. it is here in the quiet that i know love does not get sick just locked up and guarded abused but never killed.

down the hall in the heavy sleep of youth is our grand daughter. down the hall with thin limbs tangled in a hand made quilt she dreams. she is innocent. she has never waited or never noticed when she calls grandma to come. it is summer vacation and it is nearing it's end and i spend my time in prayer. i pray to god the storm will wait until she is home, back in school. i pray this summer is the great memories she will carry of grandma for life.

in the dark her head heavy and warm. i pray.

the loving

she was watching a show with her grandchild. her silver hair, once tucked behind her ear, lay lazily across her eyes. her steel blue eyes staring out into empty space. the child sat enveloped in the show in the dance of colors and song while her grandmother's left hand stroked her hair then stopped and stayed atop her auburn hair topped head.

the granddaughter is hungry, the granddaughter scoots from couch down the hall to the kitchen. she is going to make a peanut butter sandwich, she is going to make it with jelly and cut the corners off. the old lady, with her unblinking eyes and hand dropped next to her side is groping as to where she is.

i am here in the corner. i was reading the paper. i was listening to the sound of children's programming and feeling the sunshine against my cheek. i was peeking at the end of every paragraph to my wife. to the love of my life for the last forty five years. i know that something terrible is coming. i am slow to react, slow to accept, slow to invite in this new terrible future.

there is grandfather clock in the entrance. there is the sound of it's chimes ringing in the afternoon. it is summer in southern oregon.

she returns to her seat, against my wife, she returns with her sandwich and the jostle of youth against the skin causes my wife to restart, like a classic car. her fingers flex and arm jumps twice before returning to stroking her hair.

'isn't this just lovely?' she says to the television.

i return to my article but the safety is gone. i pray she holds until friday, until our daughter comes to collect her daughter. i hope she holds until monday when she will see her doctor. i hope she holds until we are both buried.

the pain we will must accept in the memories she will forget.

though i am behind, i make a promise. i will study, i will implement, i will repair.

there is a draft that causes her skin to goose pimple. there is an echo to the television. there is danger here. i loose focus, count my breath and try to will her hand to continue to stroke, her mouth to continue to smile her eyes to continue to stay clear but even from here you can see a slight twitch at the edge of her lips.

our granddaughter gasps and claps at the screen. she pushes herself from the couch and spins to the music, her sandwich flopping in the breeze. my wife claps and hums along throwing tender sideways glances at me. i fold the paper uncross my legs, lean forward and breath it all in.

2

the night.

1/11-the vomitorium

damn swordfish.

i closed my eyes at midnight after getting sucked in by this travolta movie...okay maybe the bottle of red wine did not help...okay let's be honest here, for a limited time i have all the movie channels at my disposal. so i started with gran torino which was very good, then this damn movie comes on another channel so i am hooked.

anyway here i am sleeping until four in the morning when my son starts crying. i discover that he wants to drink some milk. fine. after the milk all seemed good. ten minutes later he is crying again, this time it is teething.

teething is a terrible, seemingly endless torture. quick, run your fingers along your teeth and imagine that each one has to erupt from your gum, tear a hole in your gum line and slowly descend. worse than water boarding, i am sure.

thank god your brain does not start recording your life until three or four. so if anybody tells you they can remember things that happen to them at two, come on they are just flat out liars, like the person who knows who you are but tries to act like they don't or don't remember your name when you can see they clearly do. what the hell is that about?

so i am up at four, my son's teething wakes up his sister who wakes up the wife who has to feed the baby. so now, after all that it is almost six and while they have been asleep a good hour i am still here reading internet articles and getting that itch on your head and skin when you haven't gotten enough sleep.

i can't write anymore. there use to be a class, a real talent that rushed from somewhere deep inside and out the fingers. now i just slam the keys about, abusing them and sucking my teeth. there is too much that rushes forth drowns itself collapses thoughts into mud pools of fifteen ideas all drowning on one another.

i forget how to create proper sentences and paragraphs

i forget about words i should know, their meaning and use them in odd places. my sentences are to herky jerky, too long or abrupt. it seems the train i should have caught to fame and fortune has passed me by. now i work at the station as a bag checker and am slowly driven mad by the ideas i can not write.

you see it's a lot like cooking you have to practice. but long ago some lady kicked the shit out of me and salted the earth where my hopes grew. now i may be too old to go back and plow the sucker till the soil and try to bring back a healthy garden.

i curse my paycheck and house i curse at my flab belly and old man creaks i curse that i have no days off but when i do get a day off i curse everything i am around for the inability to fix it. the christmas tree is dying on the porch, what the hell i am supposed to do with that? i don't have the time to take it somewhere and i am sure the neighbors are gossiping about it, about how i use to mow the lawn and rake the leaves but now it lays in disrepair. i hear people and they say 'oh it's winter nobody expects you to do such things,' but i know they are lying. they don't want me to do it because it would put pressure on them to do something.

i should shop alone. i want final say. i want to go to bananna republic and buy a full new wardrobe but what the hell with only one day off and nowhere to go how much am i actually going to wear? secretly i want to always look good enough to have the option of finding a new woman. see that way it keeps her on her toes. she thinks other ladies are looking at me as a viable option then she won't go the way of frozen dinners and abstinence.

i am not happy with obama. i am not happy with the shit style of the health bill. it has no balls. i am not happy with the lack of jobs. if the republicans can find a half decent non lunatic to run i may be interested. i wish clinton would run. she has the guts to make a stand.

how can you send a bunch of young kids off to the mountains to die for something that isn't there? shame on him for that.

well it's not only national, portland should have a blood letting as well. i hear chris dudley is running for gov. really? come on. how can we vote for a guy to fix our problems when he couldn't solve his freethrow shooting?

thinking of the blazers let's get real. alderidge stinks for this team and is in a got's to go situation. pritchard built this team that has too many tires and not enough doors so he has to go. oden should demand a trade because the team can't keep his body healthy, and the fact that the training staff is still employed would bother me if i was a player. i should also add that c frye's success in phx is another reason pritchard should be let go.

think about this, if the oregon ducks would have gone undefeated they would still have been playing in the rosebowl against OSU. what does that mean? it means that kelly should only be measured by pac 10 titles. the winner and loser get the same check from the bowl commission and if there is no championship title chance than who cares if the ducks ever win a bowl game?

oh yeah, beaver fans should not be happy that their coach is happy with status quo. riley only has to make a bowl game to get a year added to his contract? that's redonkulous. i wonder if those low standards also apply to the admissions board?

as it moves towards 6 20 i am running out of steam.

i was so angry with fat rich white old suckers talking about the ownership of christianity that i made a shirt that strikes fear into the better than thou christian phoney sing along new age monster church bastards. www.socialismischristian.com i wear the shirt and feel vindicated by the power it exudes and the look on their jerk faces. eat it.

as my final flickers of anger burn out...

clear wireless sucks the big one.

peace out.

the comedian 5...

i use to work the graveyard shift at a gas station. graveyard is when the drunks come, the drugs come the shadows of human beings come. it was after i committed to wearing the bag but before i was fully committed to performing.

a joke

drunk: what happened to your face?

comedian: your girlfriends crotch.

there was always a police cruiser going by the station so fights would be quickly broken up. the fights themselves would always be blamed on the drunk or the doped up, who then were booked on a d.u.i.

the owner of the station was a semi rich asian. a first generation short man with hard slick black hair. he would rarely come around during my shift and if he did it was more to assure my well being than to watch over me.

this was during the summer when the nights were warm enough to stand all shift in. the burlap covering my face would cause the skin to sweat and burn. my uniform was of my choosing save the attendant work shirt which i wore over my pale blue suit. one must always be aware of what one is pursuing.

i remember my third open mic i heard a groan in the audience.

a joke

why are asians so good at math?

no r's.

it was afterward that i handed over my work shirt with a heavy heart. he knew it was a joke and not a true heartfelt position but there are just some bridges you can not uncross. i appreciated the help that mr. lu had given me and took the position that god's will be done.

it was late august and i was now left with only the comedian.

i am thinking of this outside the blue parrot. a traditional karaoke bar but a live mic and a stage is hard to come by so i take advantage.

'that was funny,' came a voice from behind me.

what?

i turn and pause for a moment to readjust the sack. when i can see and breathe i discover wanda smiling back at me.

'that was funny. i had never heard margaritaville performed so blue. i never even knew he talked about current events or why dogs are angry.'

ah, i never saw you. sorry.

'no, it was good. you want to come in for a drink?'

boy that sounds great but i...

'c'mon i came with some friends from work. it will be fun.'

it does sound great, really...

'i'm buying.'

huh, well i can't turn that down.

a joke

what do you get when you drink five irish car bombs?

to drunk to know the answer.

the comedian 4

a routine:

good evening ladies and gentlemen. well i am supposing that for you, for me it has been a shit evening. yes i have a sack covering my face. i dream of one day using a nice lace or silk head piece like those ladies in the middle east, but for now i am too poor and even this had to be fished from the dumpster. so now, my neighbors, think it funny to holler out, 'you stink like your act!' when i walk by.

i can't think anymore. i use to have long monologues about how the trees leaned or long meditations on the idea our always are always staring. matter of fact i was not able to sleep for three days because all i could think of was that my eyes were not shut just staring at the back of my eyelids. our body is fascinating. the constant things we forget. do you remember that you are breathing? or that your heart is pumping? or that even the prettiest girl you see has a place on her body where shit comes from? bizarre.

i use to have a lot of thoughts. i don't know if this is true with you, but now when i try to think all i hear are sports updates and television shows. someone screaming the president is failing the country is dying, someone screaming the last president failed and the country would have died saved the new guy.

when i try to imagine, i don't see aliens with huge faces and long pointy fingers waving hello from masterpiece spaceships before they blast off to whatever galaxy they come from. instead i see fat pigs sweating it out in the gym. i see a bunch of television actors in situations where they are all trying to be witty.

oh the life of the television show. we stand around like nothing bothers us and we out smirk each other while having a menial job that somehow pays a million dollars a year. that or we are every day in some unbearable drama our best friend has overdosed while screwing our spouse! or the neighborhood macho man has come to put my marriage in question while my husband suffers from cancer or my kid is handicapped.

the extremities of so called life, am i right?

i don't remember any of these things.

i can recall the bills come due and not having the money for that and food so i chose food and stuffed the bills until next month. i can recall the car not starting so my dad has to take the bus to work.

there are these magazine articles, newspaper articles and television reports about how television and movie stars are out of touch, how politicians are out of touch. well if your life is a fantasy and some point you begin to believe it.

i have always wondered about actors. i have always wondered if they are nothing. if they can become characters because there is no there there to stop the growth. is today's cinema star really a bore who can thrill you as spartacus because he has no character of his own to bleed through?

i think what it comes down to, right, like those jerks that come on and talk about the mysteries of religion as if they have the answers! ha! two thousand years and suddenly they were inspired with the truth that you can obtain in a book or movie series. this is is a side track but one moment. how can you trust anybody to lead you in faith that has so many material things? that has a church built of the finest things? a desert faith practice in the dirt seems a little whored out in the american palaces of more preached from two thousand dollar suits or sang from a twenty thousand dollar sound system.

off track and my time is running low, but what i think it comes down to is that life is survivable. it is not hard, it is not easy but just a disease we live with. go pursue your dreams or stay in your rut or do what ever there are no other answers but what your working on and if times seem to tough to bear pass gas, that always seems to make me laugh.

good night.

the comedian 3

i spilled soup on my pants while working on a bit about grandparents. my blue performing slacks now have a line of white that looks like i visit jack booths. i have had an awful time of keeping this sack on my face. it slides to one side, making me appear lazy and disinterested. it covers my eyes so i can't see and run into things, the mouth hole closes so i almost suffocate and the causes me to sweat profusely.

my mother called to talk about this:

'how are you feeling?'

fine

'you know there is a cold going around. are you wearing a scarf?'

no

'i sent one out, did you get it?'

yeah

'well don't complain to me if you get sick.'

...

'how are things going with ____?'

we decided to break up

'she was a nice girl.'

...

'when are you going to give me some grandchildren?'

here i can hear my father from the back ground.

'first he needs a job. then you get the woman, then you get the kids. nobody wants to commit to a bum.'

'harry, you shush, he has a job. he's a...what do you call it?'

comedian

'comedian, thank you.'

'a comedian? hah! now robin williams that is a comedian. a comedian? i never heard of a famous comedian living in portland. they all live in new york or los angeles.'

'well there can always be first one.'

...

'you know jerry is doing well selling insurance.'

'harry, he doesn't want to sell insurance, do you? but really, he is doing well. we could call over there. i saw he was driving a new s.u.v and you should see his wife, beautiful...'

it is about here i place the phone on the ground and pace my studio floor staring out at the city's downtown streets watching overcoats and umbrellas tread through weather to work.

i lay down and tongue the ruined spots of my mouth. i watch the light trace itself across the ceiling highlighting the water stains and dust. through the buzz of heater i can hear my mother go on, she is talking about my sister and her success in the film industry. she is talking about my brother and his awards from the banking industry. i hear of beautiful children and gorgeous new houses. then there is silence.

i pick up the receiver and can hear her breathing. it is the breath of someone trying not to reveal they are crying.

'i just want you to be happy.'

...

'i do not why you decided to do what you've done. my beautiful boy. i...'

'say goodbye darlene.'

'i love you honey.'

goodbye.

i hang up the receiver.

a joke

i have these two friends.

a joke

i have these two gay friends who told me they wanted to get married. i asked 'why?' to which they responded, 'because we want to be happy.'

when the light turns from sunlight to head lights i rise. i drink some water and head out. tonight is tuesday, it is open mic poetry night at the latern post. with the lack of comedy clubs i take my stage time where i can get it.

the latern post is full of fat broads in plaid shirts. it is filled with dark rimmed glasses, with pale and pasty huddled masses. there is no confidence amongst them. scattered about the tables they are tender and hold their journals slightly tilted, when they grab the mic. they are quiet for the first few lines and then move, emboldened, on fire with the idea of being the star. being the center of attention. in five minutes it is over, in five minutes they return to their chair, slightly different from the applause secretly waiting to be congratulated to be admired to feel powerful.

i am here and the bag over my head has to be adjusted. the stain on my pants stands out pointing to dark secret perversions. i am third in line. i can feel them watching me, i can hear some whisper wondering if it is a gimmick.

the gate keeper is a beard belly of a man. he has a pony tail and carries his poems in a 5x8 spiral notebook. he is always the first and last to go. he always talks of being young and wandering the forest.

after the host is a wisp of a girl. she looks more apparition. wanda, her of raven black hair, her of raven black clothes and eyeliner. she will smoke until her name is called. she will float through the crowd untouched or unable to be touched. she will talk about cutting, she will talk about meth and dispassion in sex.

i am next.

a poem

shit. i am on fire

the clown

with the bubbled skin.

think that's funny

you should have seen

the skin i use to be in.

i am sweating, blind and suffocating. choking my way through. tottering like a drunk.

a poem

i used my paycheck

on this monster of

a black broad

i tipped her half

her pay

and still

yet still i mean

she laughed

when i pulled out my sex

naked save the sack

on my face

say 'come get some.'

you can't win

i tell you

there is wanda. she is smoking outside as i leave. as i gasp the fresh air. as i lean against the light pole and adjust my sack.

'i liked it.'

what?

'that second poem. i liked it.'

oh, thank you.

she uncrosses her leg. she rises from the curb tossing her cigarette in the street.

'you should be a comedian.'

1/1/10

alright you son of a bitch here we are. squaring each other up for the first time. i want no hassles or problems out of the box. i got me one of those head aches from sleeping on the top of a book and can't put up with your lip.
the last sucker that just left, he got me a few good shots to the stomach but overall we had a good time. there was more than our fair share of belly laughs. we are taking a year off so i don't want you going and making yourself the year of the newborn, save that for the next fellow.
now let's get this straight, we are going to make some big cash and go on a fancy trip to europe and then buy all them damn expensive clothes so when we come home we get to rub it in these poor bastarads faces.
let's get this straight, you can't whip me on the damn mail streets for much longer so you are going to go along with whatever i am pursuing and make it happen with very little trouble. i am going to buy a new damn car and extend this house so we look like we got the big bucks and everybody is whispering about how it all came together.
last year, that son of a bitch, had a lot of people buying lots of stuff and those jerks were walking around rubbing their materialism in my face. i don't give a damn about your junk but my wife wants good stuff and to show off, hey you should be able to show off when your the most beautiful woman around.
i think your going to be the agreeable sort that lets me get to LA and audition for extra roles in commercial and film. i am going to go there do disneyland with my family and audition in sunglasses.
after that we are going to see my old man in his new home in mexico where we travel to the sea and catch big fish.
your the year we get a hefty treasure and rub it in our friends and families faces. this is the year we don't feel obliged to go to church just because, hello, we are orthodox christian and you know you have to kind of walk what your talking. courage of your convictions.
listen i am not going to be the same dumb bastard that i was yesterday.
so welcome new year.
may we all be better at posing and have more than everybody else we know. and may we invite them over constantly to rub their faces in it!