Poem for a Friend

the whole wide world (1980-2013)

book design by big poppa e

www.bigpoppae.com

all rights reserved. except as permitted under the u.s. copyright act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of big poppa e or his official representatives. any work contained within this publication may be freely performed in front of live audiences without first obtaining permission from big poppa e. furthermore, video and audio recordings of these works by anyone other than big poppa e can be freely posted and distributed on the world wide web or by any other means as long as no profit is generated. video and audio recordings of big poppa e performing his own works, however, may not be reproduced or distributed without the prior written permission of big poppa e. in plain english, it’s totally okay for you to read anything in this book out loud any time you want without permission, and if you record yourself doing the work, no worries, share it with anyone you like. but you are not allowed to record big poppa e reading his work out loud, and you are not allowed to share or sell videos or mp3s of big poppa e doing his work. it’s not that big poppa e doesn’t… okay, you know what, this is me, big poppa e, and i am talking directly to you. it’s not like i don’t want you to spread the word on what i’m doing with my poetry, dig? it’s just that this is my whole life, see, this is the only way for me to make a living, to pay my bills, to eat. so go ahead and let someone borrow this book, but if they really like it a lot, tell them to buy their own copy so i can keep eating. or, better yet, buy them a copy. that would rock. otherwise, just send them to youtube where they can see me do my stuff for free. i am so glad we talked. i feel much better already. as i type this, i am chilling in front of my imac listening to some vintage frank sinatra. i am sitting at my sister’s dining room table in wichita, kansas, and i’ve got all the ceiling fans circulating the breeze streaming through the open windows. it’s such a beautiful day outside, so bright blue and breezy. i just woke up from a nap on the couch not too long ago, lolling in sunbeams with my kitties aretha and thelonious, and it was just about perfect. when i woke up, i kicked back and looked up through the open curtains on the window, up through the leaves of the trees in the front yard, just chillaxed, smiling and eyeballing the bits of sky peeking through the branches, listening to the wind. the only way it could’ve been better is if you had been there. inspirations

this book was made specifically and only for the one, the only, the amazing, the talented, the swanky tommy toliver, he of the bean pie bow tie and tight figure slender as incense smoke. he is no follower of fashion but a leader of all that is lovely and lyrical, sucking down whiskeys and cokes while men in dresses belt diamonds are a girl’s best friend and i will survive with troops of leather twinks vogueing to the beat behind them. smell that smoke? that ain’t paris burning, oh no, that’s anywhere tommy does his thang, whether it be milan, paris, cannes, or amarillo. this is a haiku for you, tommy: when life is a drag, grab your boa, hit the club, and be fabulous! commendations

big poppa e is, without hype or exaggeration, one of today’s best creators of underground literature. doug holland, editor a reader’s guide to the underground press exuberantly defiant. the new york times big poppa e steps to the mike … energy is cranked so high … drunk on adrenaline … all bluster and bombast … the audience leaps up, clapping hand, snapping fingers, and stomping feet … call it revenge of the wussy boys. the washington post big poppa e is the leader of the new wussy boy movement ... spreading not just through the esoteric realm of slam poets, but edging across the globe. the los angeles times big poppa e is a guy who has turned one of his artistic personas, wussy boy, into an icon for effeminate males. ms. magazine championed by a hip-hop poet and catching fire across north america, a new male ideal has risen up and is demanding respect: wussy boy. the ottowa citizen (canada) inspiring men from across the country. the sydney morning herald (australia) a spoken word maestro. the san jose mercury news wussy boys [are] a growing breed who never felt a part of the testosterone-fuelled, hard-drinking concept of manhood. big poppa e is their outspoken leader, a poet who has outed himself as a wuss and discovered a nation of men joining his fight for wussy pride. london daily express (uk) big poppa e is pound for pound the funniest poet in slam. austin chronicle (tx) a hell of a performer, running on boundless energy and near-perfect comic timing. oc weekly (orange country, ca) one of the leaders in the hottest thing to hit poetry since beat poet allen ginsberg’s “howl.” the daily oklahoman (okc, ok) big poppa e’s words are so eloquent, so modern, so witty, funny, honest, angry, legitimate, motivating, sensual, wrenching, wise, naive … just so very, very right on. he’s amazing. the colorado springs independent big poppa e is like a tongue-twisting napoleon of open-aired emotion, sexual libido and in-your-face self-consciousness — a suburban Woody Allen hopped up at the mall. the chico news & review (chico, ca) bpe’s writing is over-the-top, taking simple circumstances to an extreme. but for all the humor, an inconsolable sense of longing runs just below the surface of every poem, and it is this melancholic subtext that hits home. great reading for people who think they hate poetry (and for those who already know they like it.) the san francisco bay guardian check out san francisco poetry slam team member big poppa e’s poem “crushworthy.” so f-ing sweet, i cried. the san francisco bay guardian fantastic reading, the kind of stuff that inspires you to do your own personalzine … he transforms his experiences into poetic stories that capture the magic and mystery. factsheet 5 (san francisco) some of the most engrossing personal writing i’ve ever read! absolutely engrossing! amusing yourself to death (santa barbara) a sharp sense of humor and great eye for the details and absurdities of young life today … he’s a natural-born storyteller who takes everyday events and elevates them to near-mythic, side-splitting proportions. next magazine (los angeles) big poppa e has a wonderful, charming writing style. zine world (san francisco) this guy could write a story about absolutely nothing and make it funny. when i grow up, i want to be big poppa e. psycho moto zine (new york city) a seasoned performance poet who regularly fries the minds of audiences with hard-hitting, humorous poems … a caffeine injection of couch psychology, maybe even a beer bong of espresso. chico news & review (chico, ca) full of power and humor … funny, thought-provoking and sharp … chico’s own poetry slam god … he could make an obituary come to life, he’s so powerful. the synthesis (chico, ca) this guy’s got talent … one of my favorite zine writers. happy not stupid (reno, nv) cool, finger-popping, caffeine-sipping, goatee-sporting riffs. the liberty press (wichita, ks) his written work is well done, and his flair for writing makes it very interesting to read. he has a very good capacity of expression that provides the reader and listener with an excellent understanding of his concepts and positions. he may have to watch for attempting to consume too much time in therapy group: he likes being the center of attention, and this may be related to a control issue that he needs to address. big poppa e’s therapist (chico, ca) deﬁnitions

poem a literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm. rant a wild, incoherent, emotional articulation. screed a long discourse or harangue, typically one regarded as tedious. diatribe a bitter, sharply abusive denunciation, attack, or criticism. ephemera transitory written or printed matter not intended to be retained or preserved. the word derives from the greek, meaning things lasting no more than a day. a damn what big poppa e doesn't give about deﬁnitions. quotations

i may be a geek, but i’m a geek with a purpose. jim thirlwell he’s a writer and a ranger and a young boy bearing arms. rush stupidly beautifoolish true, you. frente! i’m empty and aching, and i don’t know why. simon and garfunkel i’d go the whole wide world just to ﬁnd her. wreckless eric i used to wear my heart on my sleeve, but it made my wrist too bloody. big poppa e dedications

my parents richard and sandi and my sister sabrina thanks for your support and love, for taking me in when i had nowhere else to go, for supporting my dreams with gas cards, cell phones, plane tickets, cars, insurance, and all the rest. there’s no way i can pay you back. this book is yours. my best friend zara i have written my strongest work while i’ve known you, and so much would never have existed without your warm presence in my life. you are my favourite person in the whole wide world, and i don’t know what i’d do without you. you constantly amaze and delight me. live forever, and name your first son andrew bird for me. my cats aretha and thelonious you two little familiars have been the most stable force in my life for 15 years, and i love you both so much. thanks for being mah bebes and sleeping with me. my creative lovelies annie la ganga and bill cotter i cherish both of you. thank you for giving me those pre-stamped postcards and demanding i fill them with adventures from the road. your relationship inspires me, and i hope annie is not still mad about me kicking her butt at the ’99 nats. rebecca robinson thanks for your friendship, warmth, hospitality, humour, and companionship. tell petey and owl bait i said hi. and stop texting me about BH. that’s gross. mike henry my captain, slam master, coach, friend, confidante in times of trouble, champion. thank you so much for your friendship and support over the years, for your tough love, for your example. i miss you, and i miss courage, too. he was a good cat. matthew john conley the best tour partner i’ve ever had and certainly the most talented. lennon simpson ignore what i wrote about matthew. it’s all you. i’ll stomp you at catan any time. marc kelly smith you gave me focus, purpose, community. i can never thank you enough. your life changed mine forever, you crotchety old bastard. keep pulling the next one up. jim thirlwell thank you for 30 years of amazing music and inspiration. i am so glad you made the conscious decision to survive the ’90s, and i can’t wait for what happens next. introductions

this is it. this is everything. at least, it’s everything i want you to see. some stuff was left out, stuff either not good enough to warrant inclusion or not wretched enough to provoke mocking laughter and jeers of derision. i narrowed down this collection to poems, spoken word pieces, short stories, and the few tiny plays i’ve written. i left out all the newspaper columns, essays, and journal entries i’ve penned along the way as those will be featured in a collection of their own in the near future, and i plan on compiling all my tour diaries shortly after that. basically, though, this is all my poetry and fiction, from the very first haiku i wrote in the 8th grade to the newest performance poem i just finished this past summer. i combined most of my greatest hits and greatest misses collections, added everything in my latest chapbook pretty girls make me sad, and threw in a bunch of stuff that had been gathering dust on my hard drive or one of my online blogs or in some box in my parents’ garage in wichita, kansas. you might notice anachronistic tidbits in several poems — such as a reference to an 80-gig ipod in a poem written in 1996 — and that’s because i’ve tweaked the poems to reflect how i perform them in front of live audiences. that process has been like looking over the shoulder of my younger self and kibitzing, which has been fun. to be perfectly honest, some of the stuff in this omnibus collection really sucks, and i’m not trying to act like i’m all humble, either, because some of it is truly odious. in fact, the first 30 pages or so kicking off this book are so very bad i crack up every time i read them, and i do actually read them during live shows all the time. they’re hilariously bad, like, you can’t fake that kind of bad. if you purposely try to write poetry that bad, it just doesn’t have the same deliciously execrable essence of shitty poetry written by some feckless poetaster utterly devoid of talent who stubbornly believes they are brilliant despite the voluminous evidence to the contrary. i find that brandishing a fake english accent while reading the worst of these poems aloud is inevitable and, in fact, absolutely necessary to drive home how truly bad they really are. it is also best to dress completely in black and have at least one facial piercing, like a spike protruding from your lower lip, and you should wear hot topic bondage pants and a marilyn manson t-shirt. and guyliner. definitely guyliner. and you should scream every word so loudly your throat bleeds, because otherwise, really, what’s the point? delicious!

i have to think most poets contemplating a career-spanning collection like this would eagerly discard their oldest and shittiest work, focusing instead on what they consider their very best verse and prose, but i didn’t want that for this book. i wanted to show where it all began, show how terrible i was when i first started, show that i eventually got a little better with each crap poem i wrote. no one just sits down at a piece of blank paper one day and writes howl. i am sure ginsberg dropped a huge pile of malodorous poesy before scrawling i saw the most brilliant minds of my generation in his journal, and i am sure howl would never have been written had he not shat every crappy line leading up to it. the point is, you shouldn’t be embarrassed by your early work, and you should never discard it no matter how cringe-worthy it might be. regardless of how you come to think of your first poems, don’t forget you totally believed in them when you first wrote them — you sat up from your notebook at one point and said, yes, that’s exactly how i feel — and i think it’s important to honour them, even if they now make you giggle and roll your eyes at how very dreadful they are. as i’ve put this collection together, it’s been interesting to watch my style progress through time, to note how events and people in my life influenced my subject matter, to follow themes that have infused my work throughout the entire timeline. if i had to pick my biggest inspirations for poetry, it’s clear they would be girls and fear of death. yup, that comprises pretty much 85% of my work, and the rest was probably written to either impress a girl into liking me or to avoid thinking about death or because my cats kick so much ass. i have no idea what to call the stuff i write. most of it is not really poetry, not really, although poetry is definitely an element. a lot of it is pretty close to stand-up comedy, especially when i perform it live, but it’s denser and more structured than a comedy routine; they’re more like comedic monologues. some of it is just straight up storytelling, or what used to be called spoken word in the ’90s. i don’t really know what to call what i do, but i know it’s created specifically to be performed on a stage in front of a live audience, so it’s written with an economy of language to ensure a direct connection to people who will likely have one chance to hear the piece and be impacted by it or not. it makes demands on the listener, demands they open themselves up emotionally to a complete stranger.

my shit isn't meant to stand toe-to-toe with page poems, and if you try to compare it to page poetry, you're missing the point. whenever someone claims my stuff doesn’t work on the page, i think neither does star wars. you might enjoy the screenplay for star wars, but you have not truly experienced it until you see it on the big screen with a packed house and bad ass surround sound speakers. the same goes for my writing. i hope you can enjoy it on the page, which is why i put so much work into this book, but you really haven’t experienced my words until you have heard me breathe life into them on a stage while you sit shoulder-to-shoulder in a room full of thinking smelling feeling warm-blooded people. it’s not a lesser art than page poetry, it’s just a different form of art that has different rules.

i don’t write poetry to impress other poets, i write poetry to express myself to the 99.8% of the people in the room who know nothing about poetry and just want to be moved emotionally, to be inspired, to be roused, to feel… something… i am of two minds about this book.

on one hand, it’s going to be amazing to actually hold it in my hand, to heft it, to know i wrote every word on every one of its pages, and how cool is that, you know? look at this! i wrote this! all of it!

on the other hand, the works in this book cover a time spanning about 25 years, plus that very ﬁrst haiku from 8th grade, and i kinda feel like this is it? i would have to say a good 30 percent of this collection comprises the most god-awful poems i’ve ever written, and the only reason i’ve included them is so we can all get a good laugh at how nauseating they are. of the remaining pieces, i would say a good 30 percent is not much better than the really bad stuff. i could easily whittle down all of the pieces in this collection to just, oh, 60 that i genuinely really like and would perform on a regular basis. 60 poems and short stories in 25 years that don’t make me cringe? that doesn’t seem like a whole lot to me. i still have a lot of work to do. and you do, too. no one else is going to document your life for you. if you don’t, there will be no record of your existence, no footprint left on the surface of this planet. write it all down. it’s important.

writing and performing have been the focus of my life ever since i stepped on a stage at my very ﬁrst open mic in matches coffeehouse in my shitty hometown back in january of 1992, and this will probably remain so for the rest of my life. for better or worse, you hold in your hands everything that is important to me, that has deﬁned me, that has given me purpose, that has made my life worth living. this is my whole wide world, and it means everything to me. big poppa e november 4, 2013 wichita, kansas p.s. bryan honl rocks. the whole wide world

haiku ...... 1 ode to poison mushrooms ...... 2 stranded ...... 3 epiphany ...... 4 lone ...... 5 erosion ...... 6 ennui, go on ...... 7 whym ...... 8 life ...... 9 oed 1 ...... 10 oed 2 ...... 11 abrupt ...... 12 mmm mmm, pro patria! ...... 13 minuet ...... 14 sexuality ...... 15 routine ...... 16 heroin ...... 17 flyboy ...... 18 flashlight ...... 21 lycanthropy ...... 23 truelove ...... 24 rage ...... 25 love poem, no. 9 ...... 27 lincoln logs and rabid dogs ...... 28 equalizer ...... 29 wendy ...... 30 ouroboros ...... 31 aspartame ...... 32 echo ...... 33 appliance envy ...... 35 plastic ...... 36 darn ...... 37 asbestos ...... 38 glue ...... 39 listening to oak cliff bra ...... 40 listening to deep in the heart ...... 41 insinuation ...... 42 new town, new school, new job, new life ...... 43 floss ...... 44 partyboy ...... 46 siena vision ...... 48 commerce ...... 49 new poem about a coin ...... 50 the miracle corner pocket luck shot ...... 52 bookends ...... 54 wiping the salt from the corners of my mouth ...... 57 state of the art ...... 58 bigman ...... 60 the politics of just friends ...... 63 roadtrippin’ ...... 65 pueblo dog ...... 67 ode to poet x ...... 69 ma’amed ...... 71 death to romance ...... 73 jesus moshpit ...... 74 just take another drink ...... 75 real life über grrrl ...... 77 potty is pee ...... 79 silly shower song ...... 81 map of your body ...... 82 1,000 secret things ...... 83 catching the bus ...... 84 painfully white ...... 86 poetry widow ...... 87 ode to a plaster casting ...... 90 wilson road ...... 91 lydia and the duck ...... 92 dreams ...... 93 immortalized in celluloid ...... 94 holiest of holies ...... 96 chain record store blues ...... 97 wormboy ...... 99 fuckety fuck-fuck ...... 101 hungry poet, will write for food ...... 105 steeple stabbed and hell bound ...... 106 her smile, like knives ...... 108 incantation 1: the odyssey ...... 109 incantation 2: the home front ...... 111 incantation 3: the sweet mysteries of hot peach cobbler ...... 115 leaving las vegas ...... 118 poem for a friend ...... 121 fratboy ...... 124 ¡the wussyboy manifesto! ...... 127 deathwish ...... 130 crushworthy ...... 132 moonlight through mini-blinds ...... 135 there’s a hole in my heart in the shape of her smile that will never be filled ...... 136 wired ...... 141 presque vu ...... 144 rats in the ivy ...... 146 pushing buttons ...... 150 boojiboy ...... 153 receipt found in the parking lot of the super walmart ...... 155 untitled ...... 158 the endless pursuit of happiness, part one ...... 159 the endless pursuit of happiness, part two ...... 161 the endless pursuit of happiness, part three ...... 162 wallflower ...... 164 krakatoa ...... 166 the lonesome ballad of josephus moshpit ...... 169 drought ...... 172 don’t forget to breathe, love ...... 173 you are a strange fruit ...... 175 us ...... 176 the train station ...... 177 fists ...... 178 13 metaphors for why we should’ve never dated ...... 179 scars, part one ...... 181 emo love song in the key of 9 3/4 ...... 184 someone ...... 186 albuquerque penance ...... 188 austin penance ...... 189 sushi penance ...... 190 wendy’s penance ...... 191 war penance ...... 192 road penance ...... 193 hooter’s penance ...... 194 mikey penance ...... 195 el condor pasa penance ...... 196 watching lockup penance ...... 197 breakfast penance ...... 198 working at spenser gifts penance #1 ...... 199 working at spenser gifts penance #2 ...... 200 working at spenser gifts penance #3 ...... 201 overnight shift at kinko’s hourly penance ...... 202 disillusion curry ...... 205 passersby ...... 206 sorrow, part two ...... 208 the double glass doors of your heart ...... 210 cellophane ...... 212 26 new rules for poetry slamming ...... 214 ode to george w. bush ...... 216 bpe rap ...... 218 silver ...... 221 tigerlily ...... 222 propers ...... 223 mission statement ...... 225 cats ...... 227 birth control ...... 229 thoughts on gay marriage ...... 232 i want to hold you ...... 234 oh! canadian fedex lady! ...... 236 closer to the heart ...... 239 muscleman ...... 241 napoleon ...... 244 dead horses ...... 247 not drowning, but waving ...... 249 scars, part two ...... 251 ode to dwarf planet 134340 ...... 254 redneck ...... 257 falling in like ...... 261 to the barista at the cafe down the street ...... 264 neurotika ...... 266 mixtape genius ...... 268 mementos ...... 270 the crush ...... 274 she never really loved you ...... 276 beardo ...... 278 how to make love ...... 280 what i mean (when i say i love you) ...... 282 pretty girls make me sad ...... 284 my undying love ...... 286 confessions ...... 289 the word ...... 291 dear white people! ...... 293 the burning bush ...... 295 caffeine ...... 297 embouchure ...... 299 you ...... 302 jara ...... 306 bread and butter ...... 309 molly ...... 311 04.05.94...... 314 p.o.v...... 364 doug, cale, and the closet king ...... 369 the girl on the bus ...... 379 sorrow, part one ...... 382 my very first real live nekkid lady ...... 384 how i escaped my shitty little town (a true story) ...... 388 garanimals ...... 392 everyday magic ...... 394 the butt triplets ...... 396 mosaic ...... 411 temp hell ...... 421 the lord of the breakfast club, part one ...... 428 the lord of the breakfast club, part two ...... 432 microwave ...... 434 seesaw ...... 441 michael6 ...... 448

ABANDON HOPELESSNESS ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE why silence (1967)

i stare and only see the height of mediocrity! i must be like the shifting sand; there is no place for me to stand. like a robot i must be; like the rest, no real me. i do not wish to conform; to be taken by this subtle storm: convention here — convention there; i shudder as it’s brought to bear. lost am i and lost i’ll be, as driftwood on the lonely sea. but this for me is not the place, for i must join the human race. countless are the years i’ve fought, but still no victory i’ve wrought; so bend i must and bend i will, if only silence to instill.

big poppa e’s father joined the navy on june 24, 1964. he was 17. he wrote this poem in july of 1967 while aboard the aircraft carrier uss bon homme richard (cv/cva-31) off the coast of vietnam. he was 20 years old and had been married less than a year to big poppa e’s mother. big poppa e was born may 11, 1967, and his father wouldn’t meet him until he was four months old. he followed his father’s footsteps and those of his father’s father and joined the navy at 17. many of bpe’s ﬁrst poems were written aboard the aircraft carrier uss saratoga (cv/cva/cvb-60) while on deployment in the mediterranean sea in 1987. he was 20 years old.

. haiku (1981)

parking lot whirlwind ever swirling and swift picking up the dust

1 Y . ode to poison mushrooms (1985)

shifting shafts of shining sunlight arc across the summer night’s sky. pulse and ﬂash and blinding radiance as a deathbloom blossom watches by.

2 O . stranded (1986)

alone in a room full of people, together with myself in my mind. searching for some kind of reason, and a love i am never to ﬁnd.

3 U . epiphany (1986)

a thousand times i’ve kissed the lips of faceless love in vain, only to wake a thousand times alone and ﬁlled with pain. but now my eyes in sleep behold this one thing to be true, the face of love in dreams obscured forever shall be you.

4 K . lone (1986)

i run across the wastelands. my only mate — the shadow which i cast — runs with me at my side. we wander into the night, chase the sun’s fading light, and rest until it’s time to run again. i am at peace. but, an image burns my sight. two shadows converge into one and melt into the setting sun. i cannot run alone forever.

5 N . erosion (1986)

youth, as sand, is easily washed away; more often it is shed like unwanted skin. time dulls the memory with dripping claws, rends and tears what was, making what is to be. sandcastles built in the prime dissolve, carried out by the sea to be forgotten.

6 O . ennui, go on (1986)

living easy isn’t hard wish i had a gold card wake up another day doesn’t matter anyway dull day here we go living at the movie show dull life bores me let them live it for me got a job got a place gathering lines across my face got some hopes got some dreams life is ripping at the seams don’t drink don’t smoke it’s getting hard for me to cope wanna scream sometimes do thinking about those eyes of blue take a shower for an hour looking for some inner power close my eyes burn incence hide within this inner fence got some hate got some fear wipe away the silent tear i’ll get by i always will looking for that hole to ﬁll

7 W .

whym (1987)

the pale flame of an unformed idea flickers in my mind on sight i give chase trying desperately to bind and capture the flame giving fuel and tinder to build and shape and coerce the bright splendor of a raging bonfire of flowing creation that swells to burst into its fruition and onto the paper that lies blank before me becoming the words that tell their own story

8 W . life (1987)

waves of humanity crashing onto concrete shores,

ﬂoundering in the wake of self-destruction. an angry void opens its doors to human deceit and rampant corruption. lives on the brink of becoming undone, while the world lives out its lie. all battles are lost for none can be won when the world watches itself die.

9 H .

oed 1 (1987)

excrement smeared across her face,

mother raped by a dying race.

through seeping sores she cries, enough.

her offspring ﬁght amongst each other,

fools against their foolish brothers,

incestuous turns upon their mother

leave her stripped and dying.

don’t they know they shall follow?

10 A . oed 2 (1987)

rape the slut mother! bugger the bitch with black fuming stacks and oceans of styrofoam cups! exhaust and deplete! throwaway and decay! mounds mounds! like boils on mommy’s neck! fester! molest her! fuck the whore! bend her over like auggie doggie and ram it to her one more time! even a dog knows not to shit where it sleeps. incest! molest! digest! hi-test! now get undressed and fuck the green bitch brown!

11 T . abrupt (1987)

BRICK WALL treble head smack the dash splatters the red googum grey mush too bad so sad little man wished he had a car now he do he don’t little bottle broken cut the piece his grabbing hand steering wheel in the other lights out idiot!

12 W . . mmm mmm, pro patria! (1988)

big sticky parfait of cherry syrup, vanilla cream, and blueberry gel. a gooey concoction whipped up by bitter aging chefs and waved in front of the rotten-toothed mouths of innocents ready to be spoon-fed anything candy coated and easy to swallow. until the acrid aftertaste sours their stomachs and twists their bodies with malnutrition and transforms them into a new wave of bitter aging chefs doling out new and improved bonbons and lemon drops and heroes wrapped in red, white, and blue.

13 O . . minuet (1988)

…and then, of all things, she hands me a book. i say, what’s this? she says, a book of games. i look at it, turn it over in my hands, open it, and ﬁnd the pressed petals of a lavender rose. i look at her with antici

pation, and she smiles and says, yes… games.

14 U . . sexuality (1988)

beneath the coloured umbrellas of an outdoor cafe, she slowly puts down her cappuccino and whispers something foreign under her breath. i think it is latin. she ﬂashes a knowing smile, ﬁnishes the hot liquid, and proceeds to gouge her eyes with a fork, after which she places the fork upon my lap. i ponder this a moment… neatly fold my napkin, and bid her adieu.

15 L . . routine (1988)

i open my eyes. there, standing before me, are two young women clad in orange polyester jumpsuits. the one on the left — the prettier of the two — smiles at me. i smile back. i am not surprised in the slightest when she gently removes her head from her shoulders and tosses it to me. quite naturally, i catch it. while the other woman, who bears a striking resemblance to shirley temple on crack, tap dances and sings oh tannenbaum, the head and i tell dirty jokes to one another. we have a lot in common, actually.

16 D . . heroin (1988)

swan dive off the edge of the world into a sea of molasses with an enveloping PLOP! happy little ant in amber suspended weightless in a numbing womb of goo all sight all sound all pain absorbed in the fuzzy grey hum of disconnection

17 B . . ﬂyboy (1988)

fucking cat! we decided it would be in our best interest to fly our cat ivan. so, with a rented helium tank and k-mart punching bag balloons in hand, we traipsed to the top of the bluffs. quite suitable for the flying of cats. the crowd was already there. we had put up flyers all over town. come! see ivan the flying cat! saturday at 2:30 p.m.! we had this harness thing with 4 little holes in the bottom for 4 little cat feets and 2 rings on the top for tethering the balloons. jim held the balloons as i blindfolded ivan.

18 E . . on the end of a ﬁshing line, little legs dangling, my kitty ﬂew. meow. meow.

meow.

he got pretty damned high. if i had watched bill nye the science guy more often, i could’ve predicted what was going to happen. helium expands at high altitudes.

POW! (meow?)

POW!POW!

POW!POW!POW!POW! the crowd sucked air in a collective gasp

19 C . .

as ivan’s little body tumbled cat-ass over cat- head little legs kicking and clawing down onto the hard-packed ﬂoor of the oil ﬁelds with a wet, sticky smack!

we received lots of hate mail for that one.

it seemed a good idea at the time.

20 O . .

ﬂashlight (1989)

i am a leaf in a storm drain mouse in a hurricane tossed by winds i no more control than i do the channels of the moon or the frequency of the child’s screams i scream across the bandwidths of unmodulated white noise the light’s gone out the rocks below the waterline can’t be seen

21 O . .

my ﬁngerbones etch wicked bloody wakes across my face

scattering red ﬂinders down into the frothing current below

22 L . . lycanthropy (1989)

arching twisting gnashing man all teeth and gums and shotgun eyes shatters splatters the air about with claws of rabid hate and rage his drooling-thick saliva scream stains the silence razor red smearing dreary disappearing echoes drip and run and fade

23 I . . . truelove (1989)

when her rubberband smile stretched to snap peels and cracks into blue-black shards that twist and curl exposing the bone-white enticement inside my pinprick eyes tense like clock springs ready to burst from darkened sockets and beckon with sacrosanct truths and lies of love and life and death and all within sight is sucked inside to live in sinful pleasure or die in sacred agony

24 N . . . rage (1989)

the sun lurches from behind the steeple-stabbed town violets shake sun-splattered dewdrops from dark petals that quiver in the prowling miasmic haze a worker bee grumbles crisscrossing the ﬁeld collecting tithes carried wearily at his sides a stigmata-skinned lizard arches on a warming rock its ridged backside folded and wrinkled into a frown then white-hot light bursts through stained glass

25 S . . . raining multicoloured shards upon the lowing herd the grimacing preacherman scarlet robes ablaze lashes his followers into the apocryphal agony His love invokes sunday mourning in a prairie town

26 T . . . love poem no. 9 (1990)

i see crosses empty crosses everywhere i look looming large and threatening closing me in a pen a cell the prison bars the sharpened spines of crucifixes plunged into the quivering flesh of the ground around me hymns thicken the air chew my bleeding pimpled ears and inject their larvae fester my pus-riddled head eaten alive by squirming words and blindwhite promises i jab my fingers into my ears and eyes and still the vibration rattles my body with the monotone drone fills my eyes with visions of black and white and so much fucking light tears at me with doubtful claws they rip and drip as i strain to grip the truth but grab at nothing the nooses snake around my neck and ankles and wrists and pull tight for an instant i am a human cross then sinew and sockets give way to fountains of crimson absolution wash away my sins heal me cleanse me make it all crystal clear just let me feel just one thing even if it’s pain even if it’s pain let me feel

27 E . . . lincoln logs and rabid dogs (1990)

regression’s white-knuckled fist swells my lip and bloodies my smile as i genuflect from a fetal crouch in a corner k.o.’d by visions of wascally wabbits and nuns in white habits where in hell’s the deference i pray my unseen days away looking for an answer a cure for this cancer that eats a whole in my soul i wish i could drown my doubts in a bowl of holy water but the tear-stained stormdrain of eternal desire has smothered the fire that burned so fervently in my misplaced youth i’ve lost it and the cost it’s so fucking hard to bear where did i leave the wide-eyed ignorance that shouldered those summers of razors and incense why’d they have to tell me there’s no such thing as santa claus sainted clause it’s all cause and effect and causing me to remember when i believed in a god and all was fine and all was dandy and all was teeth stained with cotton candy but now all’s i got are cavities pockets full of holes and a heart full of coals and a head full of nothing at all i drank all my cigarettes and smoked all my beers i got gas in my stovepipe and guns in my ears this lust is a must ‘cuz my love’s turned to rust and my eyes are sealed over by blood sweat and dust i can’t wipe the i’s from my tears for the years i’ve left behind are mine to keep and none but mine to weep laughter and slaughter look like they rhyme they don’t though they should and do after time and god doesn’t love me and neither do i and hate is to me what the clouds in the sky mean to the lightning that spears at the ground and what in the end makes the world go around i don’t know what the hell i am trying to say except the price i’ve been given is too much to pay my eyes are full-dry and so is my soul and what’s left of my heart is burnt black and cold i’m crying i’m sighing i’m trying i’m dying i’m not making sense to myself ‘cuz i’m lying so i’m allowing this captive audience an escape a way out i wanna go home where my innocence roams where it’s safe and warm and jesus christ tucks me into my bunkbed every night but i can’t ‘cause i’m stuck out here with the rest of you rocked by adulthood’s numbing wake and wishing i could come home again

28 A . . . equalizer (1990)

i sometimes drive down the freeway at 35 miles an hour it pisses people off but i don’t do it just to piss people off i just enjoy watching all the cars speeding past when it rains i turn off the windshield wipers and watch the world turn into an impressionist painting little dots that shift and move and become renoir runabouts and monet mercedes slithering past me i suppose if i looked into the faces of the drivers i’d see little impressionistic frowns and scowls and even a clinched ﬁst or two but i don’t look especially at night i just stare at the driplets of light and listen to the big band music playing over my eight track sometimes i stick my arm out of the window and make aerodynamic motions up and down in the wind like a sine wave and the rain slaps my hand and little coloured beads slide down my wrist and crawl past my elbow and collect in my armpit and i just smile and smile as the angry people pass me by sometimes i even forget about the pistol in my glove box

29 D . . . wendy (1992)

empty as a pane of glass cold to the touch of your pressed-ﬂat ﬁngertips you whisper let me in let me in but your voice only fogs the window

30 O . . . ouroboros (1992)

he masturbates with her body instead of his hand they touch then turn away side-by-side the lukewarm space between their dry backs measured in years a misty reminder of the love behind her drips from between her legs and fades into the tightly knit ﬁbers of their crisp white sheets

31 F . . .

aspartame (1993)

i’m a one-man remembrance day parade adorning myself in mournful clutter of ﬂuttering ﬁts of passion bits of my past in ashes hastily discarded earrings found under the bed a torn concert t-shirt left behind by the girl who said take your cream rinse and get the fuck out!

in every new pair of eyes in every smile i see more stuff left behind

32 S .. .

echo (1993)

no need to screen my calls now everything is bigger more space in the cupboard more hangers in the closet squares of cleanliness suddenly in the middle of dust-caked ﬂoors i reek of desperation can’t remember the last time i left this room except to order cornerstore pizza from the livingroom phone or wash the abandoned cum from my bedsheets woe to him who is alone when he falls for there is no one to pick him up

33 T .. . .

i keep it cold in my ﬂat cold so i can get away with using heavy covers when i sleep i sleep entirely too much and listen listen for footsteps stopping outside my door

34 R .. . . appliance envy (1993)

they’re chasing me. the kitchen utensils blame me. the silverware shames me. they’re in cahoots with crockpots and saucepans and garlic presses and dusty stoneware. the kitchen screams and dreams for the day when you return again . not a pasta’s primavera’d, not an egg souﬂee’d, and they’re pissed. the knives are sharpening themselves against the countertop, scraping etching at the black and white formica tile. the spices and teas in the cupboard overhead plot to smother me. my allies in the pantry have all been smashed to bits — the ramen and macaroni, the chicken soup and rice — all dashed upon the linoleum by spiteful sauce mixes and angry bottles of balsamic vinegar. soggy cakes of tofu and brown and wobbly sprouts plan to jump me should i open the icebox door again. i wish you’d come back just long enough to ﬁx a crepe or something and make this kitchen happy again.

35 I . . . . plastic (1993)

how many people have raised their hands to the sky how many people have held their heads and cried how many people have closed their eyes tight and prayed for the existence of god i cast myself into a pit of millions dead and billions yet to die when i clasp my hands and wonder if my pleas are heard wonder if i’ll live on in pain in ecstasy or in nothingness and like all before me and all to come i am answered only in silence

36 P .. . . darn (1993)

jagged fingers sew cruel patterns and folds into your creased face. right before your dimming eyes, like some quilt, seams ripped apart and carelessly stitched together again. your visage frays, unravels. go ahead, disbelieve if you must. this threadbare hag is not you, not you with harsh-white hair and crushed linen skin. there! on the shelf! on the wall! the true reflection! in the rosewood picture frame, in the sticky yellow pages of the high school yearbook. heave your wrinkle-bound fist through the blasphemous glass, then drape your bones across the easy chair and let your wandering mind’s cool breath fill your head with billowing breeze-filled truth. and smile, and ignore the mirror’s lies as they trickle from between your old woman hands, slide down the insides of your varicose pencil legs, and puddle in your dirty pink house shoes.

37 C .. . . asbestos (1993)

itchy swollen eyes infected with anger thicken the air with bloodshot glares, inject squirming blind-white rage into the meat of any host within reach. i am helpless, unable to resist planting larvae into your stomach. my hate gestates and grows. the rotten acid sting empties into your soul, and i am cleansed, and you are pregnant, bloated with malignance, eaten alive even as i bump into walls and trip over tables on the way out.

38 L .. . . glue (1993)

two smiling-happy little glazed hams basting in their love oven of moist sheets, pillows, and discarded clothing. all sweet pork stink and promising sighs. two piggies in a blanket sharing the same wet spot and breathless embrace as four-in-the-morning sleep woos and cuddles their sticky snuggle-bunnied clutch and fades them off to the morrow.

39 U .. . . listening to oak cliff bra (1993)

little kitty chillin’ in the tall grass under an oak tree gots a butterﬂy caught in between his feets little kitty smilin’ ‘cuz he’s soaking up the summer breeze then he lets it go

40 B .. . . listening to deep in the heart (1993)

twenty years old sweet as a rose every petal of her paper thin i could see her veins showing right through her powder-perfect skin pond-green eyes bright-eyed wide how’d she’d smile when she’d see me now i don’t know where she is

41 S . . ..

insinuation (1993)

hey can i bum a smoke?

no really i just need one just one and i’ll be ﬁne just one and i’ll make it through these shakes.

where you going? can i bum a ride? my car’s all busted up. i’m stripped i’m sans wheels i’m rudderless. wherever you’re going i don’t care just take me with you.

can i sleep on your couch? i don’t need a pillow i don’t even need a blanket, i just need a place a place to crash for the night so i don’t have to go back to my house, so i don’t have to go back to my room; i can’t stand the blank-eyed walls the silence the dark. i’ll sleep on your couch tonight just for tonight, just to get me through the night.

can i sleep next to you? no i’ll keep my clothes on i’ll keep my socks on; it’s not a sex thing it’s a warmth thing. i can get through this night through these shakes through this void just hold me just hold me, and in the morning i’ll go.

in the morning i’ll go.

can i bum another smoke?

42 Y . . . .. new town, new school, new job, new life (1994)

stuck in between times — the last time and the next time — where nothing much happens, and sleep comes too easily and too often. the phone doesn’t ring anymore, but will. dead saturday nights will soon be ﬁlled. the little black book full of old numbers that no longer work will be replaced by a new book and new connections soon. but now, in between and waiting — patiently — life is reduced to twilight scrutiny of the bedroom ceiling and the mournful hoot of an owl just outside my window.

43 O . . .. .

ﬂoss (1994)

i like to ﬂoss my teeth.

i mean, i really like to ﬂoss my teeth.

there’s nothing better than unwinding a good yard of floss at the end of the day, kicking back on your futon couch with your beat feet thrown over the armrest, your eyes closed, head back, listening to some ella or bessie or billie or fats on the stereo, and stretching that waxed dental floss between your fingers. and none of that fancy stuff, none of that high-tech, space shuttle floss, and no cinnamon or mint flavouring either, just the classic type… not too thick, but just right. and you’ve got to pull it tight, nice and tight, nice and purple-fingertip-tight. and the music is playing and your eyes are closed and ohh…

you slip the ﬂoss between your teeth, just ease it in and scrape gently up and down along either side of each tooth, and ohhh…

the pressure of a day’s work just disappears, even as you remove bits of chicken chow mein and polska kielbasa sausage and strings of lemon grass and bean sprouts. ohhhh… it’s heavenly. the pressure on the spaces between your teeth just vanishes, and the sins of the day just vanish, and the missed opportunities and the relationships that never work and ﬂesh-eating bacteria and dying children in afghanistan and biological warfare in america and the world trade center and the pentagon and jihad and fatwa and holes in the ozone and the fate of the planet and what happens when you die and whether or not there’s a god…

44 U . . .. . it all fades away as the slender thread dances between your teeth and skitters along your gums and removes all the dreck it finds. such bliss! running your tongue across that pearly expanse of enamel and not finding a single foreign substance, not a solitary unplanned particle or rebellious crumb, just smooth ivory smoothness, your tongue ice skating over the expanse of white… i have this recurring dream. i won’t tell you all about it, but tori amos is in it, and we floss each other’s teeth on a black leather couch with one red pillow. this dream took a strange turn the other night: instead of tori, it was my mother and she had this enormous ball of floss and it was like she was mom of the undead and… i woke up, suddenly, frightened by what it could mean. mmmm… floss. in heaven, just as you get off the elevator and still have songs of the carpenters in your head, the host angel who greets you and takes you to the correct line you’ll be standing in for the next two thousand years will hand you a little white dispenser of waxed dental floss that never frays, never breaks, and never runs out. knowing that, what in this life is impossible to take?

45 C .. . . .

partyboy (1995)

have you ever gone to a party with a friend where the only person you knew in the whole place is that very same friend and your friend happens to know everybody in the entire place and did you end up glomming onto that friend sticking to their side and just kinda nodding and smiling at everyone your friend introduces you to like some mute sidekick and did your friend just kinda leave you standing there by the cheese dip so they can go off to socially butterfly and you’re left to just pick through the chips and lunchmeats feeling like a real schlemiel because nobody will talk to you and the few times you try to strike up a conversation with some random person standing next to you they just sort of look at you like you smell like play-doh or something and did you just find a piece of wall to lean against and watch all the people go about their little party business while you’re drinking flat beer from a red plastic cup and did you look at everybody and they’re all thinner than you and they have cooler hair than you and they’re tanner than you and taller than you and their teeth are whiter than yours and their clothes are nicer than yours and you totally feel like a loser because you’re doing the wallflower bit just like in 6th-grade after your mom dropped you off at your first dance and you felt like a real geek and did you listen in on their conversations and find that they’re talking about totally stupid shit like their clothes and their hair and their tans and diets and their white fucking teeth and did you realize that these people are just so completely shallow that the only thing they know how to talk about is themselves and didn’t you feel so above these people and superior that you can talk about something of more substance than the brand of hair conditioner you’re using but then didn’t you also feel so totally beneath all these people because you will never look or be anything like them because they all look like they’ve got the world handed to them like bright red delicious apples on a silver platter and you’ve always had to work hard to get everything you’ve ever had because you don’t have the looks of a model or mommy and

46 O . . .. . daddy’s money fed to you by a 1,000-mile long umbilical cord and then all of a sudden did you look across the room and see that one person standing by the mantle with a red plastic cup who looks like they’re enjoying this party about as much as you are and then they like smile at you and you smile back and you think thank god there’s someone here who can see through all this shit and maybe this party will turn out better than you thought and then they wave to you and you wave back to them and smile and then they call out hey, what’s up? and you get ready to answer back but before you do someone from behind you says nothing much what’s up with you? and you get pushed out of the way as some fashion mannequin shoulders their way through the crowd to the person by the mantle and you realize they weren’t smiling and waving at you at all but at some boob standing behind you and didn’t you feel totally embarrassed and burnt and so completely over this lame party and all the posing and posturing and that same ’70s disco cd compilation they’ve been listening to for the past two hours and your friend’s gone and there’s no more dip and you can’t find the bathroom even though you’ve asked four different people and you finally decide fuck it i’m out of here and you just leave without saying a word and then you walk the long way home sort of sad and sort of burnt but sort of hoping you’ll happen upon some truly cool party with truly cool approachable people listening to really good music and they’ll say hey, come on up to the porch and hang out with us! wanna beer? but there’s never any party and there’s never any people there’s just you walking home in the dark all by yourself again and did you just let yourself into your dark apartment and go straight to your room and put some billie holiday in the cd player and maybe light some incense and get undressed and get in bed and stare at the ceiling for a couple of hours before you finally fell asleep?

i hate that.

47 U . . .. . siena vision (1995)

pseudo english punk band loudspeaker spieling while the espresso spout kooooosh! announces another caffeine connection mr. short- clipped-roman-style-dyed-black do with thrice-pierced ears drags in another dollar and fifty in pocket change from a soon-to-be-satiated customer in thrift store grunge three pots a-perking cafe siena brew plup-plups that smell that arabica smell that kenya that special new orleans grind with a hint of chicory it’s warm no breeze to blow the flies by brick wall broken out in student art it’s spread infecting the adjacent wall with sculptured faces painted ceramic faces of earth tone red gray and blue the click-clack and scrape of dishes and silverware on faux marble countertops soft hum of study seekers scratching notepads the taste of pumpkin pie cinnamon globber stuck on my goatee tastes even better the second time around homegirl too-cool dink-dinka-dinks her spoon on the edge of her herb tea cup chats to roman-do boy behind the counter where you been where you going what’s on the tube tonight? tip jar is overflowing measure the coffee level it off with a knife jam it into the espresso machine kooooosh like a jet taking off as steam is forced through specialty coffee grinds all to the punk rock beat

48 L . . .. . commerce (1995)

look at your hair! your frizzy halo of ozone-tearing hair! seen so much goddamn bleach i could dip your head in a bucket and clean my toilet sparkly white! oh jesus, so much pancake makeup, you clog the pores of everyone within a 5-foot radius with a flutter of pink and frosty blue dust! your face has a half-life of 40,000 years, you put so much shit on it! and have you smelled yourself lately, dollface? take a whiff! you smell like you opened every perfume ad in 15 cosmos and rolled in ‘em like a wet-haired sheepdog in the grass! you drape your fake-bake body in come-hither clothes and fuck me in the ass pumps and silicon triple-d muskmelons for breasts, and you claim to be a feminist? you’ve got a spice girls mind and a miss america mouth wrapped inside a lipo-sucked carcass that’s nothing more than a twisted caricature of male desire trafficking female self- loathing and shame! i look at you and think of walt disney’s head frozen in a chamber somewhere. look at you! you thing! you it! you beckoning finger! you vicious circle! i’ll tell you what you are! you are a chocolate-covered cherry with no cherry left! you are a strip mall! blinking sign, come inside, buy buy buy, but your shelves are stripped bare! a commercial! a billboard! the goodyear blimp! you are baywatch! you are the motherfucking pepsi generation! you are the reason jim carrey makes $20 million a picture! you are the star- spangled banner! you are the american dream gone nightmare! now go wash your goddamn face off, shave that almond-head shaped ass of yours, tear off those fake-assed nails, deflate them fake-ass titties, go to the thrift store and buy some real clothes, throw out your jenny craig and rejoice in the body of a real woman, and get a goddamned personality while you’re at it!

49 D .. . ..

new poem about a coin (1995)

there’s a coin in the tip of my sock, and i have no idea how it got there.

it feels like a dime, which used to be enough for a phone call, but now is not quite enough.

it’s not really bothering me. it’s not chaﬁng me or cutting me. it’s not hurting me. it’s just there, and i’m aware that it’s there.

the only thing keeping me from unlacing my boot and pulling off my sock and removing it is the fact that the energy expelled in removing it exceeds the amount of irritation it inﬂicts.

and so it stays,

50 G ...... rattling around my sock, bobbling around my toes, in and out, in and out, in between. and i ﬁnd myself thinking of you.

51 O ......

the miracle corner pocket luck shot (1995)

my friend brian made the killer pool shot the other day at lasalle’s.

it was so good i told him i’d write a poem about it.

but how?

how to convey the sheer beauty, the utter perfection, of this shot?

two ball combo not one not two but three bumpers back spin with a perfect leave set-up snug for the next shot straight sinker into the corner pocket and the bastard called it.

damn.

if he was any good at playing pool it still would’ve been a good shot, but brian sucks at pool,

52 T ...... couldn’t play his way out of a wet paper sack. this was nothing less than divine intervention, a true blue-chalk marvel of epiphaniacal proportions. i ended up beating him by three balls because brian really does suck at pool, but damn if that wasn’t a ﬁne shot.

53 O ......

bookends (1995)

1. serendipity

our journey begins with crisp fuji apples and kiwi pepper jam bought with pocket change from a parking lot farmers market.

drizzled by honey-sweet sun from a sky too blue for words, we walk — no… we traipse — through wooded parks kicking oak balls under fallen birch, snacking on wild miners lettuce, sharing chapstick and singing songs until our voices go numb and our cheeks ﬂush cherub red from smiling so hard.

and later beneath great aunt johnny’s handmade quilt, we snuggle entwined like grape vines in a cuddle puddle,

54 C ...... caressing each other’s hands our faces our lips. and it feels so warm, and it feels so nice. more then anything it feels like our ﬁrst few steps together.

2. graduation day our serendipity didn’t last nearly as long as we had hoped. how could we go from the warmth of hands held, stomachs trembling at the thought of our ﬁrst embrace, and whispers hoarse with passion — i want us to be together for a long time — to the cold static of a long-distance phone call from four blocks away… you’re not the one. we dove in head ﬁrst, eyes closed, and sank straight to the bottom. so deeply, so quickly, never got the chance to adjust to the pressure.

55 O ...... true bliss hardened in the amber of silence, the death of conversation, of our walks through the park, making love, kissing, touching, until it was all gone.

the last time i saw her. she was so beautiful it hurt. i knew. she knew.

when she left, i emptied my drawer in the bottom of her dresser, packed my toothpaste, my socks, my pillow.

we never made it to summer time. the laughs we shared over turkish delight and gyros made us think of more long walks in the park, leaving the key in the door at the hotel at disneyland, spooning, lucky charms, the warmth of her hands.

but it was only the last laugh before summer, before graduation, before goodbye.

56 N ...... wiping the salt from the corners of my mouth (1995)

she said her wounds were still salt-fresh, a phrase from her youth of skinned knees and bruised elbows. salt-fresh and my voice still had enough sting to bring tears. my wounds bear the shine of half-forgotten scar tissue, but hers still seep.

57 V ...... state of the art (1995)

listen to america breath listen listen somewhere in this country is a madman with a handful of gun and a headful of bad ideas his eyes blinking 87 times per minute and his white-knuckle hands clinching clinching he’s right outside the ice cream store right outside the ice cream store is a little girl with a strawberry snow cone artiﬁcially coloured with red dye #5 it’s 1950 and her happy red cone lipsticks a carcinogenic smiley-face across her little mouth she’s got a little pink dress and a little pink bow in her curly-girl hair and her little hand is clutched in her daddy’s big hand in her daddy’s big hand is a gold watch with his name engraved on the back it’s 1982 and he’s retiring

58 E ...... he’s got a happy little hat on his big fat head with a red rubber band stretched under his chins 40 years he’s been with the company for 40 years working never been sick once not once only three vacations in the entire time put three kids through school through college the mortgage the car 40 years and he’s got his gold watch and mobile homes and ﬁshing poles and log cabins in his head but he’ll be dead in 6 months of colon cancer of heart disease of diabetes of alzheimer’s he’s got his gold watch his gold watch and he watches the children playing under high tension electrical wires

59 R ...... bigman (1995)

i knew a man he was a big man and he had him big hands with big pointer ﬁngers fat sweaty ﬁngers like sausages frying in a shallow pan

and in him big hand he had a big leather bound book with big gold letters etched on the cover that said my god is bigger than your god

and this big book put big ideas in him big head, ideas about my love my life my sex my death, ideas he was proud to share with a thump of his big ﬁnger

one day this big man came to me and spoke of skies ﬁlled with embers

60 S ...... his eyes blazing with the ﬁres of righteous indignation and i clucked my tongue at this man sucked my teeth shrugged my shoulders and walked away him was not amused him raised him mighty book and slammed it down with all him strength and my family planning centers burst into ﬂames and the blood of my best friends swam with virus and my sisters were bound and gagged with apron strings and the vocal cords were torn from my throat and this big man pounded on him big book and him shouted what’s your small god going to do now? and i introduced that big man to my god my small calibre semi-automatic deity and as he was looking down the barrel of my small god i whispered a passage i had memorized from my little black book for lord handgun so despised the world that he gave his only begotten son Christ Hollowpoint

61 A ...... for whosoever shall receiveth him unto their bodies shall be torn asunder and live forever as statistical data

and for the ﬁrst time in him big life this big man was at a loss for words

the moral of the story is this

you can take away my voice but you can’t take away my thoughts you can’t take away my actions

and

it ain’t the size of your god that counts it’s what you can do with it

62 T ...... the politics of just friends (1996)

i’ve reached that point again that point in a failed relationship where the cuts on your fingers from the last slammed phone received are still scabbed over and the warmth of the last sleep-over has not quite faded where the anger has basically evaporated and has been replaced by a resolve to move on and the exchange of things begins because you are still connected by the long sticky strands of shared space and shared warmth and you start gathering the things you’ve left at one another’s places cds and underwear and toothbrushes and hair care products and razors and favourite t-shirts and favourite pillows these reminders of seven months and you have to decide if you want to keep the photos of the two of you smiling whether they should stay nestled in the dresser mirror and on the walls of your work cubicle and on the cork board in the kitchen you’re still all over each other like a coating like a skin of shared phrases and shared clothing and you still hear her name in all of those songs and the chili-mac you made a month ago that she said would mold before you ate all of it is still in the fridge growing a fine fuzzy beard and the half-gallon of ice cream from root beer floats way back when is still in the freezer and now you’re in the beginning stages of just friends where your hand still twitches unconsciously toward hers in a darkened movie theatre and you have to remind your own bed who you are and get used to the non-breathing non-warmth of your own bedroom walls and you know it’s for the best and you know this is a good decision and you know this is the last best chance to salvage at least a friendship but you still miss her warmth and her smell and her taste and the way she looked at you when you made her laugh and you have to keep reminding yourself what you’re not missing the miscommunications and the misunderstandings and the mistrust and the missed opportunities and the arguments and the denials and the fading chemistry and the silence especially the silence but you’re still wondering if there’s still a chance for something to rise out of the ashes of this another failed relationship that looked so promising

63 I ...... in the beginning and still had hope in the middle and now leaves you cold in the end and now the empty spaces need to be filled the times you want to pick up the phone need to be filled with something else because just friends can’t talk on the phone about the weather like real friends can or like lovers can because just friends means space it means distance it means it’s over it means i am trying my hardest to move on but there are still things i miss about you it means i have to learn to watch teevee by myself again first kisses are easy to remember but no one ever tells you when the last kiss happens or when you’re going to make love for the last time it just comes and then it goes and then you come to realize that yes that time two weeks ago or three weeks ago that was the very last time we’ll ever make love and that time in the car after that last long talk that was the very last time we’ll ever kiss and now the future is just a great big open space again i miss you i hate you i love you i never want to see you again i’m alone and where else do i go from here other than where i always go… forward… again.

64 O ...... roadtrippin’ (1996)

there’s something magical and healing about a solo roadtrip.

it’s about forward motion, something about going somewhere and leaving something behind. it’s about yearning to blow off your job, quit your girlfriend, sell off all your stuff and pack what’s left into the back of your pickup truck.

it’s about whittling your existence down to its necessary parts — just you, an 80-gig ipod, a sleeping bag in the back — and throwing the map out the window and getting the hell outta dodge.

it’s about raising your head from the keyboard attached to a computer on a desk in a cubicle in a work center in a business that makes things for other businesses that sell things to other businesses and realizing that your paragraph in the great american novel is due for yet another rewrite. it’s about yearning to tattoo the sticky black ink of your tires across the belly of this land, to become another steel corpuscle in the freeway bloodstream and ﬂow into towns you’ve never seen and follow the pulse to their beating hearts.

it’s about blazing down the highway, just you and patsy cline, just you and johnny cash, just you and soft cell and singing at the top of your lungs — don’t touch me please i cannot stand the way you tease!* — at 75-85-95 miles per hour.

it’s about playing ski-rack or cop car for 600 miles at a time.

it’s about pulling over recklessly, immediately, across four lanes of trafﬁc to stop under an overpass to scribble a phrase or two that falls in your path like a safe from the sky.

65 N ...... it’s about leaving everything behind and cleansing yourself in a gritty, sweaty, unwashed catharsis of road dirt and sunburnt forearms and parking in a ﬁeld infested with crickets in some town somewhere and drifting off to sleep in the same cutoffs and radiohead t-shirt you’ve been wearing since diving into the colorado river in needles, california, three days before.

it’s about the random encounters in gas stations and greasy spoons, in coffeeshops and dark saloons. it’s about being embraced by serendipity and spirited away from the real deal angst machine of modern day existence.

it’s about smiling that healing smile that only days and days on the road can bring.

i love a good roadtrip, man, that shakes your head and clears the cobwebs and allows you to think clearly for the ﬁrst time in years.

* lyrics from “tainted love” by soft cell

66 C ...... pueblo dog (1996)

the puppy’s name was too hard for white tongues — all i’s and th’s, tiwa for fry bread. the boy found him in the tribe’s sacred mountains behind taos pueblo, where white people are not allowed. little, smooth, eyes sealed shut. his ﬁrst meal was bear fat and goat’s milk from a torn plastic bag. little fry bread barely survived his ﬁrst night in the pueblo, but grew gappy-toothed and happy-butted, curling around the ankles of the boy who was allowed to speak only tiwa as he learned to be a real man.

67 L ...... the boy’s aunt never let fry bread out of the courtyard of their adobe house, kept him away from the bum dogs in the open square who begged greasy chunks of dough from the white people and their cameras.

he was too scared, anyway, and content on his haunches licking deer meat from between his toes, but she could see him smell at the fry bread in the wind

just as her nephew watched the bmws and mercedes in the dirt parking lot.

68 U ...... ode to poet x (1996)

i see your rubbernecking head lolling around in perfect boredom while the other poets proceed unnoticed, unheeded, disregarded & dismissed by you, poet x, who can’t be bothered by these faux poets & their trite phrases. you whip out your poetry dangle it onstage, wag it around, climax, then collapse in your seat ﬂaccid & smug & ﬂutter-eyed. if you’re too tired poet x, if you’re too bored, if you’re above listening to what i have to say or what they have to say, then poet x why don’t you leave?

69 B ...... get out the door you’re yearning for because i have better things to do then watching you yawn.

i’m so goddamned tried of watching as you stick your middle ﬁnger up your own ass & rub it under our noses like it was vick’s vap-o-rub.

poet x the moment you lost the ability to inspire & be inspired is the moment your name changed to ex-poet.

70 S ...... ma’amed (1996)

my friend nancy was ma’amed the other day. she’s 25 and was not amused. she ran home and glared into the mirror, pinching her cheeks for elasticity and checking for baggage under her eyes. she told me, just last week my 26-year-old friend and i decided we were at that perfect age neither too young nor too old to date anyone we want from 18 to 50. and yet, just like that some overly polite supermarket checker — the little bastard! — with pimples and a greasy smile ma’amed her and offered to carry her groceries, damning her to a too-near future of backyard barbecues

71 W ...... and early bedtimes and planned vacations and mortgages and mid-life crises and pta meetings.

and this coming just three days after not being carded at the liquor store downtown.

laughing at ﬁrst, then sighing, i realize that i too am nearing the twilight of my omnisexual years, where hair dye and tattoos are just as good as career suits and sensible shoes.

and even as i roll my eyes at the giggly slip of a counter girl for whom i would have killed myself ﬁfteen years ago, i quietly mourn the passing of her affections.

gee, sir, i didn’t know sting was in the police!

here’s your receipt, sir!

have a nice day!

sir!

72 H ...... death to romance (1996)

i’d like to bring a class action suit against the makers of hallmark cards and the producers of romantic comedies and the writers of bad love poetry and syrupy pop songs. i’d like to sue their asses off and you can all join me, all you lonely housewives chain-smoking romance novels, you lonely placers of personal ads with empty email inboxes, you lonely pursuers of picket fences and lawn chair weekends. we can sentence them all to death and string the bastards up and light a bonﬁre beneath them of burning mariah carey records and when harry met sally videos and high school yearbooks and dozens and dozens of dying red roses and rotting boxes of chocolate, and we can watch the bastards kick like our hearts have under the weight of their sunset beaches and candlelit dinners, their harmonies and melodies and vows of ‘til death do us part. we can burn them all then scatter the ashes from hollywood to paris, and then maybe — just maybe — we can get on with our lives.

73 E ...... jesus moshpit (1996)

i am the biggest monster in all the moshpit! i don’t give a damn and if you don’t like it, i’ll pull a stage dive and take your greasy punk ass out!

i wade through the arching, twisting, gnashing whirlpool of elbows and knuckles, and i’ll mess up any droog foolish enough to meet my gaze! for i am a lumbering behemoth with a six-foot tall spiked mohawk and a pierced uvula! i got arms like i-beams, ﬁsts like anvils, neck like a sewer pipe, head like a volkswagen! i shrug my mighty shoulders and sweaty punks go ﬂying through the air like gnats off a yak’s back!

yea though i mosh through the valley in the shadow of punk rock music, i shall fear no punk! for i am the biggest, the baddest, the meanest, the no-pain-feelin’est, jack-booted-thuggin’est, steel-toe- havin’est, no-toof-grinnin’est, boba-fett-walkin’est, wookiee-scalp- stalkin’est punk rock motherfucker in all the valley! as a matter of fact, i made the valley, with one mighty drag of my pinkie toe! goddamn! shazam! poetry slam! green eggs & ham!

and just because you see me standing in the corner all by myself watching the moshpit mayhem from afar… skinny… in a black depeche mode t-shirt… it don’t mean nothing, ‘cuz i don’t have to prove myself to nobody! damn!

74 R ...... just take another drink (1996)

so, i’m sitting on the couch drinking early times whiskey straight from the bottle with this chick i’ve been seeing for the past couple of years, and the stereo’s spieling this vicious smoky room ricochet coltrane sax solo, and my girl’s looking up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and just a-smiling like a busload of mongoloid schoolchildren on a field trip, so i poke her in the ribs with my big toe and i ask her, i say, “baby, what is it that you’re thinking about, ‘cause i just gotta know…” and she looks at me and she says, “man, it’s this music, it’s this rabid coltrane be-bop jazz! it’s got me thinking ‘bout that time we was in that old white mercury with the oxblood tuck-and-roll interior and the battery-operated holy mother of jesus suction- cupped to the dashboard, and you were blazing a path down that methamphetamine highway, man, pedal to the metal like a one-man gang-bang bending the needle of that speedometer over backwards and still pressing your foot harder on the gas, so fast that when we hit a bump we flew like the goddamn space shuttle, man, we took off, man, like ten-fifteen feet into the air, and when we touched back down we’d bounce like a goddamn skipping stone, and you could hear the elbows of those two waitresses knocking against the roof of the trunk every time we hit the ground, and i was slumped against the passenger side door trying not to get blood all over the upholstery and listening to the wind, oh man that wind, the roar of that wind was so loud you could barely hear the sirens of the 17 nevada state troopers behind us splashing the sharp desert rocks with blueandred blueandred blueandred, and they were so close you could almost smell the adrenaline on their breath, but you just looked straight ahead, man, you didn’t look at the rearview mirror, you didn’t look at the gas gauge, you didn’t look at the suitcase in the backseat, you didn’t look at me sitting in a puddle of my own blood, man, you just kept driving, and i said, ‘baby, what the hell are

75 E ...... we gonna do?’ and you closed your eyes, and you opened the glove compartment, and you reached past the .38 with the black electrical tape stretched around the grip, past the last box of hollow-point shells, searched around until you found it, that coltrane 8-track tape, and you popped it into the tape deck, and you cranked the volume knob all the way up just as loud can be, and i tell you, man, no music in the history of this entire planet ever sounded so goddamned brilliant as a love supreme right at that very moment!”

and then this girl i’ve been seeing for a couple of years? she lays her head back on the couch, closes her eyes and smiles, and i look at her and say, “baby… what the fuck are you talking about?”

and she looks at me and says, “ahhh… nevermind, man, it’s the coltrane talking. just take another drink.”

76 Y ...... real live über grrrl (1997)

let me tell you about my girl.

she is… beautiful. she’s got curves in her hips and a smile on her lips and a little round belly just like a real woman should. when she smiles, she glows, like ten thousand fireflies caught in a woman- shaped bottle, and when she smiles at me, oh… she just melts me like an ice cube in a frying pan. sometimes she’s quiet and shy and lowers her head when she’s embarrassed. sometimes she’s in my face with an idea that burns in her mind and flickers in her eyes. and sometimes she curls her fingers into fists and raises them in the air and shakes them when she’s frustrated and growls at the fucked up way the world is. and sometimes she just puts her head on my shoulder and pats my hairy belly and tells me she likes me a whole lot.

we can spend a 9-hour roadtrip just talking and talking about this and that and the other thing and — boom — suddenly, we’re there. and we can just sit at opposite ends of her bed, each with a book, and not say a single word for hours… except with our toes… under the covers.

the woman in my life has hairy legs. this may not mean a lot to you, but to her it’s a statement. it’s a manifesto. she loves being a woman, everything about being a woman: the blood, the softness, the struggles, the sisterhood, and the space she has deep inside that she allows to be ﬁlled only in the way she chooses. the woman in my life loves her vagina. the smell of it, the taste of it, the feel of it, the wild bush of pubic hair so thick you could grow tomatoes in it, and you know what?

i feel the same way about it.

77 O ...... the woman in my life is a complete person. she has no desire to be a square peg for some dumb boy to force into his round hole, nor does she want to be used as a bridge, or an umbrella, or a scented handkerchief.

sometimes she lets me sleep on the good pillow, next to the wall, just how i like it. sometimes she tells me to have a nice night and walks herself to her door. and sometimes she taps on my window and asks very politely through my screen if i know any warm places she can sleep.

i’ve wanted to write a poem about her since the day i met her, but i won’t. depriving the world of one more crappy love poem will probably do my karma some good.

78 U . . potty is pee (1997)

my girlfriend said when she was a kid go potty meant go pee. i told her that was weird because everybody knows go potty means go poop. she said, “nope, potty is pee. poop is poop.” i told her maybe it was a family vocabulary thing because i had never heard that before, but she insisted that potty is pee and said anyone who doesn’t think so was lied to as a child, because potty is pee and that’s that. i asked her, “what about the phrase potty mouth?” she said, “exactly.” i decided to drop it. i called my friend david and asked for his unbiased opinion. i told him, “my girlfriend is so silly… she thinks potty is pee. isn’t that weird?”

79 W . . david told me, “but, potty is pee.” i stared at the phone in disbelief for a full minute, then i told him, “she got to you ﬁrst, didn’t she?” david was silent. i hung up on him. my friend vandy said the whole thing was silly and just a matter of semantics (whatever that means) and said i should just drop it before it gets out of hand. i agreed, and as i walked away, vandy said under her breath, “especially since you’re so wrong.” so, i made a long distance phone call to my mother in wichita, kansas, and asked her, as nonchalantly as possible, “so, mom, if i said to you that i need to go potty, what would that mean?” she thought a moment, then said, “sounds like you need to take a shit.” i told her, “thank goodness! everybody here seems to think it means go pee!” she laughed and said, “that’s funny, everybody out here thinks it means go pee, too!”

80 A . . silly shower song (1996)

there’s a waterlogged spider in my soapdish, been there a week or two. he’s puffy and pale in his watery jail, and i think his spider body is starting to smail. i had an agreement with that fair spider: just don’t get on my girlfriend or crawl up inside her. but curiousity got the best of him, and he checked out the shower stall on a whim, and he slipped and he slid and he fell into the soapdish. poor little spider. sweet apple cider. was gonna throw a curve ball, but instead i threw a slider. oh dear spider, you’re dead.

81 T . . map of your body (1998)

i stand in the shower watching you wash your hair, watching hot water cascade down your breasts in soapy rivulets and arc in streams from your nipples. and i realize i have touched every part of your body, kissed every curve, tasted every inch, and still i am fascinated by the sight of you. then i look into your eyes as you catch me in the act and smile back at me like you know exactly what i’m thinking.

82 C . . 1,000 secret things (1998)

i sing to thee of a thousand secret things: the soft patch of hair between your breasts, thin wisps of fuzz just long enough to tug with my pressed lips; how we fall asleep, our bodies spooned together, my arm curled around you, your long ﬁngers keeping my open palm nestled over your heart; the gentle rise of your hips; the smell of the back of your neck; how we rub our feet together soft as sleep overtakes us; how your full mouth grows small when you’re mad; how you kick your leg when frustration won’t let you sleep. i can tell when you’re sick just by tasting you.

83 H . . catching the bus (1998)

so, my girlfriend says to me, she says, “how’re you doing?” and i say, “you know, when you’re walking to the bus stop, and everything is going just ﬁne, and a little breeze is blowing, and the sun is out, and the sky is blue, and the birds are singing, and everything seems just about right in your little world, but then you look up and you see the bus you’re supposed to catch pull away from the curb, and it’s the last bus of the day, so you haul ass trying to catch the bus, and you’re waving your arms trying to attract the attention of the bus driver, and your backpack is ﬂopping all over the place, and your lungs are burning, and there are those precious few moments where you’re running and the bus is rolling at the very same speed, and you both kinda hover there, and it could go either way, i mean, the bus could suddenly slow down and stop and it would’ve been all worth the effort, or it could remain just out of reach and you’ll watch it drive away and disappear around the corner into the next block as your legs give out and you jog to a stop and you end up standing there in the middle of the street all hot and sweaty and out of breath and pissed off that this beautiful day has caught you off guard? well, i feel like that, like i’ve been walking through this beautiful day, and suddenly i’ve looked up, and i’m at that slender second where i have to decide what i’m going to do, whether i’m going to chase after the bus that i’m almost surely going to miss and end up all hot and sweaty and pissed off all over again, or maybe i should just say to hell with it without a regret and start walking home with a little of my self-respect intact.” and i stop talking and look down at my thumb. and she just sorta stares at me for a bit, then she clears her throat, and then she says, “i meant, like, are you hungry? because i’m going to the kitchen to get a sandwich. do you want anything?”

84 P . . and i look up at her for a moment, take a deep breath, look back down at my thumb, and say, “do i want anything? well… no, i think i have everything i need.” and i watch her walk away and disappear around the corner into the kitchen.

85 E . .

painfully white (1998)

i can’t compete with the black poets i love: maya angelou, etheridge knight, amiri baraka, gwendolyn brooks, sapphire. i can’t. their words are so raw so vibrant so alive with meaning and history and pain and struggle and desire and music so much music so much rhythm so much culture. like a thick tapestry of dark blues and bright reds and deep blacks draped around their shoulders that defiantly keeps them warm despite the weight. i can’t compete. my ancestors’ voices can’t conjure the sound of be-bop jazz and back porch blues, dreadlocked rasta and sweet soul music — no — my ancestors’ voices sneer: nigger, coon, porch monkey, blue gum, jiggaboo, nigger. and that is not music to my ears. when my cousin, my flesh, says to me, well, that’s what she gets for dating a nigger, it is not music to my ears. when my aunt says to me, if a nigger ever gets elected president, they’ll be shot dead the very next day. it is not music to my ears. when my nephew jokes, why do black people smell? so that blind people can hate them, too, it is not music to my ears. my ancestors did not watch burning crosses from cracked windows with wide eyes, i am afraid, but smug from behind white hoods. i rub this blessed white skin of mine until it bleeds trying to find some colour underneath some culture some base some strength some pride but it is stained by blood i did not spill. and i hear that beautiful music — the tribal rhythms of africa, the souful chicago blues and new orleans jazz, the back-breaking gospel from the american south — and i am saddened that my ancestors gave langston hughes so very much to write about. and realize that, even as i write these words, i am riding on the coattails of someone else’s pain.

86 O . . poetry widow (1998)

fuck poetry! she said, the smoking gun of her finger in my face. fuck poetry! you don’t write poetry for me anymore, you write excuses. oh, i’ve hurt your feelings again, here’s a poem. oh, i’ve disrespected your body again, here’s a poem. fuck poetry! you’re not a poet, you’re a snake-oil salesman. you don’t have relationships, you have anecdotes. i’m not your girlfriend, i’m your material. you take every sweet emotion we’ve shared, every intimate joy, every secret, and you twist them into laughter at your stupid poetry slams. that’s not poetry, that’s robbery. you rob our relationship of meaning in front of audiences who cheer you on. i used to love your poetry. i was so flattered the first time you wrote a poem about me.

87 P . . it was so sweet, all that talk… curves in her hips and a smile on her lips and a little round belly just like a real woman should but now i see right through your schtick. fuck poetry! you don’t write poetry, you write foreplay. you write propaganda. you prostitute your abilities on self-centered conquests. i’m not your muse — your hunger for acceptance your fucked up self-esteem — that’s your muse. fuck poetry! as a matter of fact, fuck bukowski! and fuck ginsberg, too! fuck ferlinghetti and keruoac! fuck snyder and burroughs and rexroth. fuck sibilance and consonance and assonance and alliteration! fuck free verse and sestinas and quatrains and limericks and haiku! fuck iambic pentameter! fuck moon, spoon, june! fuck soulmate, partner, friend! fuck lover! fuck god! fuck jesus! fuck all his disciples! nothing is holy! nothing is holy! nothing is holy! nothing… in your poetry… is holy…

88 L . . fuck poetry! i don’t need your goddamned poetry, boy, i need a man! a real man who doesn’t hide behind his barnes & noble journal and his word processor. i need a man. you gonna be that man? you gonna be my man? or is momma gonna have to go shopping? you want to write poetry for me?

ﬁne. put down your pen and love me a poem. respect me a poem. listen: i need you to stop trying to ﬁnd the right words and just be

Poetry.

89 E . . ode to a plaster casting (1998)

it doesn’t do justice to her hands. hers have long narrow palms, slender ﬁngers, graceful ﬁngers, tipped with careful nails so perfectly smooth, so pale, as to almost be transparent. hers are hands to be cupped with both of mine and warmed with mine then brought to my lips and kissed. hers are gentle backscratching hands, crafty short story hands, poetry hands. not chalky hands, not cold dusty hands wrapped around an apple held between alabaster breasts like eve. she was motionless for 45 minutes covered in cool plaster-of-paris smiling the entire time so she could smile at me from my wall when she was gone.

90 O . . . wilson road (1998)

oatmeal. that’s what i remember. my young mother stirring oatmeal in the early morning dark, scraping the sides of the saucepan with a wooden spoon. that meant it was time to wake my sister up and get ready, put on our bunny slippers and pile pillows and blankets into the back of the gto — me and my sleepy kid sister — so my mom could drive my dad to the railroad. she was 22. i was 4.

91 N .. . lydia and the duck (1997)

so, this duck waddles into the bar, flaps up to the stool next to me, and he quacks: hey there twinkle tits. i’m zeus. what’s your sign? i knock back a slug of my warm boilermaker, take a gander of his beak to his wings and back again, and i say: neon, and right now it’s flashing no vacancy. he arches a feathery eyebrow, strikes a match on the bottom of his webbed foot, stokes a stubby lucky strike, then he quacks: look, hula-hoop hips, I ain’t got all day for this witty reparté. i’m a man with needs, and you got what I need. capisce? normally, see, i woulda told this bird brain to fly south for the winter, but this was 2 a.m. on a saturday night after $18.50 for shots of early times chased by pints pabst blue ribbon, and there’s only so much freebird you can take from that goddamned jukebox. so, what the hell… i took the duck home and fucked him, then i cut his throat and plucked him, and i had myself a mighty fine duck soup. zeus my ass… arrogant prick…

92 T .. . dreams (1998)

i had a strange dream the other night. i dreamt i went on a fishing trip with marvin gaye, otis redding, percy sledge, and michael bolton. after about five minutes, michael bolton disappeared. i never figured out what happened to him, but i do remember otis chuckling to himself every time he chopped up the bait. i had a strange dream the other night. i dreamt i went on a fishing trip with miles davis, john coltrane, charlie parker, and kenny g. the last thing i remember before waking up is miles saying to ‘trane and bird, “well, lookie there, fellas… we’re almost outta worms.” and they turned and smiled at kenny g as miles reached into his tackle box for his fillet knife. i had a strange dream the other night. i dreamt i went on a fishing trip with charles manson, ted bundy, jeffrey dahmer, and george w. bush. they seemed to get along just fine… except jeffrey kept eating the bait.

93 H .. .

immortalized in celluloid (1998)

i want a soundtrack to play at important parts of my life so i’ll know they’re important. if i hold someone’s hand and the gentle chords of a strummed guitar swell into a sweet symphony of violins and cellos, i’ll know it’s true love. if weird scary music plays as i walk into my dark and lonely apartment… alone… i’ll know it’s time to ﬁnd a new apartment. if there is no music, i’ll know what is happening is not very important; post ofﬁces are places with no soundtrack whatsoever… unless you’re very unlucky.

i want to run down the street as fast as i can… in slow-mo… with buildings exploding and plate glass windows shattering and cars crashing and women and children screaming and bullets ricochetting and sirens blaring and lots of mayhem and destruction… then… i want everything… back to normal. and no one gets hurt. and no one dies. it just looks really freakin’ cool.

i want people to hear my deep meaningful thoughts in a whispery voice-over when i’m thinking deep meaningful thoughts so i won’t have to actually tell them what’s on my mind, they’ll just know. when i want someone to know i am being sincere, i want my face to completely fill that person’s vision so they can see… in my eyes… how very sincere i am. i want to fast forward through the parts of my life i don’t like, and when the good parts come, i want to hit pause. even better… i want to do something over and over and over again until i get it right, and i want the cutting room floor to be littered with break-ups and arguments and embarrassments and speeding tickets and crying jags and sicknesses and vomiting, leaving only first kisses, paydays, sunsets, awards ceremonies, graduations, promotions, and lots of passionate lovemaking.

94 R . . . i want a talented team of writers to script everything i say so i always say exactly what i’m supposed to say at exactly the right moment. i want all my dialogue to be lifted from the texts of best-sellers and hit broadway plays. i want all my love scenes choreographed and enhanced by a host of expert lighting technicians and makeup artists who can erase every imperfection, focusing all attention on my golden brown eyes… my full lower lip… my straight white teeth…

music, of course, will be playing during these times — regina spektor, joanna newsom, ani difranco — music that enhances the love i feel inside for this person whose inner voice i’ll be able to hear as we make soft focus love. i want my life to be lightweight and romantic and crowd-pleasing. i want all the loose ends tied up by last ten minutes. i want my performance to appear effortless.

i want a happy ending.

95 E .. . holiest of holies (1998)

I don’t like you very much anymore you constant companion foil nag I ﬁnd excuses to avoid you my closet needs organizing my bookshelf needs alphabetizing my bicycle needs riding anything to avoid the mirror we were so close back then back when I had nothing but you i kept you dog-eared in my hip pocket of my blue dungarees and logged our adventures crawling through vacant lot underbrush on our bellies to avoid snipers spiriting urgent messages over enemy lines or love letters to that red-haired girl who played the cello and wore thick sweaters and never formed her mouth around my name not even once you held my secret plans treasure maps codes clues confessions you got me through long nights — eternal nights — soaked by tears chewed by dogs creased and folded spindled and mutilated in an endless series of backpacks. your comrades followed one by one discarded after tours of duty and sent home to the bottom of the closet in a wobbly old sneaker box bound with rubberbands and marked with a 9-year-old’s hand sanctum sanctorum keep out! there was a time when i would’ve rushed into a burning house for you now i’m fucking frustrated by your constant berating your incessant catcalling your derision your judgement your failure to motivate me to ﬁll you again with newborn words and carefully-crafted turn of phrase, unwritten symphonies of wit and wonder. now i just want you to leave me alone.

96 E . . . chain record store blues (1998)

i worked at a chain record store over the holiday season and the worst thing about it wasn’t the customers or the shitty hours or the shitty wages or the frenzied display of rampant consumerism posing as some quasi-religious celebration nor was it the snot-nosed kids working there who referred to me as pops because my hair’s not blue and my eyebrow doesn’t have 47 piercings and oh fuck me i’m not cool i’m not def i’m not fresh i’m not phat i’m not ﬂy i’m not old school i’m not punk rock! and why? well, i’ll tell you why! because i dared to buy the latest paul simon album on my employee discount, ooooooooh! no, the worst thing about it was the music, man, having to listen to fucking christmas music every fucking day between halloween and new year’s, and oh my god did i wanna roast nat king cole’s nuts over an open ﬁre!

anyway, it’s the afternoon of christmas eve, and my chain record store is packed with last minute shoppers, and i’m on the edge, man, after not having had a break in ﬁve hours, and my poor balls are swollen with piss, and we’re running full blast with all ﬁve registers ringing up long lines of idiots, and each one of them has got a handful of screaming kids yelling “i want britney spears!” and “i want justin beiber!” and “no, mom, eminem doesn’t have any cussing on it, i promise, just buy it for me, you fucking whore!”

and in the middle of all this christmas joy comes this wide-eyed waif of a girl in a red babydoll shirt and baggy skater pants with seven silver hoops in one ear and a pierced lip and a pierced tongue and three nose piercings and a pierced belly button and the star wars rebel alliance symbol tattooed on her neck, and she wafts up to my cash register and delicately places a brand new shiny copy of christina aguilera’s latest cd on my counter and says, “hi, i’m nikkii with two k’s and three i’s, how are you?” and i say, “well, trish, i’ll tell you, i was just thinking about having my foreskin reattached because no

97 S .. . one ever asked me if i wanted half my three-day-old penis chopped up for no goddamned good reason, and even though it’s only a little square of blackened leather in a jar of formaldehyde on my shelf at home, i am gonna sew that fucker back on! and then i’m gonna take a razor and slice my penis in half from the mushroom cap all the way down to the base, and then i’m gonna slice it in fourths, and then i’m gonna pierce the tip of each piece and attach them with silver chains to my ass so my cock will blossom like a ﬂower, and then i’ll really be punk rock, don’t you think that would be punk rock? and i’m not gonna stop there, no! i’m gonna take body modiﬁcation to a new level, trish! i’m gonna have the skin of my face removed and reattached to my ass so whenever i take a shit it looks like i’m smoking a cigar! haha!” and i jump up on the counter and kick the avril lavigne display and send cds raining down onto the heads of the frightened shoppers, and then i unzip my pants and unleash my four-inch cock, and i let loose an arching yellow fountain just as the mormon tabernacle choir sings it’s beginning to look a lot like christmas, and i scream “there is no god! there is no jesus! there’s only me, and i’m sending all you capitalist dogs to hell!” then nikkii with two k’s and three i’s says, “do you take checks?” and all of a sudden i’m back at my register behind the counter just staring at this skater chick, so i say, “you know, skater chick, that christina aguilera cd sucks except for that one song on the radio,” and she says, “well, it doesn’t matter, it’s only for my brother, and he’s lucky he’s even getting this, so just fucking ring me up!” so i fucking ring her up and say, “have a very merry christmas, nikkii. next?”

98 T . . . wormboy (1998)

so, i’m fingerfucking (insert name of prominent boy in the audience who deserves to be mocked), and he’s really getting into it, and he’s moaning and groaning and grinding, and my middle finger is stretched just as deeply inside him as it can go, so far i wanna call him “elliot… (e.t. voice with middle finger extended).” soon my fist is shoved so far up his ass i feel like jim henson, “hi ho, kermit the frog here!” and something suddenly occurs to me, so i say to him, i say, “baby, you know what?” and he says, “(moan),” and i say, “if you were in some horrible farming accident and got both your arms and both your legs chopped off, i’d still love you. you’d be my little worm boy. i’d just make a special backpack so we could go on long walks together, and you could just lean your head on my shoulders and give little chin hugs, and when we got married i’d just put your ring on a silver chain so you could wear it around your neck. sure, people would stare, but fuck ‘em. i’d look ‘em straight in the eye and say, ‘hey, he might only be a torso, but he’s my torso, and i love him from the top of her head to…’ well, you know what i’m talking about. to be honest, you’d be the perfect boy. and if you ever gave me grief, i’d just lie you on the ground and tickle you until you shit all over yourself. and if you really pissed me off, i’d just rent boxing helena for the 10th time to show you how good you’ve really got it. sleeping with you would be a little weird, though, because half the time you’d end up under the covers at the foot of the bed with the socks i’d kicked off during the night with the cat gnawing at your ear. and when we’d go into the mall bookstore, i’d have to check you and the backpack behind the counter. but, think of all the money you’d save on clothes… all you’d have to buy is extra large athletic socks and stretch them up over your head like a terry cloth turtleneck. of course, we’d have to be really careful about the dog. that’s a big dog, and you’ve seen how horny he gets around the furniture.” and by this time, my boy, who i’m still fisting, has stopped moving and breathing hard and is just looking at me with this cute little pissed

99 A ... off look he gets when i say something stupid, so i go, “what?” and he goes, “to be honest, big poppa, if you lost even your middle ﬁnger in a freak farming accident, i’d dump you so goddamned fast your head would spin, and i’m not talking like spin once or twice, but you’d have to get a job at the barnum and bailey sideshow as billy the spinning head wonder boy, so shut your goddamn cake hole and fuck me right because i’ve got to be at work in 25 minutes!” so, i say, “okay.”

100 G ... . hungry poet, will write for food (1998)

i saw my poet friend john the other day sitting in the lobby of the butte county social welfare ofﬁce. he smiled, shrugged his shoulders with palms turned to the smoke-stained acoustic tiles on the ceiling, and said, “this world is unkind to us poets.” i scratched my ear with the rolled up tip of my appointment slip — #B79 — and couldn’t help but agree. a few days later i was back ﬁlling out more forms and checking more boxes and saw my african dancer slash poet friend holly sitting in a dirty molded plastic chair with an appointment slip in her hand. she looked up from her journal and said, “my job at the bookstore doesn’t pay enough. i need to get my teeth cleaned. i need a checkup. i need to buy some cat food.” poetry has a way of keeping us all in need. us poets. us dreamers.

105 L ... . steeple stabbed and hell bound (1999)

he’s back. his jet black sedan prowls a darkened highway cobblestoned with the blackened husks of this victims’ skulls. his engine’s roar is the plaintive wail of a thousand howling wolves and the sticky black hurricane of furious bat wings. his steely grip locked around a steering wheel fashioned of arthritic knucklebones from a thousand suicides. his black-clad thumb and trigger ﬁnger pinch a swollen black stogie wrapped with crackling baby skin and stuffed with the eyebrows of a thousand strangled children. cruciﬁxes and swastikas of brittle bone and twisted hair rattle from his rearview to the rhythm of cackling laughter.

106 L ... . his headlights cut the night like a knife through a black velvet dress. he knows where i live, knows i’m alone, knows i slammed the phone on you last night. and now he’s coming for me in a cloud of black crows and locusts and bitter black wind. he’s coming for me, and i close my eyes and wait.

107 I ... . her smile, like knives (1999)

thin shivers of lip turned down slightly at the corners, even her smiles hid something. that small slit of a mouth, that cut, barely covered the bright white points of her teeth. her sharpened smile could cut glass, could lash out, could wound without even trying, without even meaning to. a smile like prison gates ripe with razor wire, like crumbling cement walls crowned with shards of glass. it was an ex-girlfriend smile, a smile i wasn’t on speaking terms with anymore. i could never kiss a mouth like that. it would hurt to touch her lips, even with my ﬁngertips.

108 N ... . incantation 1: the odyssey (1999)

…and i look into the 17-year-old eyes of my father in that boot camp snapshot and see… the son of a son of a sailor’s son four generations of escaping to sea fleeing backwoods and boondocks for shipping lanes and greasy docks and endless ocean blues. goodbye godebowl, oklahoma! go to hell bakersfield, california! eat shit shamrock, texas! fuck you, wichita, kansas! four generations of kicking the dust of our shitty little towns from our boots, of setting out on our own still wet behind the ears and working our way across the sea to find ourselves. four generations of telling our fathers to kiss our asses,

109 G ... . of turning our backs on home and never looking back, of turning our hearts into bitter black holes and facing the void at sea. and returning a little taller, a little skinnier, to replace the fractured homes that spawned us with wives and houses and mortgages and bills and dreams upon dreams upon dreams and sons.

…and i look into my 17-year-old eyes in that boot camp snapshot and see… we have never left home, never severed the umbilical cord that strangled us all, never freed ourselves from becoming exactly what we despised. all of us turning in ever-shrinking circles yearning for a home we’ve never had.

110 S .... incantation 2: the home front (1999)

to die brilliantly was always the goal, to tear at our school clothes upon impact of a well-aimed dirt clod and tumble screaming and gurgling from freshly erected mountains of dark, moist earth in a tangle of scuffed hi-tops and bowl cut hair, to crumble in a heap with a weak medic… spilling from our lips, to heave a trembling sigh and die with our eyes half open and our hands clutching an invisible smoking carbine. we were a motley crew of redneck kids battling hordes of the enemy in the shadow of skeleton houses at the outskirts of town, crawling on our bellies in the water pipe trenches of soon-to-be strip malls and convenience stores and rows upon rows of cloned tract houses.

111 T .... . every saturday we met while our parents watched family shows on the teevee, met in the field cleared of trees and paved with streets named oak and birch, met by the scuffed yellow tractors and earth movers and dump trucks (tanks & jeeps & troop transports) left by workmen over the weekend. we peppered our speech with grizzled epithets worthy of combat and bristling with battle-hardened authenticity: stop crying and fight like a man! get off your ass and fight like a man! stop crying before i give you a reason to cry! be a man! i remember the last time we played war. john p. crouched behind a thick tangle of tumbleweeds and hefted a fist-sized clod embedded with concrete and weeds — i heard it sizzle as it missed my ear by inches —

112 O .... . and nailed bo right between the eyes. bo, who was always the point man leading us into the thickest of battles, who always died the most magniﬁcent deaths, who spewed paint-stripping obscenities strange and venomous and wondrous to our ears, whose body arced like a dying gull through the air to collapse with a huff onto the trampled earth clutching severed limbs and sucking chest wounds and convulsing with the most convincing of death throes. bo just stood there, stunned by the chunk of rock embedded in his forehead, and let a slender thread of red carve a trail through the dirt of his nose. we tensed, waiting for the inevitable torrent of curses that would become catchphrases in the battles to come. we watched one bulbous drop of real live blood

113 R ... . . dangle from the curve of his nostril and splash on the laces of his dirty white tennies. he glared at john p., then gary, then mookie, then me, then tore the concrete from his head and threw it with all his might into the ground. he mounted his bmx bike and peddled away. i’ll give you a reason to cry. the next saturday it was just me and gary’s kid sister grace swinging our legs from the attic of our favourite skeleton house and talking in hushed tones about the end of summer.

114 I .... . incantation 3: the sweet mysteries of hot peach cobbler (1999)

1. 12 years old, turning tricks in okie truck stops, my grandma: 1938. she’d do anything to get out of that dusty oklahoma town, anything, to fade into the western sunset to pick peaches penny a pound in the golden state: in lamont, in arvin, in wasco, in shafter. she’d lie, tell them she was 16. she’d lie, tell them she loved them. lie on her back in the dirty rags and boxes of their pickup trucks, this pale slip of a blue-eyed farm girl. easy money from a lonely man 600 miles from his home. his wife. his 12-year-old daughter.

115 E .... . and their hot breath stank of bathtub gin and hand-rolled cigarettes, and their rough stubble tore at her skin like a father’s belt, and she held them all tightly and dreamed of palm trees and ﬁelds and ﬁelds of peach trees ripe for the plucking.

2. i watch my grandmother’s hands blurred by constant motion and the gravity of age. she slips the just-sharpened knife into the soft flesh of her backyard peaches and guides the edge along the unseen stone, cracks open the virgin fruit with a soft, wet ripping of ripe flesh then peels the thin skin with flicks of her thumb against the blade. she does this for an hour, her hands pink and sticky with juice, while i stir cinnamon and nutmeg into boiling sugar syrup and roll flour and salt and ice water into dough.

116 S .... . later we spoon the warm golden crisp and golden bulbs of sweetness into bowls of cold milk — pure childhood — and she nods her head as i smile the same grateful grandkid smile i’ve had for years. i do most of the work when my grandmother makes peach cobbler these days, but she insists on cutting her own peaches.

117 T .... . leaving las vegas (1999)

i exist in a forest of chain stores and pavement, of billboard whores and sacraments of plastic coins and dice meant to distract the masses from their dreary daily routines as wobbly cogs in the great white machine. i exist in an x-rated cacophony of pre-packaged destiny, of come-hither eyes from a thousand blinding signs, of cocktail waitresses bound in tight poly plumage and gagged by patriarchy gone mad mad mad, of sex-store dollar booths satiating salivating sociopaths with eye candy debutantes and gaily coloured tissue boxes while minimum wage jizz moppers wait to sop up their discarded sickness, of oxygen mask octogenarians chain-smoking lucky strikes and shufﬂing across casino carpets clutching change cups to skinny chests like drowning men with life preservers, of shipwrecked showgirls and their silicon come-ons shaking their money maker for drooling fools and their viagra-choked tools who think this must surely be the american dream… i exist but i do not live for this life is not for me not this quagmire of consumerism not this miasma of materialism not this bloated corpse of sexism this wretched hive of scum and villainy.

118 H .... . i see with my naked eye fields of hunched shoulders pressed against huge banks of slots, rocking unconsciously back and forth and mumbling, stuffing quarters into slots and coaxing their dreams to life at the amazing technicolour wailing wall. i exist as a shadow cast on a casino wall watching, sick to my soul, and yearning to leave this shopping mall town and its chopping block people and escape. but to where? to a corporate culture that trades billions of pink chinese lungs for trillions of nicotine tainted coffin-nails and the bright, white image of the marlboro man called progress? to a soft drink youth movement of mass-marketed rebellion that teaches our children to pay for their advertising and display corporate logos proudly across their pubescent chests and define themselves not by their actions but by their fashions? to a sound-bite government of photo op polemics smiling for the camera and regurgitating the latest cross-referenced trends and poll statistics

119 E ... .. as they kiss white babies and bomb brown babies over there somewhere? to a society where the term work ethic means working your life away for ethics-free companies and religion means you’ll be rewarded for your sad lonely life after you die bitter burnt heartbroken and alone? there is no escape… there is no leaving las vegas… every town in america is las vegas and we are all hopeless gamblers on an extended losing streak just rolling those dice as the skyscrapers come tumbling down around us.

120 N ...... poem for a friend (1999)

i imagine myself with you, my friend, on childhood street corners sweating in the summertime sun, sucking on frozen kool aid in a dixie cup in the curbside shade of a broken down pickup truck. i imagine us locking and popping to old school hip hop like boogaloo shrimp, trying to pimp the candy store hotties with our portable cardboard dance ﬂoors. we’d spin our gangly bodies into b-boy oblivion, boombox blastin’ staccato break beats while melle mel bellowed, don’t push me ‘cuz i’m close to the edge…* and i’d be right there with you, man, frontin’ with some white kid cabbage patch running man mime shit while we waited for the inevitable bidding war for our music. sucker mc’s could not fade us ‘cuz we was lyrical assassinators, cold cut commentators, gesticulating wildly over plates of your great aunt’s red beans and green tomatoes, collard greens and mashed potatoes.

121 I ...... and i’m telling my friend about this dope poem i’m writing about him and me when we was kids, and i look to him for that glowing smile of recognition, expecting imagined stories to fall from his tongue like ripe plums, populated with characters named skillethead and june bug, prefacing everything with, “man, remember that one time?” and i’d be like, “man, that shit was off the hook!” but my friend doesn’t smile. he just clucks his tongue and says: i appreciate the enthusiasm with which you embrace what you think is my culture, but i have news for you, my friend… my mother wasn’t weezie jefferson, and my father wasn’t fred sanford, and i didn’t spend my childhood on street corners with fat albert and the cosby kids. i don’t appreciate your re-writing of my childhood so you can pretend you had a black friend. i’ve lost track of the white friends who think negro is an esoteric culture with secret handshakes and code words you can just pick up through osmosis, through the beastie boys and blaxploitation ﬂicks. it’s cool you know so much

122 F ...... about langston hughes and etheridge knight and maya angelou and it’s cool you know so much about miles davis and john coltrane and thelonious monk… but that does not mean you know shit about me. now why don’t you go write a poem about that?

* lyrics from “the message” by grandmaster ﬂash and the furious ﬁve

123 Y ...... fratboy or he loves his girlfriend’s thesaurus (1999)

baby, listen to me. i like you… a lot. as a matter of fact, i admire you. i adore you. i am gratiﬁed by, keen on, partial to, pleased by, sweet on, and delight in, and derive pleasure from you. i care for you. i cherish you. baby, i dig you! i fancy you. i get a kick out of you. i go for you. i hanker for you. i hunger for you. i yearn for you. i prize you, revel in you, savor you, relish, deify, glorify, idolize and treasure you.

124 O ...... i worship the ground you walk on, sing praise to the phone you talk on, shout hosannas to the blackboard you chalk on, exalt the grout you caulk on, because you’re a starring role, not a walk on. i am captivated and fascinated by you, enraptured and enchanted by you. i care for you. i delight in you. i hold you dear. i hold you high. i put you on a pedestal. baby, i think the world of you, would do anything for you, would walk 500 miles for you, then would walk 500 more for you, just to be the man who walked 1,000 miles for you.* baby, i! love! you! now, come on over here… that’s right. you know i love you, baby. don’t you, baby? why don’t you come on over here and let’s get a little somethin’ somethin’ going on. you know what i’m saying, let’s try a little tenderness. let’s get naked. let’s breed, baby, let’s mate.

125 U ...... i’m talking about having relations, excitations, stimulation, oh look! erection! lubrication! penetration! fornication! copulation! conjugation! orgasmatration! ejaculation! jubilation! i’m talking about smokin’ rubber hammer head shark wide-bore piston jack rabbit love, baby! i wanna knock boots with you, square the circle with you, become the beast with two backs, plow the ﬁelds of love with the scrotum tractor, get down, get funky, and get back up and do it again with you! let’s get nasty, baby! let’s get stinky, baby! let’s get to know each other in the biblical way, baby! let’s practice making a baby, baby! oh! quit that grinnin’ and drop that linen and fuck me ‘till the cows come home, baby! what? where you going? wait a minute… what’s wrong? baby, what’d i say? come on back, baby, it’s all good, we can… i don’t know… cuddle, caress, touch, fondle… bitch! e-mail me?

* lyrics from “500 miles” from the proclaimers

126 L ...... ¡the wussyboy manifesto! (1999)

my name is big poppa e, and i am a wussyboy! it’s taken me a long time to admit it… i remember shouting in high school: no, dad, i’m not gay! i’m just… sensitive. i tried to like hot rods and jet planes and football and budweiser poster girls, but i never got the hang of it, dad! i don’t know what’s wrong with me… then, i saw him, there on the silver screen, bigger than life and unafraid of earrings and hair dye and rejoicing in the music of the cure and morrissey and siouxsie and the banshees, talking loud and walking proud my wussyboy icon: duckie in pretty in pink. and i realized i wasn’t alone. and now i look around and see a whole new school of wussyboys living large and proud of who they are: jake gyllenhall in donnie darko, wussyboy! tobie mcguire as peter parker in spiderman, wussyboy!

127 I ...... and lord god king of the wussyboy movement: elijah wood as frodo baggins in the lord of the rings, wussyboy! unafraid to prove to all of middle earth that two wussy hobbits can take the dark lord down! now i am no longer ashamed of my wussiness, hell no, i’m empowered by it! when i’m at a stoplight and some redneck testosterone methamphetamine jock fratboy asshole dumb fuck pulls up beside me blasting his trans am’s stereo with power chord anthems to big tits and date rape, i no longer avoid his eyesight! hell no! i just crank all 12 watts of my car stereo and i rock out right into his face: i am human and i need to be loved just like everybody else does! * i am wussyboy, hear me roar! (meow!) bar ﬁght? pshaw! you think you can take me, huh? just because i like poetry better than sports illustrated? well, allow me to caution you, for i’m not the average every day run-of-the-mill wussyboy you beat up in high school, punk, i am wuss core!

128 K ...... don’t make me get renaissance on your ass because i will write a poem about you! a poem that tears your psyche limb from limb, that exposes your selﬁsh insecurities, that will wound you deeper and more severely than knives and chains and gats and baseball bats could ever hope to do. you may see 65 inches of wussyboy standing in front of you, but my steel-toed soul is ten foot tall and bullet proof! bring the pain, punk, beat the shit out of me! show everybody in this bar what a real man can do to a smack-talking wussyboy like me! but you’d better remember my bruises will fade my cuts will heal, my scars will shrink and disappear, but my poem about the pitiful, small, helpless cock man oppressor you really are will last forever!

* lyrics from “how soon is now?” by the smiths

129 E ......

deathwish (1999)

we are all going to die someday.

and we all have to deal with this fact our own way.

some people are new-agey about their deaths, requesting that their bodies be burned in a big tibetan ceremony until their heads burst open and release their spirits skyward. then, a small gathering of friends can mix their ashes with potting soil and have a tree-planting shindig where everyone wears party hats and tells dirty stories and feels a whole lot better afterwards knowing their fallen comrade’s essence will course through the veins of a living tree. well, that scenario is all ﬁne and good, but i see a slightly different scenario for my death. call me grandiose, but when i die, i want world markets to collapse, tectonic plates to shift, volcanos to erupt, hurricanes to blow, jet planes packed with passengers to plummet from the sky, endangered species to fall dead, mountains to crumble, and the entire bush clan to spontaneously combust the moment i breathe my last breath.

i want virgins sacriﬁced by the bus load and lots of weeping and moaning and gnashing of teeth when i die. i want the thousand years following my death to be known as the millennium of mourning. i want the year i was born changed to the year things got cool.

i want my last words to contain the cure for aids, cancer, heart disease, bad breath and the common cold… and the exact location of jimmy hoffa’s body. i want my crappy hometown of bakersﬁeld, california, consumed by a holy ﬁre storm and anyone looking at it to be turned into a pillar of salt.

130 D ......

i want everyone who believes in god to tear at their eyes and swan dive off skyscrapers, and i want everyone who doesn’t believe in god to make me their deity. i want the members of christian youth groups to wear little motivational bracelets that say WWBPED and when they look at those bracelets in times of moral dilemma, i want it to give them the motivation to launch tri-state crime sprees and kill-crazy rampages because that’s exactly what big poppa e would do.

i want hundreds of thousands of women to claim i was the father of their love children… because i was the father of their love children! i want every person on this entire planet to simultaneously change their facebook status to oh shit big poppa e died. i want the vast majority of the earth’s population to be so overwhelmed with sadness and loss that billions commit suicide en masse, and i want those pussies left behind to become raging alcoholics who masturbate constantly and without joy. i want the oceans to dry up and every crop to turn brown and every puppy to get hit by a car and every voice raised in one colossal global wail. i want obi-wan kenobi to pause, put his ﬁngertips to his temples, stagger and say, i just felt a terrible disturbance in the force, as if millions of voices cried out, then were suddenly silenced. i want reality to come to a screeching halt when i die, and the only way you’re gonna prevent the apocalypse from dancing down main street in a tight red dress is by protecting me like the freakin’ crown jewels because if anything happens to me, man, i am taking every one of you with me!

131 S ...... crushworthy (1999)

i want someone to have a crush on me for a change. to notice when i don’t come to class and wonder if i’m okay. to get nervous when i enter the cafe, to fumble with her papers and books, to pick at her clothing and check her reﬂection in salt shakers and napkin holders. to catch her breath when she sees me from across campus, tug on her best friend’s collar, and point with her eyes, and whisper loudly, there he is… big poppa e! to run around the block as quickly — and nonchalantly — as she can just to walk past me. make eye contact. and smile.

132 O ...... to look into my big brown eyes such long lashes! from across the room and think, yesss… to look at my full kissing lips and think, oh yesss… to hear my voice and imagine how her name would sound if i said it if i whispered it if i… (shivering breath) oh yesss… i want someone to make up nicknames for me, to talk about me in code: i saw backpack boy today in the library in the romantic lit. section! i saw steel-toed boots boy talking to some girl in the bookstore today! i want someone to go straight home every night and check her answering machine just in case just in case and check the phone cord and check the battery and check the tape and make sure the goddamned blinking light isn’t burned out just in case i called

133 M ...... i want someone to say, you’re wrong about him, because you don’t know him the way i know him! because she can just tell i’m a good person, must be a good person, gotta be a good person because i write poetry about my grandma and my cats, and because she likes me so much for some reason, some unexplainable psychic supernatural reaction to me. me. i want someone to mark her calendar he talked to me today. to wonder what i would smell like after a long warm sleep under a down comforter. to close her eyes and picture what our kids would look like. to write silly wretched wonderful poetry about me for a change.

134 E ...... moonlight through mini-blinds (1999)

whenever i need proof of god’s existence, i need only run my open palm along your spine, trace the small of your back, and cradle the half moons of your behind. god must be an artist to have crafted such exquisite angles, such curves, such warm, smooth, ﬁne hairs. soft, like rain.

135 O ...... there’s a hole in my heart in the shape of her smile that will never be ﬁlled (2000) i will never forget the last sentence of the article in the newspaper the next day: the terrible crash pancaked the tiny honda civic. it rattled our minds as we ran our ﬁngers across the gouges in the pavement, our eyes squinting through a thousand glaring pinpricks from windshield fragments, searching for lucky pennies scattered — hundreds of them — from her broken penny jar. the terrible crash pancaked the tiny honda civic. that sentence robbed us of closure. we weren’t allowed to marvel at the mortician’s handiwork: she looks like she’s asleep. we couldn’t cup her lifeless hand — powdered and coloured with an artist’s touch —

136 N ...... and conﬁrm that it was true that it actually really had happened. no, the terrible crash pancaked the tiny honda civic, and they wouldn’t even run photos because it’s a family newspaper, and you can’t run photos like that in a family newspaper. we had to just agree, nod our heads in unison and agree that she was gone and would never be back, this precious ﬂower plucked in mid-blossom. and we held each other and remembered her as we had last seen her, pink and alive and smiling that big thumbs up smile. and we were warmed by the knowledge that if anyone could’ve changed the world she could’ve. she would’ve had she only been given the chance. but now… we’ll always feel like she’s out there somewhere always at the corner of our eyes in the summer sea of spaghetti straps and backpacks

137 E ...... tan lines and smiles she’ll be there, and we’ll catch our breath, turn, and see nothing. i think about that last sentence every time i drive, it echoes in my brain as i near the spot on the four-lane highway where she crossed the median and died. i picture the time of day: around 11 a.m. the sun was out. the sky was blue. there was no rain. she was driving alone. she was probably smoking. she was listening to james taylor’s greatest hits. we know this because the tow crew pried that cd from what was left of her stereo. and i grip my wheel white-knuckled as i near the spot. and i can’t help counting down the time she had left. (and she didn’t even know it was coming.) it was a bright sunny day and she was singing… i’ve seen ﬁre and i’ve seen rain 20 seconds i’ve seen sunny days that i thought would never end 10 seconds i’ve seen lonely times when i could not ﬁnd a friend 5 seconds but i always thought i’d see you, baby, one more time again…*

138 Y ...... and just like that we are past it, and the scars in the pavement are left behind. and just like that we are past it , and the white cross we left in the grass on the embankment is left behind. and just like that we are past it , and the lucky pennies, and the photos, and the little good luck tokens, and the letters, and the constellations of shattered windshield are left behind. just like she was left behind. the headline should not have read: chico state university student killed in car crash. no, the headline should’ve shouted in capitol letters across the front page:

JENNIFER LYNN O’HARE KICKED SO MUCH ASS! she was a poetess, a priestess, a goddess, a feminist, a ﬁghter, a lover, a laugher, a teller of truths, a spinner of midnight balcony tales shrouded in heinekin and camels. she could break down brian johnson’s male chauvinist arguments with the precision of a surgeon, hurling words like patriarchal and misogyny and hegemony in a rapid ﬁre distillation of everything she had learned in women’s studies classes. we almost felt sorry for brian as she leaned towards him on the edge of her stool pointing with the glowing cherry of a lit cigarette.

139 O ...... she was a god-awful drummer, but a very enthusiastic drummer, a deep and passionate kisser, a liver of life, a lover of all things. not the best of students but the best of teachers, a mentor, a sister, a daughter, a conﬁdant, a friend… my friend. these words should have been displayed on the pages of every newspaper in the world, but they were not, most people in this world probably didn’t even realize their loss. and i feel sorriest of all for those people — you people — those of you who never had the chance to meet her. because jen was that cool. the last sentence in this poem is how i will remember jennifer lynn o’hare: this world is a better place for having jen in it, even if it was for only 20 years.

* lyrics from “ﬁre and rain” by james taylor

140 U ...... wired (2000)

i have a post office box for my business letters and a mail box at my single bedroom apartment for my personal letters and a mail slot in my cubicle in the office where i work for my inter-office memos. i have call waiting on my home phone line and a high-speed internet connection for my home computer. i have an answering machine at home and a direct line with voice mail at my work number. i have a smart phone with voice mail and skype on my laptop and desktop with voice mail. i have e-mail addresses through my work, my university, and america online, and i also have free internet e-mail service through hotmail.com, gmail.com, and yahoo.com. my home computer can even send and receive faxes. and i have a stand-alone fax machine. i have a graphically-pleasing website featuring photographs of me and my two cats — which i also upload to my flickr.com account — and all my short stories and poetry and essays and music reviews and book reviews and movie reviews and food reviews.

141 C ...... just surf to www.bigpoppae.com, and you can read all about me. you can even connect to the rss feed of my diary entries, which i cross-post every day on xanga, livejournal, friendster, myspace, blogger, and tumblr.

i have 2,347 facebook friends and 433 twitter followers and 126 subscribers to my weekly podcast.

i am a member of four internet chat services and six internet listserves, and i frequently post messages on no less than 12 online forums at websites like penpals.com and foreignfriends.net.

i have 127 buddies on my america online buddy list with whom i can exchange instant messages anytime we’re online at the same time.

i publish a personal zine six times a year and send it to other personal zine publishers all over the world.

i have personal ads in seven newspapers across the state under the heading looking for a friend, and i am registered with 12 internet personal ad websites such as love.com, match.com, okcupid.com, meetingpeopleiseasy.com, and singles.net, all under the heading still looking for a friend.

142 O ...... anyone can contact me at any time of the day or night. they can phone me, they can fax me, they can page me, e-mail me, instant message me, send me a virtual greeting card. anything. and no matter where i was, and no matter what i was doing, i would stop what i was doing and i would talk to them. but, so far… nobody has.

143 U ...... presque vu (2000)

i contemplate angels dancing on the heads of pens and pencils pressed to pads of paper as i labour to give birth to beauty as a poet it is my duty but as a human it is my folly to fail so i ﬂail away on stages ripping words from pages bats freed from cages to swoop overhead to snatch hearts from chests eyes from sockets hands from pockets blood will be spilt by these words i spit but i be watching sick as my carefully crafted phrases brick and i stand there struck dumb some impotent magician top hat of lack no rabbits to pluck no words to speak

144 L ...... no more lyrical miracles no more verbal herbals no more poetricks i suffer from premature articulation and stand ﬂaccid limp my pen in hand full of empty desire to articulate beauty but devoid of ability

145 D ...... rats in the ivy (2000)

pain is a gift, she says, pointing to her heart. as long as you feel pain, you know you are still alive. she smiles as she says this, as if offering a bon bon. and i say, smoke is a symptom of an inefficient fire, and i pinch what’s left of our love between my thumb and forefingers and i suck to numb the pain.

(suck) and it’s a good thing because i was tired of that pansy-assed love bullshit i was experiencing in other so-called healthy relationships, you know, that lame happiness nonsense, that silly stability tripe, that boring great fucking sex unsweetened by the pang of regret.

146 P ...... how fucking blind was i? i had no idea of the pure pleasure of a truly self-destructive co-dependant relationship. oh, but now how i revel in it’s beauty! don’t worry about me, i tell my therapist! i’m ﬁne! i’ll survive! i thrive on contradiction! i like it when shit don’t make sense! i can quit anytime i want to!

(suck) fuck trust! fuck mutual respect! fuck solid ground to stand on! that shit makes you weak! loving you is a work-out! i’ve got muscles on my corpuscles ‘cuz my heart is pumping iron every time you scream, i am addicted to what your dick did! when we make love, no, when we have sex, no, when we fuck, no, don’t go away, no, just hold me, no, just get the fuck away from me, no, give me back my fucking key, no, how come you never call me? no, can’t you just leave me alone? …i miss you… fuck you! i love you…

(suck)

147 A ...... wait, here’s a haiku: i am charlie brown, and you are lucy, and your love is that football! and i just keep coming back for more! you are the heroine of this love story, and i am hooked. i got motherfucking donkey kong on my back, baby, only it’s not donkey kong, it’s you in a rented monkey suit! and we’re slinging syringes stuffed with satisfaction, sucking crack pipes crammed with contentment, popping pills of understanding, snorting lines of devotion, hufﬁng sacks of commitment, anything to keep us from seeing that this shit stopped working a long, long time ago. and i don’t even know what love is anymore; all i know is this ache, this hunger, this desire for the ﬁre that once burned in my stomach when you used to smile at me. remember that? before we were junkies hooked on the open-handed smack of this broken relationship?

(suck) i don’t know how to get over this sweetest hangover.

148 Y ...... not even a methadone clinic full of well-adjusted romantic replacements could help me kick this habit. hell no! i’m addicted to the real deal street level shit you’re working, baby, 100% pure uncut grief wrapped in the thin paper called love. those aren’t tears in my eyes, baby, it’s just the smoke, so roll me up another hit and light my ﬁre.

(suck)

(butt that sucker)

149 F ...... pushing buttons (2000)

now, this is what i don’t want: i don’t want racism, sexism, homophobia, date rape, serial killers, cia dope dealers, television evangelists, and late night faith healers, telemarketers, politician fat cats, cigarette companies, lab rats, trafﬁc jams, kids with guns, parents with guns, neighbours with guns, cops with guns, coloured folks in cages, minimum wages — when are we going to have a maximum wage? — road rage, anger, danger, frustration, loneliness, depression, futility, hopelessness, heartlessness,

150 O ...... slackers who support liberal causes yet can’t be bothered to vote and complain from their couches as our rights are taken away, multinational corporations proﬁting from poisoning the environment, raping human self-esteem, and co-opting culture,

mass media vultures spoon-feeding damage control as infotainment, shiny tokens in a crow’s face as another poor man faces another arraignment.

i am tired of seeing a woman’s precious body dismembered and used to sell products: look, breasts, buy this car! look, breasts, see this movie! is that your ﬁnal answer? no, motherfucker, i’m just getting started! now, this is what i do want: i want happiness through art and expression, through interaction with like-minded individuals who do things rather than just talk about doing things, through risking embarrassment and rejection and reaching out for that connection that makes life worth living.

i want good food free of poisons. i want to walk into a market and buy my rice milk and veggies with a poem instead of money. i want everyone to know that i stole that line from allen ginsburg. i want people to stop falling in love with songs on the radio and go out and fall in love for real and write their own love songs. i want every vote cast in this country to actually be counted! i want the president to be voted off the island, and i want aretha franklin installed as president: congress better r-e-s-p-e-c-t, bitches! don’t make me whip out my v-e-t-o!

i want to pick up the phone and call mumia abu jamal and be like, yo mumia, let’s go pick up leonard peltier and go see that new jackie chan movie. and this time, you’re paying.

151 R ...... i want my father to call me on the telephone and say, hey son, i just wanted to say that i love you. i want that last line to not make me cry anymore.

i want a tank full of gas and a sunny day and 1000 miles of open road with not a single trafﬁc cop, cross street, or stop sign.

i want calvin and hobbes back… now!

i want a kick ass girlfriend who cries with me during that scene in toy story 2 where sarah mclachlan is singing as the little girl takes her little cowgirl doll for a ride and the doll is so happy because she thinks they are ﬁnally going to play again, but no, she gets taken to the dump, and we both know how that feels, man! i want a feast… i want a bean feast! cream buns and donuts and fruit cake with no nuts so good you could go nuts… daddy, i want an oompa-loompa now! *

i want love and passion not packaged as fashion, but as truth.

i want you, i want me, and i want no space between.

i want more than three minutes to ﬁnish this poem because there’s a whole lot more that i want, that i don’t want, that i need, and i want to tell you all about it..

* lyrics from “i want it now” from “willy wonka and the chocolate factory”

152 A ...... boojiboy (2001)

i see you, militant white poet x, be-bopping and cock-rocking to co-opted hip-hip rhythms, busting out bumper sticker diatribes to pre-packaged beatbox beats.

you’ve got your lee press-on dreads on your pointy head and your free mumia iron-on patch on the back ﬂap of your $100 jansport backpack, your $125 nike sneakers, your cell phone humming from the hip pocket of your tommy hilﬁger hip huggers, and your $35 hot topic t-shirt with consumerism sucks across the chest.

and you’re pointing your straight, white, middle class, american male ﬁnger as you sneer, “fuck the bourgeois… man!”

and then you beatbox. and then you freestyle. and then you beatbox.

and then you raise your ﬁst deﬁantly in a militant salute, just like that poster of malcom x you bought in the mall and hung on your dorm room wall.

and then you leave.

and i can’t help wanting to stick my ﬁnger in your face and point out how much easier it is to pin a feminists kick ass button on your backpack than it is to actually treat women with respect and kick misogyny’s ass face to face on a daily basis. how much easier it is to slap a free leonard peltier sticker on the bumper of your beemer than to free yourself from society’s stranglehold on the truth and ﬁght the prison industrial complex that holds peltier hostage.

153 D ...... how convenience is bliss full of soundbite politricks and push button oprah topics — racism is bad!!! sexism is bad!!! homophobia is really bad!!! george w. bush!!! — self-satisfying slogans that sing you to sleep without accomplishing a single thing, except allowing you to deny your blindingly obvious privilege from being a card-carrying member of said bourgeoisie.

how convenient to stage bedroom revolutions and basement coup d’etats to ﬁght the powers that be one rage against the machine cd at a time, one tibetan freedom concert dvd at a time, one poetry slam at a time. you keep talkin’ about a revolution, but your revolution will be memorized from pop songs and ad campaign sing-alongs and mass-marketed, corporate-sponsored propaganda made to satiate and silence the activist inside you. how much easier to spiel a self-serving, hypocritical screed posing as poetry than to stop denying your privilege and start using your privilege to change this fucked up, straight, white, american, patriarchal hegemony so that people who are not white and straight and american and male can live lives free of oppression. and i want to get in your face and deconstruct the fucked up front you have constructed in order to prove how open-minded and politically active and militant you are… but i don’t.

i just watch you leave the open mic, climb into your friends benz and drive back to campus, satisﬁed you have made… a difference.

and how convenient is it for me to pick such an easy target as you — umbilical-corded college student with shoes costing more than would feed for a year the third world slave who sewed them for you — how easy it is to point out your obvious shortcomings than it is to deal with my own. fuck the bourgeoisie? no boojieboy, fuck you. and fuck me, too.

154 I ...... receipt found in the parking lot of the super walmart (2001)

soap shampoo hair conditioner toothpaste dental floss shaving cream after shave lotion deodorant hair gel spray starch anniversary hallmark card flowers candles matches incense 2 filet mignon steaks 2 portabello mushrooms 1 loaf sourdough bread butter garlic spread paprika fresh parsley 4 yukon gold potatoes sour cream fresh leaf spinach croutons red onions red peppers feta cheese sun-dried tomatoes slivered almonds balsamic vinegar

155 A ...... extra virgin olive oil fresh strawberries block of white chocolate bottle of white wine barry white’s greatest hits cd 4 aromatherapy candles aromatherapy bath salts aromatherapy massage oil mr. happy back massager hershey’s chocolate syrup honey box of condoms, 32-count, extra large spermicidal foam astro glide personal lubricant box of dental dams, 32-count, cherry flavoured feather duster dog leash dog collar fly swatter rope rubber gloves hot water bottle w/ hose clothes pins needles nail file ice pick hacksaw plastic garbage bags, extra large, heavy duty 5 bungie cords leather gloves, black turtle neck sweater, black jeans, black knit beanie, black hiking boots, dark brown flashlight d-cell batteries, 8-pack wheelbarrow, large

156 L . . . shovel black and decker mini-vac plug-in air freshener stain remover, heavy duty ajax tub and tile cleaner carpet fresh, lilac scent bleach scrub brush pumice stone 5-pack sponges 2 large beach towels 1 hustler magazine 1 penthouse magazine 1 barely legal magazine 1 box kleenex tissue, deep forest series tylenol caplets, extra strength, 128-count melatonin, one bottle, 64-count 1 packet razor blades, 6-count cat food

157 O . . . untitled (2001)

mmmmm… and the darkness could not hide her smile. that was… (searching) …so… (yes yes) …nice, she said, exhaling the word like incense smoke, like warm, like new. and it was nice, very nice to feel those words tickle the back of my ear, her arm curled around me from behind, her ﬁngers blossoming like lotus petals gently pressed against the open book of my chest. and we had no use for question marks in this poetry of the ﬂesh, no use for foreshadowing, no use for words other than perhaps… perhaps… and sweet sleepy sighs as we faded, and her cats snuggled tightly around our toes.

158 G . . .

the endless pursuit of happiness, part one (2001)

i went to the candy machine in the break room just a moment ago, and there it was, amongst the plastic packages of cookies and chips and gum and poptarts, for only 65 cents — true love — nestled at e4 between the reese’s peanut butter cups on the left and the hershey’s chocolate with almonds on the right.

imagine, the thing i’ve been searching for my whole life, and there it is, in bright yellow plastic wrap in the candy machine at work, and for only 65 cents. i know i’ve already spent way more than that trying to ﬁnd it, so 65 cents was one hell of a bargain. i reached into my pocket, and found that i had exactly 65 cents: two quarters; a dime; and ﬁve pennies. since the machine only took silver, i was out of luck. a nickel short.

i went to the receptionist and asked if i could borrow a nickel, even offered to give her the ﬁve pennies for a nickel, but she didn’t have it. she had no change.

i went to all the people who work near my cubicle and asked if they could trade my ﬁve pennies for a nickel, and none of them, not a single one, could do it. they had no change. i ﬁnally dug around the crumbs and lint balls in the very bottom of my backpack, and i found one dirty dime, more than enough to make my 65 cents, so i marched back to the break room with change in hand…

…only to ﬁnd the true love in bin e4 was gone. there had been only one, and someone must’ve gotten it while i was looking for the money to pay for it.

159 U . . . i looked at the machine… i looked at the money in my hand… i looked back up at the machine… then i put my 70 cents into the machine and pressed e5: hershey’s chocolate with almonds. got a nickel back for change. i put the chocolate bar in my pocket and went back to work.

160 E . . . the endless pursuit of happiness, part two (2002)

after work, i walked to my bus stop. on the way i passed the brightly lit windows of a gift shop, and right there in front of the biggest display was a box marked deluxe true love. there was a photo on the box of a man and a woman staring into each other’s eyes and smiling slow, dreamy smiles. the ﬂashing sign next to the box said, only $69.99! going fast!

i walked in and went to the front counter and asked the cashier what about this brand of true love made it deluxe. he said that this particular true love was especially long-lasting, yet it encouraged individuality, which many other cheaper brands of love often neglect. i took out my wallet and told him that i would take one, but the cashier said that he was all out because of the christmas rush. he said he could put me on the rain check list, but he cautioned that the wait would be several months, if not longer. i asked if he could sell me the one in the window, but he said it was an empty box. i asked if he had anymore in the back, and he said he didn’t think so, but he would look just in case. when he came back out, he held a much smaller box that was wrapped in bright paper with neon ink and colourful photos of people smiling very large and beaming and driving sports cars and talking on cell phones and playing computer games and watching big screen teevees. i asked him if that was it, was that deluxe true love, but he shook his head slowly and said, “no, we are all out of deluxe true love, but we do have several boxes left of instant gratiﬁcation for only $29.99.” i told him i already had loads of that and thanked him for his time.

161 I . . . the endless pursuit of happiness, part three (2002)

when i got home, i turned on the teevee and ﬂipped around the cable channels and stopped for a moment on one of those home shopping channels. and there on the screen was a big colourful box of deluxe true love, only this was a special version of deluxe true love they called the limited edition deluxe true love supreme.

the salesman said these versions were hand-crafted in very small batches by experts in the art of making love, and he said his company was allowed to sell only 100 boxes. the time was running short, he said, since 67 had already been sold in the last five minutes. the price, he said, was three low monthly payments of $99.99 each. what made this version of deluxe true love so supreme, he said, was its easy application, its long lasting strength, and its durability. it wasn’t like those shabby versions of true love you could buy for less elsewhere, he said. they were fine for the first few months or even years, but they inevitably began to fade. this enhanced version of true love was specially made to last the lifetime of its owner; in fact, it even came with a ‘till death do us part money-back guarantee.

fourteen more boxes of limited edition deluxe true love supreme were sold as i watched, so i grabbed up my phone and called the 1-800 number and was greeted my a friendly receptionist named molly. she asked me what product i was interested in, and i said i wanted a box of limited edition deluxe true love supreme. she asked me what credit card i used, and i said i didn’t have a credit card. she asked me if i wanted to use an atm card, and i said i didn’t have an atm card. she said she could only accept one or the other, but i asked her if i could just arrange to send cash. she put me on hold. and i watched as ﬁve more boxes were sold. and seven more boxes were sold. and then six more boxes were sold. and the announcer

162 N . . . on the teevee said, “we only have one more box of special edition deluxe true love supreme left, and our lucky next caller will have the ﬁrst crack at it!”

and then the receptionist came back on the line, and i said, “i’ll take it, please, i’ll take that last box of special edition deluxe true love supreme! i want it more than anything in the whole wide world!”

but she replied, “i’m sorry sir, we can only accept major credit cards or atm cards with the visa or mastercard logo. we do not accept cash. i’m very sorry, sir. i cannot help you, sir. have a nice day, sir.” then the friendly and helpful operator ended the call. on the teevee screen, the smiling salesman announced that a mrs. gladys goldfarb — 87 years young! — from millington, tennessee, was the proud owner of the last box of limited edition deluxe true love supreme. i turned off the teevee and let my hands collapse into my lap. i felt something hard in the pocket of my jeans. i reached inside and slid my hand all the way to the bottom. i felt something warm. i heard the familiar crackle of plastic wrap. i smiled.

163 S . . .

wallﬂower (2002)

“i can’t dance,” i tell her as i try to free my ﬁst from the grip of this painfully beautiful woman pulling me toward the throbbing horde on the house party dance ﬂoor.

“i can’t dance!”

and she purrs, “sure you can, it’s easy!”

and i say, “of course, it’s easy… for you! but you could be choking on a chicken bone and giving yourself the heimlich on the edge of a chair, and paula abdul would be like, ‘goddamn, that girl’s got some moves!’” but me? i hit the dance ﬂoor and epileptics come up to me and say, “brother, i know how that feels.” i can’t dance! what little i know about dancing, i learned from ally sheedy in the breakfast club. i can’t dance!

if i fucked like i dance, i would never get laid!

(pause)

oh my god! i do fuck like i dance! that’s why i never get laid! but i don’t tell her this, i just say, “i can’t dance!” and she ﬁxes her feline gaze upon me, and in my mind i hear her whisper: just… watch… me. and i am powerless to do anything but watch this goddess in the form of an english lit. major in jeans so skintight they are no longer fabric, they are ﬂesh, they are a big blue tattoo with a pulse and a

164 T . . .

waistline cut so low you can almost see the baby faces of her knees peeking over her belt loops.

she winks at me and wades backwards into the frothing tide of bobbing college kids and begins rump-shaking this wickedly gyrating humpety-hump-hump dance that deﬁes the laws of physics, her body thrashing like a south american river full of starving piranha tearing apart an unsuspecting cow to the beats of kanye and jay z.

her blur of an ass is twitching so frantically, yet so precisely, she must have robotic pistons in her hips as she slips the pointy tip of her tongue to her lips. if you taped drumsticks to her undulating midriff, she’d do deadly drumrolls across the forehead of every boy on the dance floor… goddamn. she’s cleaving rhythmically through the booty jungle like a flesh machete, and i haven’t blinked once, and she’s eyeballing me, mouthing the words come dance with me as she runs her open palms over the ebbs and flows of her body and quivers like a fleshy jackhammer, like a jell-o mold madonna, like a field of dragonflies fluttering their wings at once. she’s setting up sympathetic vibrations inside me like sitar strings, and my body succumbs to the rhythm, my feet shuffling, my knees bucking, my hips bumping. then she breaks away from the crowd and catwalks towards me, her eyes burning all the way through me and into my beating heart that wants nothing more than for once to dance with abandon.

and she reaches her slender hand to me in super slo-mo, and my ﬁngers blossom to accept hers, and i whisper, “i can’t dance, but tonight… i’m gonna try.”

165 E . . . krakatoa (2002)

my father is a skilled BBQ technician, and every central californian summer of my youth, he would lay his magic hands on meat and conduct grand operas of seared flesh and glowing charcoal briquettes, lifting galloping symphonies of flame to do his bidding. his backyard orchestra pit was nicknamed krakatoa, a mammoth BBQ not store-bought but hand-built brick by concrete brick until it loomed over us, a visual horrorshow bereft of aesthetics but efficient beyond reproach. it was our fiery altar to the gods of summer, and we worshipped weekly. when i was in high school, we were a few streets removed from poor white trash and couldn’t afford grade a choice #1, so when my father bought meat, he had to pound it into submission, and i’m not talking with one of those namby-pamby chrome-plated tenderizer mallets from the kitchen section at sears, oh no, my dad used a ball-peen hammer from the garage.

166 A . . . and he would knock the resistance right outta that rump roast, cursing his day’s frustrations away with every blow, attacking that t-bone till toughness fled shrieking, transforming cheap cuts of cow into beef-flavoured butter that melted at the gentle kiss of a fork. and while we stoked the coals from the safety of shredded lawn chairs — prodding porterhouses, charring chuck roasts, brushing and buttering and bbqing briskets and rib eyes — we sat beside each other and didn’t say a word, just stared deep into the flames of krakatoa. him drinking a silver bullet of coors, me knocking back my brown bottle of I.B.C. root beer… elvis on the a.m. radio. and it didn’t matter that i got crappy grades and cut class and stole books from the mall and played my depressing goth music too loud too late and was probably on drugs and probably gay and probably a democrat and probably going to amount to nothing but a burden on my parents. and it didn’t matter that my dad and i didn’t really speak anymore, that he understood me no better than i understood him, that he probably hated me as much as i hated him, that we were quickly becoming strangers in our own home,

167 D . . . more disgruntled housemates who tolerated each other than family, than father and son, than ﬂesh. okay, yeah, maybe all that stuff did matter, but in those moments at the grill we could at least pretend all that mattered was making sure the steak had enough secret recipe bbq sauce so it wouldn’t dry out, spreading the coals to distribute the heat evenly so no one got burned. just me and my dad in the backyard, while my mother and sister set the table inside and never ever disturbed us.

168 O . . . . the lonesome ballad of josephus moshpit (2002)

there once was a mean old punker with oil for blood and poison for spit. his name struck fear both far and wide: they called him josephus moshpit. now josephus was a mean old punker with a mohawk at least six feet with spikes he’d use to spear them punkers and lift ‘em off their feet. the chains he wore around his neck couldn’t stand the strain, they’d break, so he chucked them all in favor of three pissed off rattlesnakes. the rings he wore upon his ﬁsts were silver skulls and daggers. his teeth were fangs, his nails were claws, his lips just like mick jagger’s. the steel-toed boots upon his feet were splattered with blood and gore; the tread was made of broken glass that left gouges upon the ﬂoor. an eyeball was tied upon his lace to remind him of a recent victim, and he’d smile and laugh as he recalled just how hard he’d kicked ‘em. yup, josephus was a mean old punker, as mean a punker as you could ever catch, that is until that fateful day that josephus moshpit met his match.

169 F . . . . you see, there was another punker as mean as the devil in tight pants who challenged josephus one sorry day: her name was wynona slamdance. oh, wynona was a pistol, she was evil though and through, with elbows of sharpened plexiglass that would cut a man in two. that night the punks were in the pit tangled up in a dreadful swirl. as a hellish punk band raged on stage, josephus thought, “who’s that girl?” he glared at wynona slamdance on a speaker about to dive, and tore a helpless punker in half and waited for her to arrive. he took out a file and sharpened his teeth and leered at the pitiful sinner. he licked his chops with his forked tongue and thought, “i’ll eat that bitch for dinner.” wynona leapt from that mighty speaker into a swan dive that seemed to float, and when josephus cracked opened his maw, she slid right down his throat. at first his face was bright with triumph at vanquishing another foe, then all of a sudden his expression changed from one of glee to one of woe. he clutched at his belly, he clawed at his throat he scratched at his eyes, then he started to bloat.

170 A . . . . he wrapped his arms around the bulges as if he were trying to ﬁght ‘em, and blood foamed upon his lips as the battle raged inside him. josephus threw back his head and howled in pain as his shivering chest began to split, and crimson gore shot like a fountain to announce the return of wynonna moshpit. her plexiglass elbows burst from his belly with a evil stomach churning rip, and quivering chunks of liver and spleen dangled from each bloody tip. she emerged from what was left of his body naked save for a bloody speedo, then she discarded his rotten bloody carcass like a dime store ﬂesh tuxedo. the crowd by that time had stopped to stare at the battle wynona had won, so she jumped on the speaker tower and screamed, “get back in that pit and love someone!” the moral of this sordid story about the day josephus moshpit was licked is this: if you mess with a punk rock moshpit girl, you’re liable to get your sorry ass kicked.

171 L . . . . drought (2002)

a tear weighs less than a raindrop, yet an ocean of tears can crush the life from you. sadness is heavy, it bends the back arthritic. a body needs to be touched, it thirsts. cracked desert ﬂoor weeps for warm rain.

172 A . . . . don’t forget to breathe, love (2002)

you are comice pears to me, the gentle give under thumb, the snick of teeth past grassy skin into succulent fruit beneath, the rush of sweetness, the smell of fresh nectar at the corners of my mouth, the webs between my fingers, drooling down my forearm, my elbow. you are the perfect mixtape to a long roadtrip with nothing between you and me but a thousand miles of ancient joshua trees and spiky saguaros pointing at the sun darkening my forearms, simple thoughts of you my soundtrack, my silent smiles the cadence, the rhythm of my heart the beat. silence does not exist here. we talk. you are the perfume of sleepy warmth snuggled in a bed engulfing us and three cats, the prickle of sweat dew-dropping tiny hairs on the back of your neck. you smell so good when you sleep inches from me, my nose planted betwixt your shoulder blades, breathing you in, my palm between your breasts. your breath catches for just a moment, then releases in a smiling sigh. you love me, even in your dreams. you are the oh my god! pause as we turn towards each other in unison, mouth agape, gathering our energy to burst forth in laughter, in big milk-spilling chortles and life-affirming guffaws. you remind me of full-body little kid laughs, giggles building to howls and ululations of uncaged laughter so big your belly bursts, so big you have no choice but to fall to the ground and flail red-faced and puffy with tears. you are poetry, pure and simple, written not to impress, but to express, poetry as sunshine and rain, as food and water, as oxygen. you are the firm grasp of fingers entwined, yearning to press flesh deep inside itself, and defiantly daring the world to even try — just fucking try! — to pull these hands apart, these hands that were meant to hold each other, meant to guide and follow, meant to hold and be

173 P . . . . held, meant to wrap around each other while standing in line at the supermarket, while driving, under tables while dining with friends and family, under covers pressed to hips and shoulders and bellies, nails raking across backs, cupping faces, touching lips.

you're the look that says, don’t forget to breathe, love. be. stop thinking. it’s perfectly okay to embrace bliss. no one will mind.

you are bare feet in a late autumn stream, rock-numbed and slicked with algae, the rolling texas hill country surrounding us, the hint of baking biscuits and cowboy coffee and homemade roux gravy wafting from the railroad hotel behind us, us on the bank of the llano river feeling like the luckiest people in the whole wide world and forgetting for a whole hour all the things we’re supposed to be stressed about, all the bullshit rendered silent in the presence of such stillness. you are secret alcoves in rocky grottoes, sleepy chords from a strummed guitar, nate and brenda and david and keith and especially claire, your toe-clinchingly great buttermilk pie and my world famous veggie burritos. you are bubble soda and deep-fried sushi rolls with big mac sauce, bathtubs stained by sharpie tattoos, ﬂirting on livejournal, modest mouse at midnight through computer speakers.

i could go on.

i want to go on, adding stanzas until my ﬁngers cramp. we’ve only just begun to live this poem, and i’ve only just begun to write it down.

174 D . . . . you are a strange fruit (2002)

pomegranates are odd. crack one open, expose the ruby heart: pure beauty. but they are difficult, and messy, and you can’t quite figure out what you are supposed to do with them. eating one stains your fingers bloody, fills your mouth with inedible matter. but the juice: oh, the juice! sweet cut with tart. perfect. worth every bit of trouble.

175 A . . . . us (2003)

you might not know them, but you’ve seen them. standing stifﬂy beside each other in the line behind you at the supermarket checkout line, in the video store, in the dmv: the bitter couple.

ﬁngers curled into ball-peen hammers held rigidly at their hips, the rictus of frustration on their lips. the silence measured in sighs.

176 N . . . . the train station (2003)

i remember it like i’m right there right now and my shoulder’s wet and my back hurts and the hard plastic chair is making my shirt stick to the small of my back and the train station is packed with people waiting on their own hard sweaty plastic chairs and my shoulder’s wet and i am miserable and i can’t hold you tighter without hurting you and your head is on my shoulder and we are waiting for your train to come and take you away and we both know you will never come back even if you do physically come back you will be different it will all be different and my shoulder is wet and i am miserable and i know it’s the right thing to do and you know it’s the right thing to do but we are dreading the moment when your train is called because then we will have to commit ourselves to an irreversible decision neither of us wants yet both of us need and the announcement comes and you lift your head from my shoulder and stand and wipe your nose and rub your eyes and i pick the sweaty shirt out of the small of my back and i adjust my shoulders and i pick up your bags and we walk to the gate and we stop and we stare at each other red- rimmed eyes puffy cheeks miserable knowing we have to do this knowing there’s no way around it but through it and we nod our heads in unison and we hug each other so tightly and my shoulder is wet and i am miserable and you walk away from me without ever once looking back and i watch you the whole way watch you get on the train watch you disappear and you disappear and you

177 C . . . .

ﬁsts (2003)

the thing about store-bought flowers is that they always die no matter what you do. you can give them everything — all the water, the nourishment, the sun — but you eventually must watch them fade. slowly at first, brown around the edges, heads drooping. and then one day you can’t even remember what they looked like when they were new, what it felt like to walk into the room lit by those little yellow hands with a thousand soft fingers reaching for you. you finally sigh, pick the sad bouquet of brown fists from the table, and throw them away so you don’t have to look at them anymore.

178 E . . . .

13 metaphors for why we should’ve never dated (2003)

you are the jagged rusty tip of a nail sticking out of a polished wooden banister, and i am the little kid sliding down that bannister in baby blue felt pajamas. you are the computer hard drive grinding to a complete halt, and i am the last 200 pages of the great american novel written in a mad 12-hour rush that were never saved. you are the speeding train hurtling toward the stalled greyhound, and i am the cure for cancer whispered by the bus driver seconds before impact. you are the answering machine that eats the tape, and i am the telephone call from the lottery saying i have just won 26 million dollars if i just call back right now. you are a small furry rodent wrapped tightly in duct tape, and i am richard gere. you are the bullet, and i am the kennedy. you are rock, and i am scissors. you are scissors, and i am paper. you are paper, and i am rock. you are gollum, and i am frodo’s ring ﬁnger. you are a daytime emmy award, and i am susan lucci. you are a ham sandwich, and i am mama cass. you are a super tanker bulging with oil, and i am alaska. you are george w. bush, and i am alaska.

179 T . . . . .

you are the matrix revolutions, and i am the kid from cleveland sick with cancer who begged the make-a-wish foundation for a chance to see the last matrix movie before he died and whose last words were, “i want my stupid wish back!”

you are michael jackson, and i am not gonna go there.

you are the sharpened spine of a sting ray’s tail, and i am the crocodile hunter! and yes, i went there! you are the proposed sequel to the goonies and i am corey feldman… waiting… for that phone call… for the last 20 years. which is to say, you and i do not go together like peas and carrots; we go together like candy apples and razor blades. and i am aware of this, i know this, and yet at three in the morning, i ﬁnd myself staring at the ceiling and thinking about you.

180 H . . . . . scars, part one (2003)

when i belch, i finish by exhaling deeply as if ridding my lungs of any remaining gases. i don’t make a big deal of it. it’s just something i do. and every time i belch like that, i think of trish, the first person i ever knew who belched liked that. we only dated two and half months. graduation was enough to end our college romance, but she left the belch with me. there was a time when i could eat campbell’s tomato soup all by itself, but no now, not after kimberly. now a bowl of campbell’s tomato soup just seems… silly without a grilled cheese sandwich to sop it up. i have a scar on the knuckle of my right pointer finger from when i slammed the receiver of the phone so hard after breaking up with sonia it shattered both my phone and my skin.

181 E . . . . . once a year, every year, just before the academy awards, that old scar prickles, and i’ll send sonia an e-mail asking for her oscar picks. she usually answers. two lives dig their nails into each other for a couple of months, a year, more, and leave curly-cues of ﬂesh in their wake. favourite movies co-opted, catch phrases caught and adopted, books, discarded concert t-shirts for bands you’ve never seen found beneath futons so long ago you’ve forgotten they were once someone else’s. they are blackened rings hidden deep in the hearts of oaks. they are hiroshima shadows on crumbling brick walls. i don’t know what you will have left behind, how you will have marked me: a love for sweet tea and the central texas hill country, sushi and avocados and alt-country and naps and buttermilk pie and the endless pursuit of the perfect plate of migas,

182 T . . . . . a yearning to write from a deeper place, to calm my anger and defensiveness, to quiet my insecurities, to untie the knot deep inside my guts. arguments about trafﬁc about money about jealousy about space about space about space. these scars are water stains on eggshell plaster walls, so faint you can only see them when you wrinkle your nose and squint. they are small half-moon crescents dug into the meat of my heel, whispering of barefoot summers ﬁshing from wooden docks. they are badly-fused broken bones that ache when i read poems about rain. but i want you to know that i have torn my shirt off for you. whip my bare back with rose bushes and nettles, i’ll take the scars, and i cherish every one of them, and i gladly collected them, and the stories behind them, and the lessons learned, and all the songs that for the rest of my life will sing only of you. i’ll take the scars. they’re the only things that prove you have loved, and i have loved you as much as i could.

183 A . . . . . 3/4 emo love song in the key of 9 (2003)

i see you sitting there in the library with your nose pressed into a book, and i’m sitting across from you crossing my fingers hoping you’ll stop and give me a look. the sound of your voice makes my face go full flush, as red as ron weasley’s hair, and i want with all of my being to reach out and take your hand, but i do not dare. i used to think that cho chang was the one who was the object of my desire, but now i know my dear you’re the witch who turns my heart into a goblet of fire.

(chorus) oooh oooh, hermione granger i love you, i can’t keep you off of my mind. climb on the back of my nimbus 2000, we’ll leave hogwarts far behind, far behind, wooo oooh oooh ooooh oooh sometimes i hide under my invisibility cloak just so i can watch you from afar, and i don’t care if your parents are muggles, the lights in your eyes shine like stars. if i had the chance to go back to ﬁrst year, i’ll tell you just what i would do, i wouldn’t take that sorting hat from my head ‘till it said i belong to you.

184 L . . . . . and yeah i know you know who is out there somewhere trying to kill me with his evil dark art, but the mark he left on my forehead is nothing compared to the lightning bolt-shaped scar on my heart.

(chorus) i’ve written you a note on a scroll my dear and tied it to my owl hedwig’s leg, and i’m hoping my words will convince you to love me, so i don’t have to fall to my knees and beg. it says, “if you love me half as much as i love you, meet me at midnight behind hagrid’s shack, and if you’re not there i’ll know that you don’t, and i’ll have to ﬁnd my way back to being your best friend.”

(chorus)

185 K . . . . . someone (2003)

someone quicker to laugh than to rage. someone who does things rather than sit on the couch talking about doing things. someone who makes things. someone who makes things happen. someone who watches the news and gets angry and wants to do something about it. someone who can appreciate a long, deep breath full of summertime after being pelted by swollen raindrops the size of baby fists. someone who can sit on a couch under a blanket and read with me while nick drake is playing on the stereo, sipping chamomile tea with lemon and honey and touching hips. someone who will look me in the eye and tell me i am wrong, but who doesn’t always have to be right. someone who can have an effortless conversation lasting hours, but who isn’t afraid of silence. someone who is an amazing kisser. someone who won’t be grossed out that i love having my toes popped for me. someone who giggles during sex because sex is just so weird. someone who enjoys debating movies and politics and what happens after you die. someone who enjoys lazy bike rides across long bridges and back alleys. someone who would rather see local theatre than watch teevee, but who also appreciates that the office and peep show make teevee almost worth watching every once in a while sometimes maybe a little kinda if it’s on the internet. someone who isn’t afraid to dance even though they secretly know they look silly when they dance, but that’s okay since most everybody looks silly when they dance. someone who won’t hesitate to jump inside a shopping cart at the supermarket and allow me to push them through every aisle. someone who explodes in fits of percussive laughter in the most inappropriate situations. someone who is quick witted and whip smart, but doesn’t feel the need to prove it all the time. someone who can’t pass a jell-o butt puppy without patting its wee scruffy head. someone who has favourite words and goes out of their way to use them regularly. by the way, some of my favourite words of all time are: succotash, scallywag, shindig, flibbertigibbet, and brouhaha. someone yearning for travel

186 E . . . . . and adventure, but who also appreciates the lure of tire swings on old oak trees. someone with their shit together… most of the time. someone who can admit when they’ve fucked up, and who is patient when i fuck up, which i will… often. someone who doesn’t take themselves so seriously they can’t mock themselves. someone who will stick up for what they believe in, especially if i don’t believe in it. someone who’s fearless even when scared shitless. someone who can dominate me at scrabble, balderdash and cranium. someone who can actually spell the word brouhaha. someone who can appreciate the joy of handmade mixtapes. someone who cries with me at pixar movies. someone who spoons. someone who kicks ass. someone who has lofty goals they can actually taste. someone who has gotten their heart torn apart and has learned to sew it back together all by themselves. someone who appreciates handmade birthday cards and homemade cakes that are kinda lopsided but honest.

(pause) b-r-o-u-h-a-h-a.

187 R . . . . . albuquerque penance (2003)

hatch chiles roasting over apple wood ﬁre in a backyard oil drum. the skin blackens then crackles as chile juice bursts in bright green bubbles. submerged, the skin slips easily as banana peels on a sidewalk. thick home-rendered lard protects hands while unsheathing the hottest peppers. new mexican stew: potatoes, onions, chiles, and crushed tomatoes. handfuls of cumin, salt, pepper, oregano, and pungent garlic. mighty southwestern feast worthy of poetry: one haiku won’t do.

188 S . . .. . austin penance (2003)

couple builds fort of cardboard and newspapers under wet freeway. swollen lips of sky spit rain at passing trafﬁc. man holds sign: i need. toothless woman steers shopping cart with garbage bag umbrella overhead. man under bridge has four empty pants pockets and two hungry puppies. dirty asphalt steams. angry car horns bitch and moan. moist breath warms cold hands. motorists ignore soaking onramp veteran. his thumb pleads: somewhere. election billboards leer, if you voted for me, you’d be home right now.

189 W ...... sushi penance (2003)

ted the sushi chef is a true poet, crafting haiku from raw fish. his poet’s palette playfully juxtaposes textures and flavours. press the flesh and rice to palate with tongue to melt with warm wasabi. barbecued eel and sweet avocado mingle in taste bud tangos. eyes closed, head tilted, close-mouthed smiles giving birth to breathy sighs and moans. cleanse the tongue with hot green tea and pickled ginger, then dive in for more. pablo neruda spent nine lives striving for what ted does with sharp knives.

190 O ...... wendy’s penance (2003)

drive-thru window guy asks, “what’llya have?” i say, “can i get world peace?” he says, “we’re outta world peace. would you like to try a burger meal deal?” i think about it for a moment, then say, “can you biggie size that?” he says, “of course i can biggie size that. that will be four ﬁfty-six.” i’m thinking of man’s inhumanity to man… the environment… drive-thru window guy hands me my order, then he says, “have a nice day.” hot salty french fries won’t help world peace one bit, but they sure do taste good.

191 U ...... war penance (2003)

let’s get all the chairs and blankets and make a tent in the living room. we’ll order pizza, make crank calls, and talk about our very ﬁrst kiss. you can kick my ass at scrabble. i’ll kick yours at trivial pursuit. we’ll turn off the lamps, get in out sleeping bags, read comics with ﬂashlights. we’ll fall asleep with foreheads touching, faint traces of smiles on our lips. you will wake up to the smell of fresh-baked orange rolls and ground coffee. it will almost be like the whole wide world is not sliding into hell.

192 L ...... road penance (2003)

1,500 miles from st. cloud to las cruces for our monday gig. matthew and i have seemingly endless supplies of dick and poop jokes. i drive. matthew sleeps. cold coke. punk rock. blurred landscapes. take a piss and switch. matthew drives. i sleep. hot coffee and cigarettes. take a piss and switch. thirty bucks gets you a tank of gas and nearly 500 more miles. tiny clenched ﬁsts of pain wrench the muscles along my road-weary spine. i’m reeling in those miles, sister. i’ll be home by tuesday afternoon.

193 D ...... hooter’s penance (2003)

my dad says he comes here for the great hot wings, but i don’t believe him. the hot wings here are not all that hot, and neither are the waitresses. some of them are nice, though, in a cheap sort of way. the hot wings, i mean. hooters inspires me to beg forgiveness for being a man. waitress asks, whatchoo writin’? i say, some haiku. she looks skeptical. i’ve never dated a hooters waitress. there are good reasons for that. teenaged hot wings cook probably thinks this is the best job in the world.

194 F ...... mikey penance (2003)

mike henry makes strong margaritas with lots and lots of tequila. i never drink, but last night? yeah, i drank like a ﬁsh out of water. i made it through one scrabble game before i bid my drunken adieu. hilary was such a good girlfriend... she gave me love and a bucket. she kissed my sweaty forehead, said, i love you, then tucked me into bed. three ibuproﬁn, lots of water, and hil’s love got me through the night. happy birthday mike! next year, don’t make those fuckers so damn strong, old man!

195 L ...... el condor pasa penance (2003)

i would rather be a hammer than a nail, yes i would, if i could. i would rather be the ocean than a sail, yes i would, if i could. i would rather be a blackbird than a snail, yes i would, if i could. i would rather get a postcard than email, yes i would, if i could. i would rather be the outlaw josie wales, yes i would, if i could. i would rather eat a guppy than a whale, yes i would, if i could. i would rather be jonathon livingston seagull than slobodan milosovic, yes i would, if i could.

196 A ...... watching lockup penance (2003)

murder of orange jumpsuits mumble payphone prayers to distant lovers skinny eyes critique blue tattoos on bulging lock- down bicep canvas. constant noise hangs thick as thieves spread past exploits thick dried blood on concrete thin wool blankets and steel-piped air inspire ﬁelds of fetal positions.

ﬂuorescent ﬂicker illuminates roaches and slim/lipped gangbangers. slack jaws ruminate lost life in the pale glare of television screens. freedom auctioned for concrete tombs, cigarettes and death row religion

197 U ...... breakfast penance (2003)

stove door swings open, releasing pleasing orange scented biscuit clouds. thick mits slide beneath 350-degree cookie sheet of love frying pan heats oil. potatoes chopped in cubes wait. the tension rises. tomatoes hiding with crispy bacon beneath ﬂuffy scrambled eggs cheddar climbs grater leaves bits of itself behind for us to snack on salt chases pepper in savory tug of war for domination soapy water drains from sink. bits of last night’s food run to meet their doom.

198 N ...... working at spenser gifts penance #1 (2003)

i’m surrounded by fart-related merchandise and cheesy sex toys. spenser gifts is a playland for gross little boys and their frat boy dads. i would never date someone who thought sexy meant playboy underwear. baseball capped thug leaves pinpression middle ﬁnger. how original. movie theatre spews pre-teens waiting for rides. they surge toward us. high school gangstas crowd poster rack in far corner. spidey sense tingles. everybody plays with the newton’s cradle but no one buys it.

199 T ...... working at spenser gifts penance #2 (2003)

punk ass fucker’s goal: make all the dancing hamsters sing at the same time. i conduct tinny symphonies of orgasm keychain orchestras. if i saw someone from my high school working here, i’d think, huh... loser. my personal hell: hours of the muzak versions of 4 non blondes songs. if i hear the theme from the brady bunch one more time, someone will die. screaming child in mall. i just close my eyes and think, please don’t bring him here. bathroom breaks each hour. i don’t really have to go. i’m just really bored.

200 T ...... working at spenser gifts penance #3 (2003)

if you dress sexy to go to the mall, you are probably fourteen. the only cool things they sell at spenser gifts are homies bobbleheads. the mall goths with their hot topic bondage pants and chains crack my shit up. i patrol spencer’s harassing shoplifters and hunting for haiku. bob marley incense neither smells like bob marley nor marijuana. the kiss incense smells nothing like gene, paul, ace, or peter, thank goodness. the down’s syndrome kid who can name all the simpsons characters likes me.

201 H ...... overnight shift at kinko’s hourly penance (2003)

10 p.m. back at work again. seems like i went to sleep just a few hours ago.

11 p.m. dj cues breakbeats rips ﬁngertip symphonies crossfade tchaikovsky

12 a.m. big band tunes ﬁll my head with scratchy memories i’m too young to have.

1 a.m. i can copy, fold, staple, bind, score, collate, fax. college served me well.

2 a.m. kinko’s graveyard shift. mountain dew and mini-thins. my heart’s exploding.

3 a.m. rapscallion would be a great hip-hop name for a vegan m.c.

202 E ...... 4 a.m. i need this damn job like john f. kennedy needs a hole in his head.

5 a.m. a slew of design students ﬂood my quiet store. they are all so tired.

6 a.m. girl with bright green eyes and shoulder-length black curls gets the special friend price.

7 a.m. thom yorke wails his pain as early morning fades from cobalt to baby blue.

8 a.m. i choose the christian muzak station and hide the remote, then clock out.

9 a.m. sweetie leaves her door unlocked, so i can slip in and sleep beside her.

10 a.m. i’m too wired to sleep, too tired for anything more than one more haiku.

203 I ...... 11 a.m. still not asleep yet. sitting beside her reading kavalier and clay.

12 p.m. we are giving up on sleep and making pancakes in our underwear.

204 R ...... disillusion curry (2003)

i knew a girl once.

i don’t remember her name. i may never have known her name, to be honest, but she was the cute girl at the thai place for a long time, my favourite waitress in my favourite restaurant in my favourite little college town. she always made me smile. one day, she was wearing a sheer white shirt, and you could see right through her sleeve to the large tattoo on her forearm. i asked her about it, and she rolled up her sleeve and showed it to me, this huge colourful tattoo of a pepsi can.

i was… well… sort of taken aback.

i asked her about it, and she said, “yeah, i used to love pepsi. drank it all the time, so much that all my friends used to call me pepsi.”

we paused for a moment.

then i asked her about the use of the past tense, and she said, “yeah, the real shame of it is that i don’t even drink pepsi anymore. i drink dr. pepper.”

at that very moment, precisely as she ﬁnished that sentence, i fell deeply… out of love… with the cute girl at the thai place.

205 E ......

passersby (2003)

i am the boy on the bus you shoulder past every morning on your way to work, the one with your favourite book in his backpack.

i am the girl walking in the rain as you drive past thinking how glad you are to be in a car instead of outside in the pouring rain.

i am the waitress you didn’t tip because you thought i took too long getting the lemon for your herb tea even though i apologized and didn’t charge you for the tea because i thought you were cute. i am the telemarketer who called at dinner, the one you hung up on in mid-sentence, the one with whom you have more things in common than anyone you will ever meet, the one you’ll never meet again for as long as you live. i am the temp worker who closes her eyes and breathes the scent of your hair conditioner as you pass her in the hallway at work, the one whose name you’ve never bothered to remember.

i am the 76-year-old woman who drove so slowly on the freeway that you cursed her and honked at her and drove angrily past her, the one you would’ve fallen madly and deeply in love with had you only met her at 21 when she was a dancer and a poet. i am the small woman with tiny hands and watery blue eyes who purchased an orange juice and a plain bagel every weekday morning at your cafe on her way to work, the one with long wisps of auburn hair she tucked behind her ear as she ordered, the one who stopped coming to the cafe one day and never came back, the one you called the oj girl, the one you passed three years later while walking through a crowded airport in lexington, kentucky, but didn’t recognize, the one who saw you and thought, oh, the bagel guy.

206 D ...... i am the man who lived in the apartment next to yours, the one who slept with his head inches from your pillow separated by a hand’s breadth of drywall, wood, and space, the one you never met because he worked the graveyard shift, the one whose newspaper you borrowed every morning, read over breakfast, then carefully placed back in the plastic sack and returned to his front door, the one with the cd collection nearly identical to your own. i am your third grade sweetheart gazing out a bus window at an airplane passing thousands of feet overhead, the one who wonders whatever became of that little boy who would chase her around the jungle gym, the one who sighs deeply and turns back to her magazine as you gaze out the window of an airplane at the white roof of a bus stuck in traffic thousands of feet below and wonder how long it’s been since you had a belly so swollen with laughter you could barely breathe. i am the cable guy, the pizza guy, your mom’s next door neighbour, the landlord, the counter girl, the mechanic, the cop, the paperboy, the exotic dancer at the all-nude strip club, everyone you’ve ever stood behind in lines, cut off in traffic, spoken with through fast food drive-thru windows, sat next to in a movie theatre, walked past on the sidewalk, taken a piss next to in subway bathrooms, purchased lattes from, whose lawns you mowed when you were a kid, who filled your tank, who rang you up, who changed your tire, who gave you a flier while walking past a bar a club a coffeehouse. we pass within inches of you every single day. we have so many stories to tell. and you will never know any of them.

207 U ......

sorrow, part two (2003)

edmund loved sad songs.

he collected them like some people collect stamps. he had japanese pop tunes that made his heart ache, mississippi blues riffs that caused tears to burst from his eyes, pakistani folks songs he could not begin to understand that made him bury his face in his pillow at night just thinking of them.

and he wondered how the sound of a bow drawn across the strings of a violin could conjure within him the forlorn thoughts of lost loves and dashed hopes, how breath blown over an oboe’s reeds could bring him to his knees and weep.

and he wondered what those sounds had in common with the distant longing trill of train whistles, the mournful wail of wolves howling, the wind through the leaves of willow trees.

edmund felt if he could isolate the roots in all of these sad sounds, he might be able to arrange the notes into one chord, the playing of which would connect all the sad songs ever sung and all the sad sounds ever heard and bring forth an unstoppable human tide of glorious and profound emotion. and one day, after much labour, he found it. and he organized a performance in a grand hall, and he invited members of the world press to come and encouraged them to broadcast the event simultaneously to all corners of the globe.

and on the night of the performance, edmund stood in front of his keyboard in a somber grey tuxedo and tails and a tall smoky stovepipe hat. he cleared his throat, and he spoke very softly into

208 C ...... the microphone, “and now, ladies and gentlemen of the world, i give you my gift… the chord of ultimate sadness.” and the whole wide world held its breath. and edmund brought his grey-gloved hand down softly on the keys. and there issued forth from speakers all around the planet — from every radio station, from every television station, from every web browser — pure and beautiful and complete… silence.

and fat laughing buddhas with huge ﬂapping earlobes danced waltzes down the cheeks of the whole wide world. edmund closed his eyes, lowered his head, and smiled.

209 A ......

the double glass doors of your heart (2003)

if you had a full-body tattoo of a 7-eleven sign, i would open up the double glass doors of your heart and walk inside, saunter over to the slurpee machine of love and get myself a nice 32-ounce coke slurpee of faith and devotion, then i’d sashay over to the candy aisle and get myself a nice butterfinger of passion — maybe even a nice jumbo butterfinger of passion, the really big one that’s as big around as an ok sign — and then i would traipse over to the magazine rack and get a fresh copy of juggs magazine of eternity, then i would wait in line behind the guy buying a money order to pay to have his phone reconnected… and i would wonder… how that guy got in here because what the fuck? this is not just some 7-eleven down the block from where you live, no, this is the 7-eleven of your soul tattooed on your body, so why the fuck are you letting people in here to pay their goddamned phone bills? but then the guy would be done and i would prick my finger and pay for my coke slurpee of faith and devotion and my jumbo butterfinger of passion and my juggs magazine of eternity with drops of my lifeblood, and i would make my way for the double glass doors of your heart, but the doors wouldn’t open, and it would occur to me how odd it is that places that are open 24 hours a day have locks on their doors? and then it would occur to me that you had tricked me! i would realize that you had that body-sized tattoo of the 7-eleven sign removed with laser technology while i was in there spilling blood for my coke slurpee of faith and devotion and my jumbo butterfinger of passion and my copy of juggs magazine of eternity — was it the juggs magazine? i can put it back! i can get, like, newsweek! — and then i would just sit there, propped against the locked double glass doors of your heart, my feet splayed out in front of me, eating my jumbo butterfinger of passion, drinking my coke slurpee of faith and devotion, reading my blood-stained juggs magazine of eternity and wondering what was going to happen next… wondering… just how long… the fucking counter guy has been in here! do you just let anyone, like, live here?

210 T ...... inside your heart? was he trapped, too, back when you had a body- sized tattoo of… fucking… circle k? what the fucking fuck? is that what your heart is? a revolving door in the circle k of doom? loving you is like a really weird dream… i don’t even know i’m having.

211 I ...... cellophane (2003)

i am starting my poem from the middle of the audience, with no microphone, with no paper, with nothing but my words, rising amongst you all unashamed and unafraid, as if one of your very own has suddenly been electrified with the spirit to speak and is incapable of resisting temptation. now… i am slowly walking around the room, causing heads to turn and eyes to follow, focusing the attention of this room like the spokes of a giant invisible wheel with my words at the hub. the barriers between speaker and spoken-to have been erased. there is no stage; all the world’s a stage! there is no microphone; all of our mouths are microphones! there is no poetry; there is only life! there are no poets; there’s only us breaking down the barriers between us. now watch! as this empowers me to do things i normally would never do, like find the most beautiful woman in this entire room, walk towards her with my bedroom eyes a-glinting, run my fingers through her soft, rose-scented hair, and gently place upon her lips… a kiss. now watch! as this woman — who normally would never allow me to do this — allows me to do this! now watch! as i find the biggest, baddest, meanest motherfucker in this entire city block, press my forehead to his, and offer my stare as a challenge. now watch! as i slowly walk away… without getting my legs broken…. for he knows this is not just a slam poem: this is a lucid dream over which we have complete control!

212 O ...... this is not just a poetry slam: this is statement! this is a manifesto! this is us raising our voices as one and telling the powers that be that we do not need their $200 million special effects budgets! we do not need their 60,000 watts of sound! we don’t need their super cable, their high-speed internet, their cell phone networks! at the poetry slam, we have distilled mass communication down to its most basic elements — a mouth, a stage, and an audience — and with those simple tools, we can do anything. we can build bridges between us, or we can burn them down. we can build skyscrapers of knowledge, or we can tear them down. we can elect effective political leaders, or we can bring them down. we can inspire this guy to go straight home tonight and call every ex-girlfriend he’s ever had and leave two words on their voice mails: i’m sorry. we can empower this girl to go home tonight and call every ex- boyfriend she’s ever had and leave two words on their voice mails: fuck you! and we can allow this woman to go home after this show and write things in her journal she never thought she’d have the courage to write before this night. you see, this is not just some kind of game we are playing: this is real, this is true, this is life, this is us comparing notes on the human experience to conﬁrm that we exist. you are no longer sitting in a smoky bar watching a poetry slam, no, you are cradled in the hearts and minds of fellow poets. you are amongst friends. you are surrounded by family. you are safe. you are one of us. and this shall be our motto: slamito ergo sum… i slam, therefore i am.

213 N ...... 26 new rules for poetry slamming (2003)

1] just because you think you should start your poem by singing does not mean you should. (sung)

2] if your intro is longer than your poem, you’re not done yet.

3] growing tomatoes on your porch doesn’t make you a farmer. putting out a grease fire in your kitchen doesn’t make you a firefighter. and filling notebooks full of shitty poetry does not make you a poet.

4] despite what you think, i don’t wanna choose whether you read a funny poem or a serious poem. just read the fucking poem.

5] you might think we wanna hear the same three poems over and over again, but you are wrong! i don’t care if they score well every time! either write some new shit, or sit the fuck down!

6] henceforth, each slam poet will be allowed an oppression poem maximum of… say… 25. so go ahead, knock yourself out, fuck shit up, but then you have to ﬁnd something else to write about. you’re not doing your struggle any favors by turning it into a cliché, and your pain isn’t nearly as interesting as you think it is.

7] anything remotely resembling the phrase the revolution will not be televised will henceforth be taxed, and all proceeds will be sent directly to the family of gil scott heron. and this includes the revolution will not be memorized, the evolution will not be criticized, the solution will not be hypothesized, whatever. so either pay up, or write your own goddamned catch phrase!

8] 8, 8, i forgot what 8 was for. *

9] friends don’t let friends freestyle. seriously. you suck at it.

214 A ...... 10] for once, write a sestina. would it kill you?

11] just because you’re the only poet who dares saying racist, sexist, homophobic asshole things at a slam doesn’t mean you are brave or edgy or pushing the envelope, it just means you’re a racist, sexist, homophobic asshole.

12] saul williams stopped writing slam poems in ’96. if you’re still jacking his style from back then, maybe you should stop, too.

13] if you cry every single time you read that sad poem, i will stop believing you. just read the fucking poem.

14] if you use your poetry to get laid, maybe it won’t turn sour on you right away, but you will eventually pay for it… by having poetry written about you that is read in front of your entire community and posted on every online social media website in existence.

15] writing a poem about the poem you want to write is not really the same as actually writing the poem. don’t tell us about the poem you want to write, just write the fucking poem.

16] not all poems have to score 30s. have the courage to write 20s.

17] the scores at poetry slams are a piece of theatre used to keep the interest of people who think they don’t like poetry. they are for the audience. they are not for the poets. anyone who takes the scores seriously needs to quit poetry and take up poker.

18] henceforth, all poems must stop immediately after the ﬁfth utterance of the word i.

(pause… then walk off stage.)

* lyrics from “kiss off ” by the violent femmes.

215 L ...... ode to george w. bush (2003)

there are three things in this life that are inevitable: excruciating pain; endless suffering; and, in the end, george w. bush. george w. bush is eternal. like a carbuncle on the ass of god, george w. bush is omnipresent. like the fetid breath of doom itself, george w. bush is ubiquitous. like a scallion hoard of bulbous burgomaster in blinding white diphthong and hairless flexing duotangs, george w. bush is endless. like curmudgeonly mountebanks wagging their shiny brown fluxus on gutterwailing thoroughbreds of umbrageous vituperance, george w. bush is infinite. like the rotting severed footlimbs of girlfriends numbers 12 & 3 moldering in your bedsheets and squirming blindwhite holy hell, george w. bush is undying. like galloping swaths of born-again vegemites with flaming swag hammery locked tightly in their bony ungues, george w. bush will always be there. waiting for you nattering swarms of naysayers and nincompoops, nabobs and nimbly whores, like lovelorn holy rollers engorged with armageddon vindaloo, like love gone to pus, like ambergris and violoncellos and marshall stacks and acid rain, not unlike a kitty head in the bowling bag of destiny. yes, not unlike a kitty head in the bowling bag of destiny. gaze upon him in fear, you silly stupid mortals, you stupid silly insipid mortals, you vapid jejunum and simian flibbertigibbets,

216 L ...... you menial moribunds and tepid iguanas, you lame-fisted lovers of hullabaloo and pork rinds, you bulbous benefactors of babylonian nipple clamps! george w. bush towers above you all, grating and witless and bizarre, wrapped in swaddling clothes and drooling madly, a fistful of asian tentacle porn in one hand and a pitcher of vanilla coke balanced on his enormous penis, his filthy rotten penis, his festering and pimpled penis, his syphilitic and seeping penis, sticking rotten vegetables in his snotty bunghole and sucking his tears to sunday while the world licks its wounds. george w. bush will always be there… but, like god, he just might not be there for you.

217 Y ...... bpe rap (2003)

my name is big poppa. my rhymes is improper. if you try to dive on me, you’ll do a belly flopper. i can’t be controlled. my rhymes is like gold. if you try to step to me, you’ll be knocked out cold. and you know why? well, i’ll tell you why… i rock hip-hip like bare feet rock flip-flops, like timex got tic-tocs, like yo momma needs a tic-tac, and yo sister eats them big macs. ain’t no slack in my mack. you’d better jump back, or i will attack, and you would not like that. ruh! i’m slaying emcees with my doo-doo rhymin’. i’m bustin’ out my rhythms like i bust yo momma’s hymen. what? you wanna play games? let’s play simple simon… simon says, “uhmmm… shut the fuck up!”

218 E ...... i slam so good, one-two-three, punk-ass tolstoy got nothin’ on me! my rhymes are warm wool slippers, put your cold-ass feets in. they’ll lock you up like aleksandr solzhenitsyn! i’m cookin’ up lyrics like i was a chef, see? i’ll give you rhymes and punishment like dostoevsky. before you step to me, you better back the fuck off, ‘cuz i got mo plays than anton chekov, got more little girlies than vladimir nabokov, got more winning moves than garry kasparov, got more poetry in motion than mikhail baryshnikov, got more funny lines that yakov smirnov. i got more melody than tchaikovsky, i got more abstraction than wassily kandinsky, i know more cat people than nastassja kinski, and i shit better poetry than robert pinsky. that’s right! i said it! i do not regret it! if my wienie was a rabbit maybe i would let you… mmm… pet it? and you know why? well, let me tell you why! my name is big poppa. watch me while i drop a poem on your dome, shine it up like chrome, make you move yo momma back into a nursing home!

219 N ...... i’m a slam barbarian, a pain librarian, make a cattle rancher turn into a vegetarian, make sir lancelot think that he is maid marion, take a regular n and give it some horns and fangs make it a scary n. aww yeah, that shit was so deep it was shallow! you can’t just understand that, you have to overstand that shit! peace!

220 H ...... silver (2004)

if you submerge a chunk of dry desert soil, it won’t get wet. the intensity of its need insulates it from the very thing it needs most. loneliness is like that. forlorn people stink of misery, and their intensity repulses us. there’s no one more alone than a person surrounded by those who refuse to touch them simply because they need so badly to be touched. this society breeds brothers and sister of tantalus surrounded by orchards of fruit trees with wrists that ﬂick at their approach. chunks of dry desert shining silver in puddles of water.

221 A ...... tigerlily (2004)

a key to understanding her is understanding tigerlily. she introduced me to tigerlily about two weeks after we met. tigerlily is what she calls her period, and there’s a magical lilt to her voice when she speaks of it, and a gravity. all the girls at the treatment center where she’d spent six months named their periods. it was a ritual of healing and rebirth, a sacred ceremony marking the time when her tiny body had healed enough to bleed again, a celebration that the 75 pounds of flesh wrapping her thin bones had blossomed to 85 or 90 pounds, just enough to flick hidden switches in her body and reawaken the dormant womanhood held captive by hunger. when she bled again for the first time, she wept ferociously, reclaiming her body and reconnecting to every curve and hollow, refusing for good the fight of finger and throat that burned her tongue with acid and etched the enamel from her smile and distanced her soul from her flesh. the other night, we walked to the 24-hour restaurant near campus holding hands and smiling. as we talked and absentmindedly rubbed bare legs together under the table like grasshoppers, she picked bits of my blueberry pancake and plopped them into her mouth, little bites, and i realized it was the first time i had ever seen her eat. she still struggles. she’s a vegetarian who skips lunches too often. she smokes too much. she still drinks diet coke. her 5’1” frame is all gossamer and willow branches, but there’s a determination in her gaze that radiates to every limb, a solemn promise she made to herself to never again drive tigerlily away.

222 N ...... propers (2004)

this one goes out to those who refuse to be defined, who look at government forms as a challenge, who see the safe little boxes next to caucasian and asian, black and hispanic, and make their own little box labelled all of the above, who scratch out the question entirely and write their own names in large capital letters, who, when forced to choose between male and female write instead “see attached 27-page document detailing why my gender and sexuality will never fit within the confines of your stupid little boxes.” this one goes out to those who fight every day for the simple right to exist: for every gay kid ever beaten up for being gay; for every straight kid ever beaten up for being gay; for every girl who looks into the hungry eyes of magazine models and shouts, “i don’t need the body of a skinny 12-year-old boy to be beautiful!” for every boy who winces when his friends measure their masculinity by how many girls they screw over and are man enough to call them out for it. for every girl who has screamed enough! and marched with her sisters to take back the night from monsters who would rather they stay at home afraid. for every band geek who picked up a guitar or drumsticks or a french horn instead of a bong, for every poet who picked up a pen instead of a gun and expressed their anger with ink and not blood, for every jock who refused to see those physically weaker than them as less than them, and for every teacher who risked their jobs by simply being there when no one else would.

this one goes out to you.

to those who refuse to deﬁne themselves by the size of their parents’ bank accounts, by the clothes they wear or the music they listen to,

223 C ...... to those who demand to be defined by their actions not by their fashions, who can’t wait to turn 18 so they can finally vote those idiots out of office, who refuse to be passive consumers in this self- centered nation and throw away their teevees and make their own movies, who throw out their playstations and make their own video games, who teach themselves to play their own music and write their own novels and create their own art. and most of all… this one goes out to the kid listening right now who thinks i cannot possibly be talking about them, the quiet kid, the one who never raises his hand or his voice, the one with no friends, who’s never been on a date, the one ignored by parents, by teachers, by other kids, yes, this one goes out to you most of all. know this… i understand. i hear you. i used to be you. don’t let anyone say your voice has no value. raise your voice, kid, and don’t ever stop.

224 E ...... mission statement (2004)

we are poets, and that lifestyle choice may have destroyed our credit, yes, it may have destroyed relationships, yes, it may have destroyed our backs from sleeping on couches between times when we could afford a place of our own, yes, but oh, the beauty! the soul! the whole wide world! we live for that connection between a poet and someone moved to touch their hand to their chest and whisper “oh… i get it,” between two people sitting cross-legged on dusty wooden floors bathed in joni mitchell and candlelight at 3 a.m. heads bowed hands held knees touching, between the wind and a person alone at a bus stop whispering his truth over invisible turntable breakbeats from the shady confines of his hoodie. it’s all poetry — all of it! — every single breath is scented with poetry! we will die penniless, but oh the stories! the love! the whole wide world held limp in the palms of our hands! the smiles on our faces as we bid you all goodbye with a twinkle in our eyes and so many sweet sad songs in our hearts! so many people never get a chance to fly because they never have the courage to leap blindly stupidly floppingly out of the nest and bash themselves against all the branches all the way down, then get up and do it again so many times they feel like they’ll die if they try again, but that’s the only way to learn how to fly, and every poet who’s spread their wings and left the bonds of this earth has a body covered in scars and bruises you feel in every word they speak. we don’t just write poetry: we live poetry. warm noses on cold windowpanes leave haiku in frost. blank pages across foreheads yield truth. we can cut our wrists on your lips and drip psalms on your tongue. we can’t help it, we are poets.

225 D ...... people chain themselves to desks and cage themselves in cubicles and trade their precious hours on this planet for scraps of paper and a gold watch and some fleeting notion of security, and we are the crazy ones wasting time with moonbeams and seashores? we’re the irresponsible one chasing fireflies and making love on rooftops?

fuck that! poetry may be the rose-coloured glasses through which we see the world, but we get to see everything! we are not allowed to close our eyes! we do not have the right to remain silent!

we are hopelessly, painfully, ravishingly, terribly, horribly in love with love and life itself, even when it hurts, even when we cry and beg for it all to end, even then it’s all so very beautiful and real and perfect that we carry sunshine in our chests, our rib cages cast shadows on the blind side of our skin, you can see ghosts dancing in our ﬂesh if you squint, and we guide ships to rocky shores by toeing the lips of the ocean and spreading our arms wide.

our goal in life is simple: to be

wide-eyed and breathless at the wonders of the world around us, and dance naked in the warm summer rain, and laugh and laugh even when everything sucks, because we won’t always be happy, and we won’t always be right, and we won’t always be beautiful, but right here and right now we are young enough to be alive, and all the stoplights are so green they sprout tendrils that tickle the tops of passing buses, and the whole wide world is still so full of magic and possibility it would be an insult not to drink deeply of it. that’s what we do: we drink deeply of life in full-throated gulps. that’s who we are: we are poets.

226 V ...... cats (2004)

why can’t you be more like my cats?

my cats are happy when i come home. they greet me warmly, are very obviously happy to see me, even wiggle their little tails at me with anticipation for my touch.

they’re never, like, “where have you been all night long?”

they’re never, like, “what’s this? is this cat hair on your hoodie? you’ve been hanging out with other cats, haven’t you?”

they’re never, like, “how come nothing but cats leave comments on your facebook? you’re using your facebook to ﬂirt with other cats, aren’t you?”

they’re never, like, “who used up all the cell phone minutes calling sexy granny chat lines?”

they’re never, like, “when are you going to pay me back that $2100 you owe me?” no, they’re just really, really happy to see me all the time. the only thing my cats want more than for me to touch them is for me to pick them up and hold them and whisper cute things into their ears. they love that shit. why can’t you be more like my cats?

my cats are never cold and distant for weeks at a time. my cats never roll over and turn their backs to me immediately upon getting into bed because it’s that time of the year. my cats never say, “don’t pet me, i have a headache.” my cats never say, “i hate it when your legs touch me when we sleep because you get me all sweaty.” my cats never say, “don’t kiss me, your breath stinks!”

227 O ...... my cats never say, “i hate giving you blow jobs because it takes you 30 minutes to cum and then my jaw all hurts.”

my cats don’t care where i’ve been, all they care is that i’m back, and that makes them happy, because they miss me when i’m gone, even when it’s just to go to the bathroom. they love me dearly, and they have no problems with that. they need me, and this does not ﬁll them with insecurities. they know i will always be there for them, and i know they will always be there for me. they love me for who i am. and they don’t sweat me all the time about looking for a job. and they aren’t always on my back about my so-called porn addiction. and if they had been the ones to have bailed me out of jail that one time, they would’ve been glad to do it, and they would’ve been over it by now.

my cats love me.

why can’t you be more like my cats?

loving you is like having a great big potty box full of cat shit right there in the middle of the living room, only there are no cats… there’s just shit.

228 C ...... birth control (2004)

dear future ex-girlfriend,

ﬁrst off, i am so sorry.

i mean, i don’t even know you yet, but if you and i are going to date sometime in the future and eventually break up, then yeah… i probably owe you an apology.

i’m sure things started out pretty good.

i probably met you at a poetry slam, right? met you in the break between rounds after having rocked the mic, and you said, “hey, good job!” and i said, “hey, wanna be my girlfriend?” and you probably looked at me with that gleam in your eye shaped just like me, and that gleam probably looked kinda cute, and kinda witty, and kinda silly, and kinda charming.

then we kinda… fucked, right? then we kinda tried to build a relationship around the fact that we had fucked, and only then did we actually try to get to know each other, right?

and then the gleam kinda dimmed, right?

because you probably found me kinda… high maintenance, right?

you probably noticed that i said i love you more times in a day than any other guy you’ve ever dated, which, at ﬁrst, was pretty cool, until you realized it had less to do with you and more to do with me hoping for that echoed response i crave from all my audiences, and that probably made you think i was a wee bit clingy, and that probably hurt my feelings and made me feel defensive, and that probably made you feel like i needed to take care of my own shit instead of

229 A ...... depending on you to take care of it for me, and that probably made me feel you were cold and distant, and you probably started thinking i needed therapy to get over my co-dependency shit, and i probably started thinking you were a mean-spirited bitch and fuck you anyway because you are so very obviously the one who needs therapy… and then… i made you laugh by saying something silly and charming even though you hated me having that power over you, and everything went back to being warm and wonderful again. until it wasn’t, again, and it could’ve gone on that way forever, except something ﬁnally snapped, some intrinsic connection was lost, and we spiralled from there, holding loosely with a grip weakened by the fading memory of good times we had that got more and more distant until they were nothing more than poems i once wrote. i no doubt wrote poems for you, right? and those words probably made you feel kinda special, right? please know this: even though those words were recycled from old phrases in old poems about old lovers, i meant every word. i hope to meet you again someday, someday after the anger is gone, maybe bump into each other in the supermarket and chat a bit by the organic produce, you with your committed life partner, me with whoever i happen to be writing poetry about at the time, someone caught between me writing this letter and actually giving it to them. but that probably won’t happen, since you probably still hate my guts and have replaced my name in stories you tell your friends with some cruel nickname i no doubt deserve. i’m sure i think about you a lot. i must since i probably perform poems about you all the time at the readings you no longer attend. i hope every once in a while you play those mixtapes i gave you, the ones you think i made especially for you, and i hope they make you smile in spite of yourself.

230 B ...... be warm. p.s. i have to admit something: i fucked your sister once. i couldn’t help it. we were so drunk that one time you were out of town, and she smelled just like you. p.p.s. i am so kidding about your sister. i don’t even know if you have one… yet.

231 U ...... thoughts on gay marriage (2004)

i don’t think gay people should be allowed to marry each other.

i think any gay people who want to get married should be banished to a desert island with nothing but a remote control for a teevee, only there’s no teevee, and even if there were, it wouldn’t matter because there’s no electricity on the island and no batteries in the remote, and it’s not even really a remote, it’s an old broken calculator, and that would serve those gay people right for wanting to get married.

in fact, i think ungay people who want to get married should be shot… out of a cannon on live teevee in front of a studio audience. that would be so cool. if you had tivo, you could pause it when they were in mid-air, then you could rewind it and make them go back into the cannon, then you could forward it again, and go back and forth and back and forth, and it would be so funny because it would look like they were humping the cannon with their whole bodies. oh, and the straight people, see, should be made to wear red, white, and blue leather body suits like evel knievel, and it would be patriotic, and every time someone was shot out of the cannon, the audience would all rise to their feet and put their hands on their hearts and sing the preamble to the constitution like on schoolhouse rock, and after we shot them out of the cannon we could banish them to gay island, with all the gay people, only they could never take the red, white, and blue leather evel knievel body suits off no matter how hot it got, and that’s the way you could tell the gay people from the straight people because the straight people would all wear red, white, and blue leather evel knievel body suits and all the gay people would just be naked all the time and humping each other around huge bonﬁres made of all those old broken calculators they’d have laying around, only they’re so gay they don’t even know they’re not teevee remotes, they’re so gay they don’t even call them remotes,

232 L ...... they call them clickers, and the straight people find this so annoying that they launch a big attack on the gay people and come into their camps while they’re humping each other and pelt them with rocks and garbage and the gay people would jump up and start throwing flaming clickers back at them, and all of this could be broadcast live on pay-per-view and it could be called battle for gay island, and they would fight and fight and fight, then we’d cut to commercial, then we’d be back and they would fight and fight and then godzilla would come and kill them all by putting them on fire by shooting fire out of his mouth on them and stomping on them and eating them live on teevee, and you could always tell when he’d just eaten a straight person because he’d spit out their red, white, and blue leather evel knievel bodysuits and lift his head up and do that roar:

ROOOOAOOAOAOAAAWWWOWOOOOOAOAOAOAOOOOOORRRRR! i don’t think gay people should be allowed to get married, because this would be way, way cooler.

233 A ...... i want to hold you (2005)

i want to hold you like an audience holds its breath when the trapeze artist lets go. i want to kiss your knees so weak the grassy arms of the world wrap themselves around you and press your head to its loamy bosom. i want to love you like we’ll never be alone, like we’re never gonna die, like all that matters right here and now is that we can whisper promises on the backs of our necks and feel them before we hear them. carved on the roof of my mouth in a language your tongue alone speaks is one word: yes. i want to drink deeply the beads of sweat that collect in the hollows of your hips and tattoo devotion on your ribs with my lips in glistening script,

234 R . .. . etch a trail of tingles with gentle taps of my tongue from the base of your neck to the tip of your spine until your belly beckons me in syllables of sighs. i want to read psalms from your open bible, plant soul kisses that blossom into heartbeats on my tongue: you taste just like god. i want the river bend of your body to blend with my ebb and flow and grow to embrace us and engulf us and send us cascading over the edge of the bed to the floor with the sheets and the blankets as the cats run for the door. i want to press my flesh so tightly against yours our spines entangle and our blood commingles and your heart pounds marimba beats inside my rib cage. and then i just want to lie there beneath the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling and listen to the cobalt blue sky shushing against our window screen as the first bird of morning clears its throat.

235 I . .. . oh! canadian fedex lady! (2005)

oh! canadian fedex lady! the way you giggled when you caught me beat-boxing to your hold music after you tracked my customer’s package made me want to forever renounce my american citizenship and emigrate to the great white north! oh! canadian fedex lady! if you are half as cute as the entire city of vancouver, british columbia, seemed the last time i toured through canada, then you are so very, very cute, especially if you’re also short and wear cat’s eye glasses, because short cute girls who wear cat’s eye glasses totally kick my ass! oh! canadian fedex lady! the fact that you mentioned how cool it was that bob marley’s buffalo soldier was playing on my hold music when i had to talk to my stupid american customer — who was rude and mean, as most american customers tend to be, unlike most canadian customers, who seem every bit as polite as you — well, that makes me think you are cool, too, because i like bob marley!

236 E . . . .

only i hope you don’t like bob marley too much, as in not enough to be a smelly, nasty, hippie who also likes crappy jam bands like moe and leftover salmon and phish… and… fuckin’… phish…

oh! canadian fedex lady!

i loved that you said zed for the last letter in the alphabet, and i loved how you ended most of your questions with eh? and i loved that you asked me for my customer’s postal code, then giggled and apologized and said, “oh, duh, you guys say zip code, eh?” and i imagine when you said that you shyly tucked your long hair behind your ear and rolled your big anime eyes, and i’ll bet those eyes are as blue as the great hudson bay, only deeper and warm. or, better yet, green as calgary bluegrass in the summertime, only they wouldn’t make me sneeze. or hazel with little yellow ﬂecks orbiting your irises like the lights of toronto winking from the surface of lake ontario. and even if your eyes are brown — like mine, and i hate mine, canadian fedex lady — i’ll bet they’d be the loveliest shade of brown since… pudding… and i love pudding! oh! canadian fedex lady! i love rush! i love neil young! i love joni mitchell!

237 S . .. . i love… uhm… canadian bacon… although you probably just call it bacon… unless you’re a vegetarian, in which case fuck you, bacon! stupid bacon! oh! canadian fedex lady! i wish i had given you my website — www.bigpoppae.com — so you could check out my poetry and see that i am witty, and i am charming, and i have tremendous taste in books, movies, and music. and we could’ve used your employee discount to send each other mixed cds for free that would’ve made us fall crazy in love with each other, and the next time i was in canada we could’ve met in a cafe and gazed lovingly into each other’s pudding brown eyes as bob marley played over the coffeehouse stereo, and we held hands, and smiled, and sighed. but i didn’t, and now… i will never meet you, canadian fedex lady! and i will never know what colour your eyes are when it rains, or what you think of this poem i just wrote for you ﬁve minutes after we ﬁnished our call as i kept my stupid, rude, mean american customer on hold the entire time.

238 A . .. . closer to the heart (2005)

when i was in high school, the popular kids didn’t listen to music simply because they liked it, no, the popular kids listened to music to enhance their popularity. guys didn’t really like the music of journey, but the cutest girls loved journey, so if you wanted to make out back then, you had to at least pretend to like them.

but it didn’t matter what music my friends and i listened to, because us geeks, dorks, goofs, nerds, poindexters, and neo-maxie zoom- dweebies weren’t making out with anybody no matter what music we listened to, and that freed us to listen to any damn thing we wanted, and we wanted that righteous power trio from the great white north, yes, we wanted rush! sure, rush was girlfriend repellent, but so were dungeons and dragons and black t-shirts with superheroes airbrushed on the front and really, really bad bacne! we weren’t cool! our only possible dating partners were non-player characters! therefore, rush made perfect sense!

we didn’t just listen to rush… we worshipped them!

rush was led by gary lee weinrib, whose yiddish grandmother pronounced his name geddy, who would grow up to become geddy lee, the best bass player in modern rock history. he was cursed with a high-pitched voice only a yiddish grandmother could love, but that voice sang of things we could whole-heartedly endorse: princes of darkness and necromancers and spaceships sucked into black holes, lords of the ring and trees that fought each other. if goofy-lookin’ geddy lee could get laid with a voice like that — and we just knew he gettin’ laid any time he wanted — that meant there was hope for us, the voiceless masses who yearned to be modern day warriors with mean, mean strides of our own.

239 N . .. . and those life-affirming lyrics were written not by the singer, but by the drummer, neil peart, who ensconced himself in a fortress of snares, tom-toms, double-bass drums, timpanis, timbales, crotales, wind chimes, splash cymbals, crash cymbals, pang cymbals, and not just one cowbell… but five cowbells! when you saw rush live – which i did seventeen times between my freshman and senior year – the only thing you saw of neil peart was the spray of splintered drumsticks showering the stage like the perseid meteor shower. and as geddy and neil laid down the beat of our pubescent hearts, alex was right there with his cherry-red doubleneck gibson guitar and camel-toed white satin pants. alex, who changed his last name from zivojinovic to its english translation son of life and became alex lifeson, whose fingertips furiously fretted six-strings and twelve- strings with surgical precision. in our teenaged bedrooms that had never witnessed real live girls, we silenced our loneliness by cranking the best record rush ever committed to vinyl – 2112 – and wielding broomstick mic stands and singing along not just to the lyrics, but to every guitar riff, bass line, and drum fill like our sad, lonely, virginal lives depended on it, which they did! long live rush!

240 D . .. . muscleman (2005)

i never wanted a weightlifter’s body, bulging biceps more granite boulders than meat, carved by steel and syringes — useless — save for poses and intimidation. no, i always wanted a swimmer’s body, perfect poetry in motion, liquid made ﬂesh, hairless and streamlined, muscles taut as drumheads pounding rhythms on the surface of the water in a syncopated symphony of grace and power and purpose. but alas! alack! obviously, i was graced with neither. no water has honed these thighs. no iron has etched these calves. for i… have a poet’s body. hunched-backed and pot-bellied, skin not bronzed and oiled but pale and sallow from basking in the radiation of a computer screen in a darkened room. body fueled not by steroids and energy bars but by coffee lots of coffee give me some freakin’ coffee and make it dark and black as the devil’s asshole!

241 A . .. . you see, this body doesn’t pump iron… it pumps irony into poem after poem, slinging sweat on reams of bright white ink jet paper and sumo-wrestling demons by candlelight. i’ve traded rock hard abs for a rock solid vocab, toned trapeziuses for threadbare thesauruses, a mountainous gluteus maximus for a moth-eaten moleskine notebook, and 20 reps at the bowflex for the 20-volume set of the oxford english language dictionary. oh yes, 151 pounds of pure definition! give me a smoky poetry slam in a dingy dive bar over cleanin’ and jerkin’ at a gold’s gym any day! my fellow slam poets may not be muscle-bound freaks, but they are multisyllabic monsters, lifting the spirits of the masses with the strength of their convictions and pulling down crooked regimes with pen strokes. my muscles propel my fingertips across keyboards at 86 truths per minute, and my eyes that flick in the direction of every sigh,

242 C . . .. and my heart, the strongest muscle in the human body, that weeps and moans and gnashes its teeth and ﬁghts and loves so hard, it nearly bursts from my chest every time it rains.

243 R . .. .

napoleon (2005)

this poem begins with a quote:

height is not measured from the ground up, but from the sky down. — napoleon bonaparte.

it always happens.

when i rock a microphone, i feel ten foot tall and luminous, steel- toed and bulletproof, but then i’ll walk triumphantly off stage and inevitably some tall fucker walks up to me and feels compelled to state the obvious:

“wow, big poppa e, you’re not very big, now are you?”

well, allow me to fashion a witty retort:

fuck all y’all tall motherfuckers! short… people… rock!

being short is not a shortcoming, it’s a strength! all it takes to turn a tall person into a whiny little bitch is a roadtrip, but me? i’m stretching out in the back and going to sleep! if this venue were engulfed in smoke and ﬂames, all you tall people would fall to your knees trying to suck up all the good air, but us short people? we just walk right the fuck out, ‘cuz it’s all good air when you’re this short!

we short people are built for maximum maneuverability, dodging through crowds like liquid mercury, avoiding knees and elbows with acrobatic agility.

244 O . .. .

question: if a tall person trips and falls alone in the forest, would there be a sound? answer: hell yeah, there’d be a sound!

but me? i’m already so low to the ground that falling is like laying my head on a pillow. and i never bump my head on anything! if i bump my head on something, that shit’s too fuckin’ low! and don’t talk to me about reaching stuff, oh hell no, that’s why the good lord invented chairs and tall people. yo, michael jordan, get me that tuna can off the top shelf now, bitch! and yes, the rumours are true. us short guys do indeed have small penises… that is if you think a throbbing purple eiffel tower of ﬂesh is small! tall people are up to no good! all the truly innovative thinkers of the modern age have been short: einstein? 5’3” ghandi? 5’2” lil’ wayne? 5’1” shigeru miyamoto? the creative genius behind donkey kong and super mario brothers? 4-foot freakin’ 9, bitches! now, i don’t want you to think that i’m drinking haterade… that’s not what i’m all about, with me it’s all love love…

(pause) fuck tall people! fuck tall people who stand in front of you at concerts and movies!

245 B . .. .

fuck tall people who take up the whole damn bed like they own it!

fuck tetherball! i fuckin’ hate tetherball! whoever invented tetherball is a fuckin’ jackass!

and fuck basketball, too! the only good thing about basketball is that the nba has corralled those who shall be shot ﬁrst! oh yes, the revolution is indeed coming! and the revolution will not be super- sized, it will be minimized! and when the short people of this world unite and rise up, you might not be able to tell… right away… but when steel-toed boot shaped bruises appear on long-assed shins the world over, you will know that me, gary coleman, that kid from webster, and mini-me and the oompa loompas and prince have ﬁnally had enough of your shit and have begun taking over the world one footstool at a time!

represent!

246 A . .. . .

dead horses (2005)

i was molested as a child… now give me a 10.

my mother had to raise me by herself while hooking on street corners… give me a 10.

the government hates people of colour! and gay people! and feminists! and ravers! give me a motherfucking 10!

and i’m not going to actually write a poem, oh no, i’m gonna slap together the most unsubtle images and over-used similes stolen from every high-scoring slam poem i’ve ever seen and use them to paint my tragedies with such bold strokes and lurid detail you will be both repulsed and proud of the strength it takes to admit them… over and over… on stage after stage… a single tear rolling down my cheek as my voice cracks with passion during the same… pregnant… pause… pushing the same worn buttons and espousing the same hackneyed emotions as every other motherfucker like me.

i dare you to disrespect my pain, because if you do, everyone will know that you think i deserved to be molested — even if the story i want you to believe is my truth is actually a conglomeration of stories i’ve either overheard or made up. give me a 10, because if you are against me, then you hate america and the baby jesus, and what did the baby jesus ever do to you, you fuckin’ heathen?

give me a 10 or every bad choice in my main character’s life will have been in vain! give me a 10 or this audience will know that you think watching my best friend die… in my arms… after i shot him up with that eightball of speed… or dimebag of… heroin… or whatever… is not fucked up.

247 T . .. . .

you see, i don’t want you to score my poem.

i want you to score my issue.

and when i come back here next week and drag my dead horse to the corner of this stage and spend three minutes and ten seconds beating the living shit out of it, then pass the mic to the next poet so he can do the same, we can all abandon any pretense of poetry and simply pit i was molested vs. i was discriminated against vs. george w. bush is an asshole and force the judges to assign scores to these ideas rather than the poems used to communicate and explore these ideas, turning every truly moving human tragedy into just another strategy to pimp our real or imagined pain for points. and then we can pat ourselves on the back for rendering yet another vital form of expression irrelevant by the very people who claim to be its staunchest supporters, derailing our revolution by simply writing about a revolution we’ll never have the courage — or writing skill — to bring to fruition.

and let’s be honest… i don’t really want to change the world…

i just want you to think i do long enough to win.

248 I . . . . . not drowning, but waving (2006)

when zara cries she withdraws into herself, pulls ﬁst-sized knees to her chest and wraps slender arms tight around them, buries her face — red — in the tiny hollow she creates with her whole body, uses everything she has to protect herself from further hurt. and i am so moved by the sight of her so small. i want to hold every bit of her, whisper tears away, tell her everything will be okay, even when we both know it won’t be, if i can only hold her tight enough warm enough long enough with all of me enough until everything is okay. i love her so much, i can stop trains with my upturned palms. when we swam galveston bay in a salty spray of inside jokes and smiles, wrist-strapped to boogie boards on whitecaps,

249 C . .. . . i was always aware of the distance between us, aware of her narrow shoulders pressed against those waves, the rip tide tugging at my ankles so eagerly sucking her from my grasp. and i called to her, beckoning her closer, held her hand as the biggest waves broke over our heads and battered us, always ready to leap through the current to grab her ankle and save her from washing out to sea. once or twice i found myself alone in the water to my neck, tossed, eyes blurred with salt and sand and sunscreen, grasping in vain for my lover’s ﬁngertips only to look behind me and glimpse her seaweedy head pop up near the shore having just caught the perfect wave and smiling.

250 U . .. . . scars, part two (2006)

momma always told me never look into the eyes of the sun, but momma that’s where the fun is. * there comes a time in everyone’s life when they must be allowed to discover this truth: the sweetest berries are in the very heart of the sticker bush. it’s the scratches that make them sweet. if i’ve learned anything about life it’s this: a knee without scars is evidence of a life unlived. children protected from playing in the dirt grow into sick adults unable to ﬁght the simplest infections. parents can’t possibly redeem themselves for past bad choices by forcing their children into closets.

251 S . .. . . this will only make them blind and afraid and vulnerable, and it will make them hate you. you can’t protect me from my mistakes. i need them. i need the protection of callouses. i need the wisdom of scars. so, give me a life full of rope burns and splinters and heartfelt advice i’m allowed to ignore. give me shins scraped by pavement and front teeth cracked by tree limbs and elbows bloodied into stories worth telling. at the end of my life the last thing i want to see is a long series of safe choices and measured steps. give me instead a life ﬁlled with dizzying triumphs fueled by countless lovely fuck-ups and wonderfully painful bad choices, with cockamamie schemes that sometimes actually worked and stories so outrageous people never stop sharing them as their own. please, god, let my last dying breath be scented with gentle regret for epic fails i had the courage to try and none for things i dared not do.

252 E . .. . . mistakes are the only things that have taught me anything, and i have learned… a whole lot. the only lessons worth remembering are the ones that leave a mark.

* lyrics from “blinded by the light” by mannfred mann’s earth band, which was a reworking of a bruce springsteen song of the same name.

253 O . .. . . ode to dwarf planet 134340 (2006)

there are few things in this life that are strictly black or white. most issues float somewhere in the middle of a vast sea of grey, open to a myriad conflicting interpretations. but i am here to tell you there are such things as absolute truths, undeniable facts that rise from that wishy-washy sea of opinions and stand resolutely like venus in a clam shell for all to see. i am talking about incontrovertible principles that are impossible to deny, of which i will now list five:

1] the sun will rise, and the sun will set;

2] all who are born will one day die;

3] van halen with david lee roth was vastly superior to van hagar;

4] crunchy peanut butter is not only irrefutable proof of god’s existence, but it also shows she loves us very much, and people who like smooth peanut butter hate the baby jesus; and 5] which is the reason i am here right now, and i am speaking of the one remaining sterling truth no reasonable person can deny: pluto is a freakin’ planet! so what, a bunch of self-important professors got bored one day and decided to get back at all the cruel people who wouldn’t date them in high school by knocking pluto’s standing in the universe down to dwarf planet and renaming it 134340, and why?

254 F . . . ..

because pluto isn’t like all the other planets, pluto’s smaller than most moons, pluto’s got a bit of a strange orbit, wahhhhh fuckin’ wahhhhh! but really, who in this room has never been considered an oddball? an outcast? special? let him that hath never been considered a dweeb cast the ﬁrst meteoroid!

pluto is like the chubby goth girl lurking at the edge of the solar system and staring longingly at the cosmic dance ﬂoor ﬁlled with all the popular planets. oooh, look at me, i’m saturn, look at my freakin’ rings! oooh, look at me, i’m jupiter, i’m so deep, look at my third eye!

all these planetary john lennons and paul mccartneys vying for celestial attention while poor ringo gets pushed to the back of the universal stage. and let me tell you… without ringo, the beatles would’ve amounted to nothing! ringo put the beat into the beatles, and without him, they would’ve just been the ‘les.

without chubby goth girls, gay high school boys would never have bosoms to cry upon! i would’ve never had bosoms to cry upon!

pluto is the symbol for every kid who’s never ﬁt in. we need pluto as proof that no matter how small you are, how separated from mainstream society, how abnormal, how weird you are…

you, too, can be someone worth looking up to.

you, too, can be a planet.

i don’t care what they say, i don’t give a goddamn about any so- called science, forget science, this is beyond science, this is about belief, and i believe that pluto was a planet long before these bitter eggheads were mewling and puking on their mother’s knees, and when they are all dead and buried along with their hoity-toity ideas and the universe has forgotten their blink of existence, pluto will still be out there…

255 M . .. . . watching over this tiny… blue… gay planet from afar like the chubby goth girl best friend it always was. call pluto what you will, but remember this… a rose by any other name is still a freakin’ planet.

256 E . .. . . incantation 4: redneck (2007)

i don’t want to wear white anymore give me that redneck my great grandad wore while earning a quarter an hour working central californian cotton ﬁelds twenty cents an hour for potatoes two and half cents for a box of peaches collected in the scalding sun so his barefoot family of 12 wouldn’t starve give me those rednecks packed in the back of rickety model t’s and mule-drawn carts with every possession a cacophony of hungry children aunties, memaws, cousins everyone who could stand on the runners and hang from the rumbleseat by the calloused tips of their ﬁngers as they crawled down the back of the mother road, route 66 you see white doesn’t remember the acres of rich, black farmland laid waste by shifting sands evicting generations

257 T ...... and erasing histories in the space of a season white knows nothing of border crossings in the silence of starlight halted by los angeles police ofﬁcers with shotguns guarding every road, every bridge, every river leading into the golden state

“okie go home,” they shouted, “go back where you came from!” “we already got ten men for every ﬁeld job, now go home, okie, and take your ﬁlthy, lice-ridden litter with you!” newspapers warned of migrant hordes invading kern county and they weren’t coming from mexico they snuck over the arizona border from shamrock, texas, and godebowl, oklahoma my family my white family while signs on every store announced the owners would sooner serve dogs than okies you didn’t just say that word you spat it then ground it into the dust with the toe of your boot redneck recognizes the blood running through my veins pumped from the hearts of the native american woman and german fur trapper who began my family in america blood

258 A ...... worked into the soil surrounding california bergs like bakersfield and arvin and lamont blood that pulsed through hard-working families forced to live in dirt-floored tent cities and squatter camps that ringed towns like weed patches redneck remembers white schoolchildren being taught that okies were filth okies were scum okies were not white they were animals that bred like vermin and over-ran your cities and infected your children and drove workmen’s wages into the dirt through which they crawled and yes we were eventually allowed the privilege of our white skin through hard work and persistence we were accepted into a society that even today deprives people of colour the right to live among equals but white doesn’t recognize the shared struggle to belong okie and nigger are two sides of the same filthy coin that is the need of a privileged society

259 P ...... to find an other to blame for its ills and push to its edge and crush under the boot of prejudice i have no pride in being white that phrase assumes silver spoons in the sepia-toned mouths of the okies and rednecks whose sacrifice allows me the freedom to be a poet who writes about their struggles rather than engages in them yes, i benefit from white privilege every day but do not forget my neck — as much as i’ve tried to wash it clean — is red

260 H ......

falling in like (2007)

you make me feel… goofy.

goofy like i blush when someone mentions your name.

goofy like i have a bzillion things i wanna tell you when you’re not around, but face-to-face i just stare at my toe making circles on the ground, like i’m all thumbs and no place to put them, like i just wanna write you a note that says:

do you like me? ❑ yes ❑ no ❑ maybe whatever random cool i’ve been able to harness leaps from my grasp when you enter the room, and i feel old school, and by that i mean grade school, like back in the day when the space between wanting to touch someone’s hand and actually touching it could hold lifetimes of passionate yearning. girl? i don’t wanna make out with you… i wanna make a fort with you, right in the middle of the living room with all the sheets and all the blankets and every chair in the whole house, a soft labyrinth scented with fabric softener and hot chocolate with marshmallows, lying on our tummies on the avocado shag carpeting and eating golden grahams right out of the box.

we’d be the best spellers in all the sixth grade spelling bee, and we’d spend our recesses in the library quizzing each other over dueling dictionaries and encyclopedias and having cutthroat scrabble wars, and you would always accuse me of cheating, but i still swear that ishkabibble is a real word!

261 O ...... i would trade my grape jelly sandwich for matthew’s fuji apple to switch with mikey’s cherry fruit roll-up to swap with fat andy’s peanut butter cup — even though i am allergic to peanuts — just so i could trade your favourite candy for your grape jelly sandwich.

during art class, i would draw dr. suess landscapes of ﬁre engine red grass and royal purple trees just so you could use the green crayon as much as you wanted.

people would talk about us… and we would let them.

and if you got the chicken pox, i would ride my 10-speed across town on a saturday and climb in through your bedroom window to hang out with you while your parents were shopping so i could get chicken pox, too. then we could both stay home from school and talk on the phone all day long and watch game shows and twilight zone reruns together and take breaks only for dinner and the bathroom until it was bed time and we whispered into the phone under the covers in the dark until we got really sleepy. and i would say, “are you asleep?” and you would say, “yesssss…” and a little while later i would ask, “are you awake?” and you wouldn’t say anything, and i would just lie there listening to the sound of your breathing.

on my homemade valentine’s day card, i would write i like you in sparkles and glue, only my handwriting is so bad, all my k’s look like v’s, but we decide that’s better anyway… i live you.

we’d make pinky swears while biting our thumbs, cross our hearts and hope to die and make promises with words like always and forever and never ever ever, promises you can only make when you’re 11 and don’t know any better, back when three weeks at summer camp was an eternity and a change of schools a disaster, back before pimples, before underarm hair, before bra straps and make-up, back before graduation and college and graduation and real life, back before resumés and jobs and careers and mortgages and marriage and divorce and debt and disappointment…

262 R ...... back when summers… lasted… forever… and our very ﬁrst kiss… on the cheek… was the most awkward and scary and wonderful thing in the whole wide world. that’s how i like you… like… a lot. so, which is it?

❑ yes

❑ no

❑ maybe

263 S ...... to the barista at the cafe down the street (2007)

it’s not that you called me ugly.

this skin of mine has draped my weary bones for two score years and change, and i have become quite accustomed to its imperfect ﬁt. the simple fact that you don’t possess the eyes to see my instrinsic beauty says so much more about you than it ever could about me.

and it’s not that you attempted to cast doubt upon my hygiene, because i am very secure in my daily regimen — which includes at least two teeth brushings, one ﬂossing, a hot shower in the morning, a liberal swipe of deodorant under each pit, and q-tip swabbings in each ear. in addition, i wear clean clothing washed with hot water and detergent and dosed with ocean breeze fabric softener.

now, while it is true i eschew perfumes and colognes, i do favour scented oils. as a matter of fact, i was wearing a delightful mix of ginger, amber, and sandlewood on the day in question, and several people commented on the faint but unmistakable scent of nag champa incense emanating from the fabric of my black hoodie. and i certainly was not bothered by your reference to my height — a remark clearly meant to be scathing, even withering — or by your surprisingly vocal assertion that my sexual prowess was no doubt hindered by my pitiful endowments — a claim that, really, only serves to underline your laughable ignorance on that lengthy subject and about which you should check with your sister for conﬁrmation.

and i can honestly say that your observation about my thinning hair was not only petty, but also entirely ineffective as an insult. as a man who has been shaving his head since you were mewling and puking on your grandma’s knee, i have come to grips with the fact that i am and forever shall remain follically challenged.

264 T ......

no, none of that bothered me, not even when you claimed that i regularly had sexual relations with my mother — a claim i dispute, by the way — and not even when you charged that i do not know the identity of my biological father.

what did bother me was your absurd expectation of a substantial tip for that lukewarm chai latte made with whole milk rather than my requested almond milk, a lukewarm chai latte hidden beneath three knuckles of foam for which you charged me $5.75 despite the listed price of $3 plus 50 cents for the almond milk, the lukewarm chai you made only after starting and ﬁnishing two conversations with random cute boys in skinny jeans as i stood there waiting and listening to the awful hipster metal you played over the loudspeakers at pete townshend tinnitus shredding levels.

this, dear heart, indicates an elevated level of either arrogance or ignorance on your part that i ﬁnd extraordinarily grating.

in the future, i suggest actually fulﬁlling a paying customer’s order promptly and correctly before loudly questioning the size of their tip, and should that customer balk at relinqueshing a bigger tip because you have totally screwed up said order, i would suggest that screaming at that customer and calling him, and i quote, a fat smelly balding needle-dick motherfucking ugly midget bastard is probably not going to garner the hoped for additional tip.

i appreciate this opportunity to clarify this situation, and i wish you the best of luck in life and love. i will not, however, be frequenting your coffeehouse any time in the near future. or distant future.

sincerely, big poppa e

p.s. it’s actually a good thing you didn’t make my chai very hot, because i’ll bet second degree burns on your hipster asshole face would have been much worse than the soggy myspace haircut you got when i threw my drink in your face, you nasty skank whore.

265 R ......

neurotika (2007)

fuck falling in love! i am so bored with love! from now on, if i’m gonna fall at all, i wanna fall insane! fuck meeting for idle chit-chat over coffee, dollface, let’s cut directly to the scene where we fornicate like two rabid skunks right here on this stage in front of everybody! i’ll write a poem about it called this skank i fucked this one time!

to hell with caution! let’s wrap the anchor of our love around our necks and dive off the golden gate bridge and strangle each other all the way down to the bottom of san francisco bay until we die! with our eyes open! it will be romantic! like the titanic! let’s write epic odes to each other consisting of nothing more than the word fuck over and over again, then let’s tattoo them on our backs with the sharpened tip of a guitar string dipped in burnt styrofoam… like they do in prison… which is what our relationship will be, a prison from which there is no escape! it will be just like death row, only without the anal rape… unless you’re into that sort of thing, in which case it will be exactly like death row! i want us to ﬁle restraining orders against each other requiring 100 yards between us at all times, then i want us to stand at either side of a football ﬁeld and glare at each other as we masturbate furiously in the end zones and shriek obscenities at each other: fuck you, you fucking fuck!

i wanna sue you for mental cruelty, then i wanna spend my settlement on a diamond engagement ring etched with the words i love you, you ﬁlthy whore! i don’t want to collect a shoebox full of mementos! i wanna stuff a casket with every lawsuit, court order, summons, and concealed weapons permit generated by this doomed relationship, and then

266 I ...... i wanna be locked inside it and buried alive… with you on top of me… until we die of suffocation… with our eyes open… you filthy fucking whore! i wanna sever all connections with everyone i know the entire time we are ruining each other’s lives, and when it’s finally over, i want to crawl back home on my broken fingernails — all pale and hollow- eyed — and have people wonder… where the hell i’ve been… for the past two weeks… and i’ll simply stare off into the distance and rasp, the horror… the horror… fuck love. love hurts too goddamned much. if you’re gonna bother liking me at all, just fucking destroy me.

267 P ......

mixtape genius (2008)

i am not an arrogant man. my tragically low self-esteem keeps any delusions of grandeur in check. however, there is one thing at which i am better than anyone in this room.

i am a mixtape genius!

i spin tunes like monsoon winds blow typhoons! make foolish DJ’s like you look buffoon! when i brew my mixtape voodoo for you, boo, you’ll swoon!

i mix melodies with memories that sway your bodies like coconut trees in the ocean breeze. i blend heartbeats with drumbeats ‘till ﬂeets of bare feets crack concrete city streets with hard heel beats. i twist turntable tornados with whirlwinds of spin and furiously ﬂip faders to and fro for surround sound that astounds.

i will conjure the bony ghost of a bebop bassman sliding all silver- like towards you, pure mississippi blues hovering inches from the tip of your nose with gap-toothed gold-plated grin and luminous arms that curl around your body like incense smoke around a long lost lover, frozen ﬁngertips furiously fretting up and down your spine in a blur of raindrop-tipped arpeggios tracing the arc of your backbone from neck to hip and back again with shivers coaxing marimba beats from your ribcage in sultry samba tempos.

i be a rainy day audio renoir bending reverberations into melodic brushes dipped in ella ﬁtzgerald scatting blues and jimi hendrix stratocaster blacks, then i go picasso throw michael jackson solo with miles davis horn blow, paint the skies with billie holiday’s cries with charlie parker ﬂying by, krylon the sonic canvas with rakim and outkast, slash it all with sharpened hooks by radiohead and talking heads, then paint it red with portishead and the grateful dead.

268 P ......

i am a connoisseur of cold cuts, a master chef of ghetto blaster base clefs, tossing ballads like salads, chopping breakbeats like sweetmeats. i’ll julienne jazz and ﬂash fry it in funk, season it with tribal drums and serve it up as crunk. i makes my mixtapes saucy like emeril lagasse’s in my posse. bam!

i will blend a chunk of thelonious monk with a hunk of old school punk, stir it around ‘till it sounds profound, make you see babies like ultrasound! allow me to expound… you will not play my mixtape… bitches, my mixtape will play you! i’ll make you dance marionette on the ends of guitar strings, pluck power chords from your hamstrings, tie ribbons of rhythms in festoons from your heartstrings… ain’t nothing but a chicken wing! and before you dare dismiss me as a point-and-click dj mouse clicking mixes in itunes all day, typing love into search engines and dragging megabytes of music across desktops and burning cds with simplicity stop, remember this: when i say mixtape, bitches, i mean mixTAPE!

i mean old school 90-minute cassette tape, 45 per side, tdk all the way, metal position with the tab clicked out so you can’t tape over it! like back in the day when you actually had to listen to every song all the way through! making a mixtape took all saturday afternoon! and when you grace your stereo with my mixtape, strap on your big fat padded dj ear goggles, press play, lay back, relax, allow the divinci code of my mixtape odes flow slo-mo like molasses kisses, you’d best remember this, missus. that feeling you get? giddy in your midriff? that whispers of summer skies and fireflies and bicycle tires and campfires down by the lake? make no mistake! take whatever flights of synesthetic fancy you feel and multiply them ten-fold! because when i molded my mixtape voodoo for you, boo, i… was holding back!

269 I ...... mementos (2008)

free meals on airplanes. smoking sections on airplanes. smoking sections anywhere. the avon lady. tupperware parties. s & h green stamps. door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen. encyclopedias. elevator attendants. gas station attendants. full-serve pumps. ethyl gasoline. answering machines with mini-cassette tapes. rotary phones. princess phones. home phones. ten-cent phone calls from phone booths. phone booths. collect calls. long distance charges. anonymous crank calls. telegrams. morse code. the smell of fresh purple mimeograph copies. typewriter ribbon. typewriters. carbon copies. wite-out. erasable typing paper. writing letters. licking stamps. saturday mail.

270 N ......

24-hour kinko’s. kinko’s. zines. slide rules. l.e.d. calculators. computer punch cards. cassette tape drives. floppy discs. zip drives. firewire. the sound of a 2400-baud dial-up modem. the sound of a dot matrix printer. library card catalogs. microfiche. drive-in movie theatres. laserdisc movies. vhs movies. betamax movies. mixtapes on actual cassette tapes. cassette tapes. cassette singles. 8-track tapes. cd long boxes. CDs. 45 rpm records. records. record stores. record companies. the walkman. the discman. grunge. radio stations that don’t suck. music videos on mtv. black and white televisions with l3 channels and rabbit ear antennas. black and white film. polaroid film.

271 G ...... 110 ﬁlm. ﬂash cubes. developing your snapshots at the drugstore. the television repairman. the milkman. the iceman. doctors who make house calls. daily newspapers delivered to your doorstep by l2-year-olds on l0-speed bikes. l0-speed bikes. newspapers. banana seats. sissy bars. roller skates with metal wheels. lawn darts. clackers. marbles. cap guns. fully-posable g.i. joe with fuzzy hair and kung fu grip. big wheels. stretch armstrong. easy bake ovens. snoopy sno-cone machines. saturday morning cartoons. comic books for a quarter. video games for a quarter. pinball machines. arcades. candy cigarettes. penny candy. pull-tabs on sodas. new coke. crystal pepsi. zima. the brontosaurus. the ozone layer. pluto.

272 A ...... the smell of the back of your neck. the sound of your voice inches from my ear.

the warmth of your body pressed against mine.

the salty taste of your tears on my lips.

washing your back.

cooking you breakfast.

the last time we made love.

273 W ...... the crush (2009)

the cute girl at the coffeehouse who serves you lattes every morning is afraid of you. when you walk into the room, the soft skin of her slender arms sprouts gooseﬂesh. you think she’s shy, the way she lowers her gaze as you approach the front counter. you think she might fancy you, the way she whispers as she asks if you want whole milk or skim, foam or no foam, a stirrer, a lid. the sound of your much-larger-than-necessary tips sliding from your calfskin wallet into the open mouth of her tip jar makes her think of a stiff leather belt pulled through the loops of dirty denim jeans. she has told her co-workers about you. they have assigned you nicknames. they all keep watch and warn her when they spy your loping gait, so she can slip into the back and hide behind the swinging door of the storeroom until they signal your retreat. that day you caught her leaning unawares near the bus tub over- ﬂowing with coffee mugs and asked her what music was playing over the loudspeakers, she winced, hating the fact that she had lowered her guard, loathing that she was obliged to tell you the name of her favourite band. she has not listened to them ever since. she wants no reminder of you hounding her day like dogshit on the bottom of her pink converse hi-tops. she purchased pepper spray on the internet and keeps it in the breast pocket of her apron at all times, half-hoping for a reason to empty the canister into your eyes, wishing you’d lunge for her throat with spit on your lips as she butters a toasted bagel with a butcher knife. but you don’t.

274 A ...... you simply order your morning double-tall-soy-no-foam-decaf latte, tip a few bucks more than you have to, and leave with a smile, wondering absentmindedly if you should ask for her phone number. every morning. while she. holds. her breath. and waits impatiently for the sound of the front door snapping shut behind you.

275 Y ...... she never really loved you (2009)

she never really loved you not really she only tolerated you as long as her fear of being alone exceeded the bother of leaving you she stayed biding her time jobs hobbies favourite teevee shows friends you never knew how she’d stare at you and see right through to the wall behind you a mimsy memory haunting her small apartment you were unprepared to come home that day to ﬁnd one less toothbrush half-empty bureau drawers indentations on the carpet slightly paler squares on whitewashed walls a postcard on the fridge of a songbird frozen in ﬂight

276 A ...... your friends all knew it had been a long time coming but you were taken off guard and you mourned her absence but she felt free you will think of her as the one who got away but she can’t wait to forget your name

277 L ......

beardo (2009)

i ﬁnd myself looking at these times of economic hardships and romantic disappointments, and i realize i have come to a point reached by many a beleaguered man,

a point where the only appropriate response to all the bullshit is:

fuck it! i’m growing a beard!

my beard will be a statement: the struggle to please you is over!

growing a beard is a rite of passage, proof you’re not some girly man capable only of some fussy little metrosexual chinstrap like a.j. from the backstreet boys, no! i’m talking about an uncontrollable wildman beard! a feral burly man beard! burly!

when you begin to cultivate a truly barbaric man-bush, you join a long woolly history of beardos before you who allowed their facial hair to ﬂy unfettered and free!

walt whitman! rubeus hagrid! fat jim morrison! the lunch lady in middle school! and walker texas ranger himself… chuck norris!

chuck norris’ beard doesn’t hide a weak chin, it hides another ﬁst with which to pummel you!

my beard will not be some scratchy tumbleweed of a beard, nay! my beard will be a welcoming luxurious ﬂeece bathed in exotic camel’s milk shampoos and smoothed by silken conditioners.

278 L ......

come, my love, allow the lush tendrils of my beard to surround our naked bodies with the scent of sandalwood and ambergris and warm us to sleep as only a soft blanket of pubic-like facial hair can!

yes, sometimes i’ll get food caught in my beard, but it will only be the ﬁnest cuisine.

last tuesday… pate de fois gras… here. (point to left cheek) yesterday… ﬁllet mignon… here. (point to right cheek) last night… your mom… here! (point to mouth)

and to those women who say they don’t like guys with beards, i say no! i will not trim my voluminous cookie-scraper mustache because it tickles! i’m a tickly motherfucker! no, i will not tame my wolverine-like mutton chops because they chafe the insides of your thighs! if you’re gonna ride this cowboy, you gotsta bring chaps! in the end, if i can’t ﬁnd a women strong enough to love me for the hirsute man i am, well then fuck it! because the biggest fans of guys with beards… are guys with beards! and i say bring ‘em on, all you leather daddies and butch biker bears, let me be the cuddle cub of your wildest furry fantasies!

let us press our bewhiskered cheeks together like two velcro-covered teddy bears and whisper roughly into each other’s ears: breakin’ the law, breakin’ the law…*

i’ll curl my pinkie around the belt loop of your tight moose-knuckle inducing leather ass pants, and we shall mount your harley chopper, and we shall ride into the sunset bellowing: beardos forever!

* lyrics from “breakin’ the law” by judas priest.

279 U ...... how to make love (2009)

if i had a son, and he came to me as a young man for advice about sex… this is probably what i would tell him. l) buy condoms. buy them and keep them with you at all times, and use them before you are asked to use them, and use them every time. the peace of mind you allow your partner will free her to be vulnerable with you, and that, my son, is exactly what sex is about. condoms are sexy. in fact, call buying condoms foreplay. footnote: if you’re too embarrassed to buy condoms, you’re not ready to have sex.

2) kissing is not merely foreplay. spend entire evenings making out on the couch while fully clothed. believe me, dry humping rocks.

3) sex is not just about friction; it’s about emotion. don’t worry about trying to find her clitoris, find her heart, then she’ll help you find her clitoris.

4) if you really want to know how to please a woman, ask her how she masturbates. then do that. a lot. if she claims she doesn’t masturbate, offer to take her shopping for a vibrator so you can both learn the vocabulary of her body together.

5) don’t put anything in her butthole you wouldn’t want in your own. footnote: try a pinkie ﬁnger; it’s kinda awesome.

6) when you go down on her — and you will go down on her, and if you are my son, you will be amazing at it! — tell her how good she tastes. stop in the middle and kiss her deeply so she knows how good she tastes, and do the same when she goes down on you.

280 N ...... 7) a simple google search yields l,347 euphemisms for male masturbation, yet only 23 for female masturbation. if guys spent less time jackin’ off and more time jillin’ off, the world would be a happier place.

8) everything you need to know about the importance of the clitoris is in the movie star wars. your partner’s body is the death star, and you are luke skywalker piloting your penis-shaped x-wing ﬁghter deep inside her trench. remember, 70 percent of all death stars cannot be blown up through penetration of the trench alone. it must be through focused contact with that little exhaust port at the top of the trench, otherwise any explosions you experience will be merely hollywood special effects.

9) just because you’ve cum doesn’t mean she has, so don’t you dare cum before her. concentrate on pleasing on your partner. don’t worry about getting yours. you’re a guy… you always get yours. your job is to make sure she’s getting hers. l0) if sex with your partner lasts no longer than this poem, you are not making love… you are masturbating with her body instead of your hand. shame on you! go back to step one! you have a lot of learning to do! love, dad. p.s. if you are gay, son, know that i love you and am proud of you for telling me about it. i don’t know anything about boys, but i am sure we can ﬁgure something out together.

281 N ...... what i mean (when i say i love you) (2009)

wanna know what i hate? poets. wanna know why? erotic poetry.

because most of the happy horseshit being passed off as erotic poetry these days is nothing more than lists of body parts and what they intend to do with them, interspersed with endless repetitions of the word love love love… as if it actually meant something. that’s not sexy, that’s lazy. if you can’t write a love poem without using the word love, then you are not a poet; you are a greeting card salesman. well, i’m here to take i love you back, so when i say it, it won’t be some vague erotic notion, no, when i say i love you, i mean as long as i’m around, you will always have someone to pick you up from the airport. that is sexy!

and you will always have someone to help you move your heavy- assed couch up three ﬂights of narrow apartment complex stairs, and you will always have someone to hold your hair back out of your face while you regurgitate margaritas into the bathtub. and i know it’s the bathtub and not the toilet because you think sticking your face in a toilet is nasty, and i know this not because i love you and this knowledge has magically seeped into my brain through love osmosis, no, it’s because i pay attention!

you wanna know what love is? i will tell you what love is! i will go to the corner store at 3 in the morning on my bicycle in the rain to get you tampons! and i will remember to buy the pint of chunky monkey you didn’t even ask for because i know you like ice cream when your cramps are bad. and i know this because i’ve got your back! and by that, i mean the little space between your shoulder blades you can never reach when it itches really bad? i freakin’ got that!

282 E ...... when i want you to know i love you, i won’t waste money on ﬂowers — oh look honey, here’s something beautiful you can watch die! — no, i’ll sneak over to your apartment while you’re at work and clean your kitchen. that’s sexy!

and i won’t allow our arguments to become ﬁghts because i will spend more time listening than simply waiting for my turn to talk, more time giving you the beneﬁt of the doubt than picking at old wounds to score points, more time learning from my mistakes than repeatedly apologizing for them. it’s easy to love you when we are so beautiful, but i will love you even when things get really fucking ugly. i will love you even when i fucking hate you. and should the time come when it’s time to move on, i will let go. and when you introduce me to your new boyfriend, i will tell you he seems like a nice guy, and i’m happy for you… even though your name is tattooed on the center of my chest so no matter how hard someone else presses their body against mine, you will always be closer to my heart.

and i mean that metaphorically…

because i ain’t gettin’ a fuckin’ tattoo…

when i say i love you, i mean it.

283 C ......

pretty girls make me sad (2010)

mine is the art of the awkward pause, the comedy of mortiﬁcation, the joy of realizing you have no idea what to do next. i am the king of unrequited love, the prince of crushes, the emperor of yearning from afar.

i fall in love with everybody and scatter pieces of my broken heart all over this country hoping one day i can follow their trail home, but the moment they touch the ground, a poem sprouts, and birds make nests in their leafy words. i have planted forests that pulse and throb with the rhythm of my blood. i am johnny appleheart, and i am lost amongst these trees.

and the wind whistles through the holes in my chest. if i twist just right, it makes the most beautifully sad music, so painfully lovely, so horribly alive, this symphony of sighs. i spend more time looking at the tips of my toes than i do the face of the moon, and i spend more time on both than i do looking people in the eyes. i didn’t used to be this way. i used to wear my heart on my sleeve, but it made my wrists too bloody.

now, i am clumsy around girls. i never know what to say. they just smell so good. i flirt with mixtapes and poetry and have no idea what constitutes a first date. i always have to ask: is this a first date?

it hardly ever is.

i hug every girl i meet so i can share heartbeats with someone… even for a moment. i have fallen madly in love with 114 girls who were absolutely perfect for me, except for one fatal ﬂaw…

they didn’t love me back.

284 E ......

i keep hoping for someone to cross a crowded room and stand brazenly before me and reach out and hold my face in her palms and smile with her eyes and say, “there you are! i have been looking everywhere for you! now that i have found you, i promise i will never let you out of my sight!” but no one ever does. i am a little kid lost in the mall and crying, clutching at the hems of passing skirts and mouthing the name of someone i’ve never met. are you my true love? no, said the steam shovel, i am not your true love. oh, my sweet heart-shaped girl, where are you? follow my poems home to me, my scallywag, my succotash, my sweet potato pie. i am so tired.

285 S ...... my undying love (2010)

i have begun strengthening my body through strict diet and exercise. i am mastering the arts of hand-to-hand combat and outdoor survival. i have amassed an arsenal of axes, baseball bats, and assault rifles. i have arc-welded thick plates of steel to the circumference of my van and stockpiled enough canned food and medical supplies to last for months. so, should we become separated when the zombie apocalypse strikes, i will be prepared to plow through the scuffling hordes of the undead across this entire country until i find you again. i will camouflage my living smell with the rotting viscera of my undead foes. so i can shuffle shoulder to shoulder amongst the stumbling corpses and scour abandoned cities for signs of you — your hair ribbon your locket your left shoe —

286 S ...... allowing my lovelorn wails to blend with their soulless moans for brains. i will prowl the radio waves for hints and allegations of your continued existence, broadcasting your name over and over into the crackling static, begging you to hold on for one more day, bebe, hold on because i am coming for you. i will visit every enclave of survivors just long enough to replenish my supplies of fresh water and biodiesel and show them your tattered snapshot, your warm brown eyes, your curls. and should i ﬁnd you too late, your soft skin gone putrescent, your lovely smile twisted into rictus, the dirty tendrils of your lavender sweater dragging behind your shufﬂing gait…

…oh my love… i will fall to my knees, tear open my ﬂak jacket, and expose my bare chest to you.

287 A ...... and as you rip through my flesh, crack open my breast bone, and gnaw upon my beating heart, i will rejoice as my body enters yours one last time. and as the dying embers of my life begin to flicker and smoke, i will kiss your forehead with the muzzle of my sawed-off shotgun, and i will gently, lovingly, release your soul from this hell on earth. and then i will hold you as long as i can before finally setting myself free.

288 R ...... confessions (2010)

confession one if every person i’ve ever wished dead were to burst into ﬂames, the entire planet would be populated solely by cute baristas, and i wouldn’t be around to write poetry about them.

confession two the last girl i tried to date kicked me to the curb because i toss and turn in my sleep. the last two nights i spent at her apartment, she ended up on the couch. she said it was a deal-breaker, then her jack russell terrier bit my big toe. we have not spoken since.

confession three i don’t really like poetry.

confession four i recently discovered i might be a father… biologically. this girl i dated for three months when we were 16 friended me on facebook and told me her 24-year-old son has my nose. i looked at his photo on her proﬁle. there was my nose. this is disturbing to me, especially since he also has three kids. i may have to update my stage name.

confession ﬁve the girl i had a crush on when i was a freshmen in high school is now a grandmother. my ﬁrst love is a conservative christian who campaigns against gay marriage. i hate facebook.

confession six i kinda wanna ﬁnd out if that 24-year-old kid is mine by doing a dna test, but i don’t wanna buy one of those take-home tests from the drugstore. i wanna go on jerry springer. i would tear off my shirt and pace the stage while yelling at the audience: you don’t know me, bitches! you don’t know me!

289 Y ...... confession seven i sometimes steal spices from the supermarket. i’m not proud of this. i pick the most expensive versions of the spices i want, because if i’m going to jail for shoplifting, it might as well be for the organic oregano. my ethics are suspect, but i can make a splendid spaghetti sauce. this says a lot about me.

confession eight i checked out the myspace page of the 24-year-old who might be my kid. he says he likes drinkin’, fuckin’, and beatin’ up fags. i am quite sure he would not appreciate me. i only like one of those things.

confession nine when i can’t think of anything new to write, i make numbered lists and call them poems. confession ten i knew the girl from high school for the summer of 1984. she was a heavy metal chick with tight wranglers and feathered hair. our favourite song was rock you like a hurricane by the scorpions. we never used condoms. we were 16. the last time we had sex, she asked me to cum inside her. i did. i thought it was reckless and sexy. i’m not sure what she thought. i broke up with her two weeks later because her redneck boyfriend skylar was getting out of juvie and telling everybody he was gonna kick my ass for fucking his girlfriend all summer long. that was august of 1984. her son was born april of 1985. you do the math.

confession eleven if she had told me she had gotten pregnant and she suspected it was mine, i’m sure the baby would never have been born. he’s 24 years old and has no idea i exist.

confession twelve i have no idea how to end this poem.

290 W ...... the word (2010)

me and god? we used to be close. we used to be buds. we used to talk, man, we used to really talk. but we had a falling out, a big one, and we haven’t talked much since. and i miss it sometimes. i miss church. i miss going somewhere on a weekly basis to gather with a community of like-minded people who raise their voices as one and share ideas about life and death and everything in between. and that’s why i’m here in this cathedral of spoken word. out there, the voice of god might be hard to hear, but at the poetry slam, every poet’s a preacher ministering the gospel to congregations of the faithful. we come to praise the power of the almighty word and its ability to pry apart the clenched ﬁsts of our hearts and empower us to wrestle nameless demons in our bellies and imprison them in notebooks so we can own them and no longer be owned by them. we pass the tip jar from hand to hand in the dark gathering tithes while poets share psalms from the pulpit of the stage, proffering poems as parables and sacriﬁcing themselves to save our souls while we anoint each other with whiskey, cigarettes and passion. we don’t buy our bibles at the bible store, we write our own scriptures and photocopy them on the sly at temp jobs, fold them in half and staple them and offer poetry as sacrament. we ask audiences to accept our words as their words, to place them upon their own tongues, for these pages are our bodies, these tears are our blood, and they have the power to heal.

291 O ...... everyone is welcome to preach their pain and sing their suffering, shout their joys and weep and moan and gnash their teeth to a hip- hop beat. redemption is granted to anyone with the courage to speak their truth, and the self-righteous among us who point heavenward to justify their bullshit are judged harshly by ﬁve randomly-selected judges and thrown off the pulpit until the next slam.

our touring brethren and sistren spread the good news like missionaries in bars and coffeehouses from coast to coast, converting open mics into old-time tent revivals, inspiring audiences to leap to their feet and speak in tongues: spit poet! spit poet!

we are not here to praise one poet as better or worse than any other. we are here because we believe wholeheartedly in the transformative power of creative expression. we all have our crosses to bear, and the poetry slam is where we gather to shoulder that weight together for three minutes and ten seconds at a time.

we are here… because this is our church.

292 R ...... dear white people! (2010)

dear white people! you are embarrassing me! you need to stop doing stupid shit that makes me look bad! for example…

just because you know all the lyrics to the theme song of the fresh prince of belair does not mean you are down with hip-hop. will smith has yet to prove he is down with hip-hip, so name-checking his punk ass will not help you.

white people!

muslim is not a synonym for terrorist, just like christian is not a synonym for abortion doctor murderer. you can’t judge an entire group of people by their most radical elements, so stop!

and stop using the word ethnic to mean an ethnicity other than your own, and stop describing beautiful non-white women as exotic. parrots are exotic. beautiful women who are not white are simply beautiful women. white people! stop altering the way you talk to mimic what you think are the slang and speech patterns of the person with whom you are talking. yes, we can all tell when you’ve got a black person on your cell phone. it’s the only time you use phrases like off the chain and what up, dawg? i don’t think black people even say those things anymore!

and don’t tell me you once had an interracial relationship to prove you are open minded. this is not 1961, strom thurman! in 2010, we just call them relationships. and just because you fucked a black girl in college does not mean you’re open minded. it just means you know how to fuck, and that don’t mean shit.

293 D ...... and don’t tell me you feel uncomfortable around black people because you once got beat up by one. if i beat your punk ass right now, would you mistrust all short white poets who are kinda chubby yet still kinda sexy? no? then get over it!

white poets! stop trying to prove you are down with the struggle. in fact, you are not allowed to say the struggle ever again. just because you can spell the word revolution does not make you part of one.

and just because you can write a poem making fun of other white people does not mean you can distance yourself from…

(awkward pause)

white people! just… fucking… stop trying to prove yourself or apologize for shit, and live your life and speak your truth and do everything you can to help others do the same. if anyone demands more than that, tell them to fuck themselves.

you don’t have to prove anything to anyone but yourself, and you need to do that shit in private.

peace out.

294 S ...... the burning bush (2010)

i ask you: how many casualties must there be before we stop this war? and i’m not talking about the war in iraq! and i’m not talking about the war in afghanistan!

we must stop this inhumane war… against female pubic hair!

women are denuding their privates on a scale akin to the destruction of the amazon rain forest. no wonder they call it a brazilian wax! coincidence? i think not! anyone who would insist their lover’s most precious pajayjay be smooth as a baby’s bottom… wants to have sex with a baby’s bottom. and i say, no more!

a bearded clam… is a happy clam!

pubic hair is there for a reason. it’s mother nature’s shock absorber. it’s god’s way of saying, “i don’t want you kids getting all chafey and red while you’re being fruitful and multiplying! so here’s a little present for you. boo-ya! knock yourselves out! the bigger the cushion, the sweeter the pushin’.”

sisters! put down your razors! i don’t need no damned landing strip; i’m a jungle pilot. just ﬂy me over the thickest deepest tangles, and i’ll parachute in with nothing but a machete and a smile… and by machete, i mean… my cock!

women of the world! throw away your weed whackers and bust out the miracle gro! i’m your lamb of love, baby, let me graze! baaaah!

here’s the thing: women are human, and humans are mammals, and mammals have hair, so when a woman has hair down there, mon frere, i declare it’s the most natural thing she can wear.

295 T ...... a shorn pudendum says, “fuck me with your gender norms.”

but a big ol’ gnarly bush says, “fuck you and your need to control me! this is what a real woman looks like, and if you can’t handle it, then you ain’t never gonna handle it!” ladies! toss those tuna trimmers and never suffer razor burns on your tender labia again just because some foolish lover can’t handle the truth! don’t look to depilated internet porn for your coochie-snorcher imagery! go back to ’70s porn, where eager beavers frolic wild and free… and look like my face! when the good lord spoke to moses, it was not through some leaﬂess shrub! hell no, it was through the burning bush! now get on over here, sister girl, and let me set that lush ill nana on ﬁre and make you hear the voice of god!

296 O ...... caffeine (2011)

i understand you built these walls for a reason, nailed shut these doors for protection, but you’ve been a voyeur through bulletproof glass far too long, sister girl… let’s tear them down. i know you’re full of doubt, but do not mistake me for some demon from your past. know this: i am determined to claw at the barricades caging your heart until my fingertips sprout knucklebones. if you’re too afraid to push from the other side, just stand back, and i’ll chew these fucking nails you’ve driven so deep between us until my teeth become gums become skull. i am coming for you. let’s smash the fire alarms and burn these walls down, crack open the doors and build a dance floor with their splinters. this flesh hides the beauty beneath, so let’s be rid of it, strip off the scars and bruises that make us flinch from touch and waltz bone-naked in the flames. i wanna see you booty dance with only hip bones for ass. don’t hide nothing. it’s all good: the fractures; the cracks; the bent spine; the arthritic grip. i don’t just want your dimples and pretty eyes, i want what’s beneath them that gives them meaning. i want your ugly, i want your disease.* and yes, goddamn it, i know i just ripped off lady gaga, but i’m on a roll, so shut the fuck up and listen. keep your backpack filled with misgivings. my backpack’s full of poetry, but my arms are free, and my grip is strong. i might not be able to shoulder your burdens, but i give great piggyback rides, so climb on board and hold on tight: it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

297 R ...... fear? fuck fear! let’s make fear our bitch and force fear to cook biscuits and gravy for us every morning and pop our toes for us every night. life’s too fucking short, and my fear of dying without ever having loved trumps my fear of failure, and i’ll be goddamned if i’m gonna die before i find out what it’s like to love you, so let’s do this. what’s the worst that could happen? okay, the worst heart-wrenching pain we’ve ever felt, granted, but that kind of hurt is nothing compared to the pain of looking deep into the reflection of your 70-year-old eyes and trying to explain why you didn’t torch these walls back when you had the perfect match, so let’s do this while we’re still young enough to do stupid shit like trust the universe to guide us. i bring you no fragile promises begging to be broken, but i do bring you love, i bring you respect, i bring you growth and communication, i bring you truth even when it hurts, my fierce loyalty, my bellyaching laughter, my unfettered joy, my healing tears. i bring you me, all of me, the fucked up and transcendent, the tragic beauty and brilliant shortcomings, the whole wide world inside me, and i accept you wholly as you are, and that is more than any dumb boy has ever offered you, and you fucking know it, so let’s do this. let’s put a million pennies on a million railroad tracks and make more lucky pennies than we know what to do with, and let’s spend the rest of our lives spending them on us and leave the smoke of our self-made prisons to fade behind us. i have no idea what happens next, but i wanna find out. so let’s find out together before we get the chance to talk ourselves out of it.

* lyrics from “bad romance” by lady gaga.

298 E ...... embouchure (2011)

i don’t have childhood friends. we moved too much. two schools in two different states for third grade, three for fourth grade, two for ﬁfth. my dad was in the navy. by the time he was discharged in my sixth grade year, this once gregarious boy… had grown silent. when hormones hit, the predatory peacocks in gym class drew all the eyes of the girls who wanted to kiss them and the boys who wanted to be them and away from me and my bad posture and shabby… college-level reading skills. while they grew closer, i grew inward, replacing their affections with books, records, and movies: things you can do alone. who needs friends when you have the company of 13 axe-wielding dwarves and a gaunt wizard who drags you from your hobbit hole and pushes you toward adventure? in high school, the kids with friends partied with jim beam and jose cuervo.

299 V ...... but me? i kicked back in my bedroom with kurt vonnegut, richard pryor, and freddy mercury. instead of doing my homework, i pressed pencil points to temples and splattered suicidal thoughts across notebook pages. my dad grounded me for most of my junior year, and i just laughed at him: like i have some place to go. this pissed him off, so he confiscated all my books and records and tore down my rush posters, causing a rift that remains unfilled to this day. here is wisdom: you do not fuck with a lonely kid’s rush posters. if there had been school shootings back then, pointed glances and whispered accusations would’ve shadowed me down the halls with every bold-faced headline, but as this was ’83 and not ’03, i was simply ignored, utterly, just another weird kid with a backpack full of conan books and a crown royal bag full of 20-sided dice. no one is more surprised to find me on a stage in front of people with a microphone clenched in my fist than i am. it took a long time to unlock the chains that held me back,

300 E ...... but poetry kissed me a key houdini’d beneath my tongue that set myself free to bellow down jericho with the trumpet of my voice and nurture the connections i never had growing up. the shy kid? the lonely kid? he’s still here, and he’s reaching out to your fat kid, your pimply kid, your nerdy kid, your silent kid. and he’s saying: if i can do it, you can do it. so, let’s do it! let’s hang out with charles bukowski and henry rollins! forget the cool kids, we’ve got george carlin and langston hughes! we’ve got sylvia plath and jill scott! we’ve got each other! and that’s all we’ve ever needed! so let’s slam our bedroom doors, crank some moving pictures on the stereo, and unleash our voices together!

301 A ...... you (2011)

i had always known you, our houses connected by the same dirt path leading to the heart of our village. our fathers joked around campﬁres we would one day marry. and even as we grew, slender brown limbs clattering like locusts though olive groves, barefooted in our innocence, i knew you were mine and i was yours surely as the stars belonged to the sky. and early in the summer of our youth, we knew each other, lying amongst the reeds and rushes beside the river, we became as one. the next full moon saw you scratching at my window, begging me to join you beneath the starless sky. you told me the red seas that parted monthly from your body had receded.

302 L ...... i lifted your linen blouse and caressed your honey belly not yet swollen with child as you cried, we have disgraced our families. i pulled you toward me and away from our village, pushed us toward the distant sea. come, my love, let us leave this place and raise our son to be a ﬁsherman. but you turned and ran from me and disappeared into the darkness of cricket song. the path between our houses went untrod for nine long months. then whispers begat rumours begat stories of stars in the east, of wise men and miracles, cluttering our olive groves with countless sandaled feet. as our son grew, i watched over grain tops, watched as the old man chosen by your father to be your husband taught our boy to coax life from deadwood, taught him to become a ﬁsher of men. i watched as our son overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple.

303 T ...... i listened as he spoke of mustard seeds and lilies of the ﬁeld. i was there standing amongst the shouting centurions as he hung with bloody crown. i witnessed his last words whispered silently through cracked lips as he stared right through me: father… why have you forsaken me? i ran blind into the hordes chanting epithets and gambling for his rags, and suddenly before me — you — 33 years removed from our shared youth, but no recognition sweetened your gaze. i called your name and shouted, i knew you! you were the stars, and i was the sky, and that is our son! but you turned and ran from me and disappeared into the darkness of the weeping and moaning and gnashing crowds clutching at your garments. the next time i saw you would be through the eyes of an old forgotten man staring into yours

304 H ...... carved into deadwood, shrouded in blue robes, and surrounded by candles, incense, and prayers. tears rolled down both our cheeks.

305 E ...... jara (2011)

sept. 11 will be forever remembered as the day militant forces backed by a foreign power committed violence on a sovereign nation in the hopes of overthrowing its government. sept. 11, 1973. south america. chile. the day armed thugs trained by the cia and funded by the nixon administration surrounded the presidential headquarters of democratically-elected salvadore allende. as jackboots splintered his ofﬁce door, allende tongued the oily tip of his pistol and resigned his position to renegade general augusto pinochet. el derecho a vivir en la paz: the right to live in peace. gentle words from chilean folk singer victor jara, who lifted his voice for the poor in his country, who championed indigenous arts and education, who sang the poetry of empowerment, who sang for the re-election campaign of salvador allende, whose socialist policies rejected nixon’s wall street cronies and their plans to rob south america of its blackest gold. jara’s words of peace became words of protest in the streets of santiago, of puente alto, of concepcion, of viña del mar.

306 N ...... and pinochet heard them, and he dragged the most vocal supporters of allende from their homes to a soccer stadium at the heart of the capitol, victor jara and thousands of others. on a stage in front of them all, gunmen mocked jara, throwing a detuned guitar at his chest and shouting, “sing for us jara!” and he sang: el derecho a vivir en la paz. and they smashed the guitar across his back and crushed his ﬁngers beneath their boots and laughed, “sing for us jara!” and he sang: el derecho a vivir en la paz. and they concaved his face with the butts of their assault riﬂes and shouted, “sing for us jara!” and through broken teeth, he sang. and they stitched his lips closed with 44 lead needles, and they dragged his body through the streets of santiago until it fell to pieces then left it to rot in the sun as a warning. the rest in the stadium? they murdered them all. pinochet’s thugs raided every music store and recording studio in every major city in chile, destroying every copy of jara’s recordings and burning their master tapes so they could never be duplicated, making the mere ownership of them a crime punishable with prison.

307 A ...... oh, how nixon ached to do the same with john lennon. when they came for jara’s wife, she was gone, escaped into the night with exactly one suitcase, not ﬁlled with clothes or food, but with records. a vinyl lp spins at 33 and a 1/3 revolutions, but joan jara only needed one. she crossed into argentina and pressed copies, thousands of them, and smuggled them back over the border to be illegally shared peer-to-peer in the basements of bookstores, in dormitories on college campuses. meanwhile, pinochet pinned the arms of jara’s stolen homeland and allowed nixon to rape her of natural resources as more than 30,000 chileans were tortured. the revolution kept spinning by jara’s words would take 17 years to unseat pinochet. both he and nixon had the privilege of dying as old men who never had to pay for their crimes. but today the stadium where 3,197 chilean voices were silenced has been renamed estadio victor jara. victor, thank you. even now, in the land of free speech, you sing for us.

308 K ...... bread and butter (2011)

at nine years old, i decided i wanted a superstition.

and i found one while watching an old popeye cartoon.

he was walking down the street and allowed a telephone pole to pass between him and olive oyl. he abruptly stopped, ran back around the pole, and invoked bread and butter, as if the words were a magic spell to heal the broken connection. this made sense to me, the idea of a spiritual thread bonding two beating hearts that should never be severed. i still do this… unless i don’t like you.

at 14, i decided i was ready for a brand new superstition, so i started looking for god. my hometown had no less than 200 churches representing more than 20 denominations. with no saturday morning cartoon to guide me, i simply showed up… to all of them… a different steeple every sunday. gotta catch ‘em all! i settled on a youth group at a mennonite brethren church near my house. don’t ask me their doctrine. i never found out. i went… for the camping trips. in fact, i won a swiss army knife for memorizing all the books of the old testament in order, like so… genesis, exodus, leviticus, numbers, deuteronomy, joshua, judges, ruth, 1st & 2nd samuel, 1st & 2nd kings, 1st & 2nd chronicles, ezra, nehemiah, esther, job, psalms, proverbs, ecclesiastes, song of solomon, isaiah, jeremiah, lamentations, ezekiel, daniel, hosea, joel, amos, obadiah, jonah, micah, nahum, habakkuk, zephaniah, haggai, zechariah, malachi. i got a knife for that! i still have it! it has a cross on it!

309 E ...... and it was fun, but we never talked about belief. we only memorized the rules and regulations. i got no epiphanies. no awakenings. no rebirth. i got a knife. i tried… for ten years… in scores of churches… to heal the disconnection i felt with god, whispering bread and butter through clasped ﬁngers every time doubt passed between us, but i never found god. instead, i found one too many people so focused on their one true way they wouldn’t allow me to ﬁnd my own, too many far too willing to re-interpret the word of god to justify doing any godforsaken thing they wanted.

i took that swiss army knife and severed the spiritual thread connecting my neck to their steeples, and i used it to carve my own commandments from bits of buddha, jesus, mohammed, and krishna, and i scribbled the margins with john lennon, bruce lee, and devo. i became a one-man congregation. i like to think of it as the holy church of not being a judgemental dick. now when i pray, it’s less superstitious mumbo-jumbo and more acceptance of the pain we all carry like a black stone between our shoulder blades, of the joyful release of tears, how skin deprived of touch becomes lonely, how humans share a need to believe in something bigger than ourselves.

i believe in speaking your truth even when no one else believes it, especially when no one else believes it. i believe there are no such things as bad words, only some words that are inappropriate for all occasions. i believe farts are very nearly always funny… especially in church… or at funerals… okay, they’re always funny. i believe in life and death and everything in between that connects us as human no matter what we choose to believe.

there’s no such thing as one true church. there are 7 billion churches in this world, one for each beating heart, and that realization is the bread and butter that bonds me to each and every one of them.

310 D ...... molly (2012)

i may not be here right now as this poem’s being read. i can’t be sure. you might be reading this poem from the page of a book or a notepad or a print-out or a computer screen or an ebook or some kind of freaky futuristic holographic device yet to be invented in my lifetime, and if that’s the case, you should read this poem aloud, even if you’re alone, especially if you’re alone, put my words in your mouth and breathe life into them because that’s what they’re for, and if you’re reading them in front of an audience, step right up to the mic, put your lips on it as you speak, and speak loudly and clearly. you might be listening to this poem as a recording on a cd you bought on the internet, a digital audio ﬁle you downloaded, a video you’re watching online, in which case turn it up, crank it, blow out the speakers and let my words wake up the whole neighborhood. you might be listening to someone read this poem aloud, someone standing on a stage or in a classroom or speaking through a phone or a webcam, and if that’s true, be quiet when you are supposed to be listening and get up off your feet and give a standing ovation when it’s over, clap so loudly your hands chap, shout your excitement until your throat bleeds, make anyone hearing the roar of applause freak out and call the ﬁre department, even if it’s just you and the person reading it, especially if it’s just the two of you. i might be reading this poem for you, and you might be sitting in a dingy blackbox theatre shoulder to shoulder with a room full of hipster assholes too cool to listen, or you might be in a school auditorium surrounded by students hoping for extra credit, or maybe you’re in a cafe and you just happened to be there the one night i

311 C ...... came rolling through town on tour, and if that’s so, buy one of my books, either now or later online at my website. i have to eat. someone else might be reading this poem, some student i’ve never met reading in a speech competition in front of judges — and if so, yo, judges, give this kid an excellent score because they are bad-asses of the highest order and will slash your tires if you don’t — or it could be someone at an open mic or a poetry slam pretending they wrote it (and if that’s the case, hey, don’t even worry about it, just tell everyone you wrote it. fuck it. like they’re gonna know. oh, and don’t read this part out loud. this is just between you and me.) here’s the thing. once i put these words to paper or enter them into a computer or speak them into a microphone, i have no idea where they’ll end up or in whose mouth and in whose mind. these words might last forever and live to rival those of shakespeare, or they might be forgotten once i die and everyone who has ever experienced them follows me into the great big dark scary hole that awaits us. it might take a hundred years, but most likely these words won’t last and it will be like they had never been written and that will be that. but oh, while they are alive and breathing, whether on a page or a stage, oh, how glorious, how amazing, how life-afﬁrming, to have something i wrote in silence be spoken out loud by a chorus of voices all over the... what... country? world? universe? there’s no fucking way i can know what will happen with these words or where they’ll go or who’ll they touch in some meaningful way. the only thing i am sure of is this: as i write these very words, it is tuesday, january 10, 2012, and i am sitting in front of my 24-inch imac listening to dubstep in my parents living room in wichita, kansas. my parents are out shopping, and the dogs are asleep, and my sister is at work, and i am utterly broke and have no idea what i am supposed to do next or where i’m supposed to do it. i miss my best friend. i miss having a poetry slam i can hit every week. i miss being in a relationship. i miss a lot of things.

312 O . . .. i am 44 as i write this, soon to be 45, and i have no idea how much time i have left, but if you are reading these words or listening to them and watching them or whatever and you are fairly sure i am still alive and kicking, please... do me a huge solid... tell me about it. write me a postcard. send me an email. call me. visit me. reach out and hold me for a few breaths. let me know that my life made some kind of impact on someone outside of myself, however miniscule or ephemeral, let me know that my life has meaning, that i was right to make the choices that have lead me here, that you have felt me. that’s how this poem becomes complete. it needs you. i need you. and if i am dead by the time you get to experience these words, well, shit... that sucks. can you... can you ﬁnd out where i’m buried and go there and sit cross-legged on my grave and read some of my words to me, remind me — if there is a me left to be reminded — that i was alive once, that my life had an impact, that my words lasted longer than my breath? can you do that for me? it would mean a lot. i would mean everything to me. it would mean the whole wide world. thank you. be warm.

313 R .

04.05.94 (1994)

An oddly-shaped key on a yellow key chain with the number 27 etched in white on the shaft. A black-and-yellow Tag-Heuer diving watch with the initials D.A.C. engraved on the back. I have these items spread on my ate-up friend Isaac’s bed, having just dumped them from the package I removed a few hours ago from my post office box downtown. Isaac looks at them, snacking on the blunt end of a Gallo dried salami. He breathes heavily as if he’s just run a mile, not from exercise but lack of it. White chunks of salami fat stick out from between his teeth. He smells of warm garlic and sweat. I ask him what he thinks. “You wanna know what I think?” He points to the stuff on his bed with the salami. “I think opening someone else’s mail without their permission is a serious crime, like maybe a felony. Didn’t you see Scared Straight? Fuck that, dude. Fucka buncha that.” He takes a too-large bite from his wad of meat, quaffs a swig of I.B.C. root beer from the bottle in his other hand as a chaser, then continues, smacking and breathing. “But, then again, I see that watch smack-smack, and I think to myself breathe, I say, ‘Isaac, how much you figure a watch like that’s worth?’ and I answer, ‘Oh, well, as a matter of fact smack, your Uncle Abe had a watch just like that, only different, and he was frontin’ like a goddamned kike Donald Trump.’ I’m thinking we can pawn that baby off and get at least a grand for it is what I think. Maybe two.” Another gulp from the root beer bottle, and he’s done, looking at me for what I have to say. I reach up to my dog chain necklace and fiddle with the tiny lock connecting the ends. I know I’m gonna regret this, but I’m thinking about hocking this watch. I need the money. My car’s a fucking hooptie piece of shit and needs a tune-up something awful, plus I’ve got classes in the fall. I don’t know. I’m worried whoever used to rent my mailbox might be real anxious to get his watch back.

314 E .

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” smacks Isaac. “He fucking deserves to have his stuff opened up and sold off. Ever hear of a forwarding address? If this…” — he cranes his non-neck to peep the name on the package — “if this Dr. Patel dude was so concerned about his mail getting to him, he should’ve filled out one of those cards at the post office. Fuck it. Sell it. You want some of this salami before I wrap it up and stick it in the fridge?” I shake my head, so he trundles off to the kitchen. I flick on his boombox, hit play on the CD player, and Automatic For The People kicks off with the throaty guitar picking of Drive. I hum along. I wonder what the key unlocks. It looks odd, like one of those keys you get with a bike lock or maybe a freezer like the one my father has in the garage to store dead animal parts. It’s a round tube with teeth along the edge. I know I’ve seen a key like this before. Just as Michael Stipe sings “smack… crack… bushwhack…,” a dull throb pulses through the back of my skull. Ugh, I’m getting a headache. I reach out for the corner of Isaac’s dresser. Isaac kicks open his bedroom door with the tip of a red Chuck Taylor, spots me, and asks, “Dude? You okay?” I wave him off, tell him I’m fine, just a headache. He hesitates, then nods and presents two frosty mugs of I.B.C. I take the one sans greasy lip marks. He’s such a momma’s boy. Twenty-two, still lives at home, still going to Cal State on the Mom and Step-Dad Grant Program, still threatening to move to Athens, Georgia, once he’s no longer amongst the funemployed and raises some dough. The R.E.M. poster over his bed has hung there since Document. We met in Beginning Spanish. We both failed miserably. He’s pretty cool. Sometimes. At least his mom lets him run the air conditioning as much as he wants. I show him the key again and ask what he thinks it opens, rubbing the back of my head and stretching my neck side to side. “Besides a jail cell? Give it here.” Isaac snatches the key with his fingertips, eyeballs it, then lobs it back to me greasy from his salami grip. He wipes his hand on his cargo shorts and squeezes behind the drum kit nestled in a sacred corner of his room. He brandishes a battered drumstick in the direction of his ghetto blaster, wiggles it like a wand and nods at me, so I cut off Stipe as his “tick… tock… tick…. tock…” joins the swell of violins.

315 O .

“Check this out.” He riddles the snare, then crashes the hi-hat for impact. He stomps a steady 4/4 bass pulse, then says, “I’ll bet you it’s some kind of locker key.” He speeds the heartbeat throb and adds a hit to the crash cymbal on the downbeat. “I’ll bet anything this key opens a locker with something in it hella better than some tacky diver’s watch.” He stoops long enough to snatch a foot-long dented aluminum cylinder filled with BBs and shakes them back and forth, then adds hits to a djembe with his other hand, laying down a primal groove: dooma duh DOOM DOOM duh doom DOOM doom. “And who’s D.A.C.? Maybe I’m just bored, but I wanna know these things. I wanna find out.” He cloudbursts a flurry of hits with his fists and his sticks, pounding and smashing and whaling on his tom-toms and congas and splash cymbals, his bass and his snares, exploring and abandoning odd time signatures and rhythm changes. He’s a blur, a big fat shapeless blur in a baggy Love Tractor T-shirt, flinging sweat and chips of drumsticks in a warm gluey spray. How he can move so quickly and with such precision and still be a good fifty pounds overweight is beyond me. You’d figure he’d sweat off a couple pounds every time he even thought of sitting behind a trap set. He abruptly stops, silencing the last cymbal with a pinch. “I think,” he says, twirling a drumstick between two fingers, “we should find which box is opened by that key. Then, we’ll go from there. You hittin’ Chaos tonight? Skrötum Traktör’s playing with The Fates. Yet another benefit to keep the place open. Bekkah’s broke.” I tell him yeah, I’m going. “How many CDs did you sell?” he cracks. Bastard. “Just kidding. I’m going, too. The sound guy’s hooking me up. Remember Joey Fuckhead? With the neck tattoo? Him. He’s all into goth shit now. Yee-ha. You want something to eat? I’m hungry.”

***

Whoosh it’s hot, sandpaper air scrubbing my skin as I barefoot the asphalt to my puke-green Gremlin on the street outside Isaac’s mom’s split-level. The swelter doesn’t help my headache at all.

316 F . .

I hate this town. It’s fucking April and already the heat of the vinyl seat is oozing through two layers of sweaty beach towels. I imagine leaving molten bits of skin on the steering wheel as I start the car with a prayer and limp off in a puff of oily smoke. The traffic sucks in the daytime, especially near the mall where Isaac lives. The heat numbs the area in everyone’s brain charged with storing information from high school driver’s training courses. Mister I Don’t Know What A Turn Signal Is cuts off Little Miss Driving Daddy’s Pinto, and I flatten my brake pedal with both feet as each innocent party curses the other and weaves all over the road. This town is crammed tight with assholes, shitheads, dickwads, and motherfuckers, and they’re all out to piss me off. A plug-ugly presa canario tied to the roll bar of his hick owner’s Ford pick-em-up laps at the air like he’s dying of thirst and strangulation. The driver has a redneck meathead mullet, short on the sides for bidness and long in the back for the ladies. He’s got angular neon sunglasses with mirrored lenses, a straw cowboy hat, and a stretched-out Mötley Crüe T-shirt. His stereo is blasting Bosephus, cranking A Country Boy Can Survive so loud his windows rattle. Hoss’s mere existence irks the piss outta me, him and his scary-assed dog. At the stoplight before the onramp, he and his homeboy in the passenger seat with the G’n’R bandanna pitch me 31 flavours of stink-eye — “Look at that faggot over there! Nice dye job, faggot! Nice earrings! Nice eyeliner! You wanna suck my cock, huh, you fuckin’ faggot? Huh? Huh? Faggot?” — but I shine the bastards and pull right on the red light and become another steel corpuscle in the freeway bloodstream of transplanted Okies and Limbaugh Republicans. The hum of the road picks me up. I pop in a Nurse With Wound cassette and listen to the rhythmic cacophony blend with the wind tossing my ponytail and tickling my goatee and endowing the stray Taco Bell wrappers in the floorboards with the momentary gift of flight. I’m making sine waves with my left hand, carving through the 65 mph wind and feeling the hair on my arm ripple and tug. Isaac’s right. I’m broke. I gotta sell some CDs if I’m gonna catch the fund-raiser tonight. Shit. I hate that. My collection’s gap-toothed grinnin’ like a 12-year-old hockey player. I leave the freeway at my exit and head home for some losers Andy Noise Records will buy.

317 T . My room. On the second floor of the house my roomies rent. A single-serving futon mattress wedged in the corner with a tatty copy of Factsheet 5 on the rolled up hoodie I use as a pillow. A threadbare tapestry on my door swirls with zodiac symbols orbiting a radiant sun. The pale salmon walls are hidden by a vast collage of xeroxed gig fliers from rock shows featuring local bands like Cradle of Thorns, Spike 1000, 2Lazy2Steal, and The Church of Morons and Latter Day Skanks. The ceiling is festooned with sagging promo posters snagged from the record store before they fired me for pinching CDs: old concert one-sheets of Foetus, Skinny Puppy, and Ministry; vinyl banners pimping Ritual de lo Habitual and The Downward Spiral. A framed piece of corkboard over my rickety Ikea desk has ads for alt-rock gigs and indie movies ripped from The Los Angeles Times. A nearly year-old clip from L.A. Weekly has the cover of Christian Death’s first album on it and the words Final Reunion Show across the top. A note pinned to it says “Review for Morgan.” I smile. Morgan is an old fuck buddy of mine, an achingly cute sliver of a girl clad head to toe in black, a self-medicating waif all of 5’1” and 98 pounds, a shoplifting stoner/goth faerie rocking spidersilk stockings and tattered Victorian lace dresses. Summertime goths are hardcore. Her zine Dead Roses for Dolly is pretty good for a cut-and-paste. Next to the yellowing reunion show advertisement is another dusty note: “New issue! Now! Do it!” It’s been 11 months since my last run of Dookie On A Stick. Maybe longer. I pull a ballpoint from my pocket and bic new zine on the back of my left hand. I cross my room and stand in front of my wall of CDs, which is literally wall-sized, a wooden tabernacle cradling nearly 6,000 jewel cases in strict order: alphabetical by names of bands or the first names of solo artists, so Michael Jackson is after Manic Street Preachers and before Mudhoney and My Bloody Valentine; solo artists who used to be in a band go after the band, so Love & Rockets, Peter Murphy, and Tones on Tail come after Bauhaus, and The Pixies come right before The Breeders and Frank Black; albums by the same band are arranged chronologically. I can tell when a CD is out of order simply by spying the colour pattern of the spines. My shelves of LPs are organized the same way, only I sold my turntable for rent money a few months ago. Le sigh. My best licorice pizza is gathering dust.

318 R .

I drag my middle finger over the spines until I hit the D’s, then pick The Soft Parade. Fuck that album. Definitely their worst. Fat bastard. I hit the L’s and grab The Presence. Great cover, shite album. Fuck Let It Be and High Infidelity, too. My fingertips waver over No Pocky For Kitty, but then I snag Breakfast In America. I look around the floor for a dry shirt to replace the sweaty one I’m wearing. I give it all the sniff test and find a ratty Sex Art T-shirt behind a knot of wobbly boxes in the corner. Cool. I decide to wash clothes some time before Monday and bic wash clothes on my hand, then I scrawl pay rent below that, think a moment, then pen pay phone as well. Downstairs David and Karen are cross-legged in a swirl of Nag Champa. They’re practicing a song about Joseph Campbell for a gig next week at Chaos. They glance in my direction as I step over three dogs, two cats, various amps and mixing boards and other sound equipment on the way out. Karen says something from behind me about the rent being a week late, but the shutting door cuts her off.

***

It’s the next day. My headache’s mostly gone, but my ears still ring from the Marshall stacks last night at the pretty vacant fund- raiser. Isaac’s kvetching about the wind. When I tell him to roll up the window — he was there when I broke it the last time I locked my keys in the car — he tells me to fuck my mother with a brick. I say be cool, my mom’s dead, and he says it’s because he fucked her so hard with the brick. I tell him to ask his grandma to stop blowing up my pager, and while he’s at it tell his step-dad to pick up the riding crop and polska kielbasa he left in my bed last night. He feigns offense, mouth wide in a chubby capital O, then giggles. I win. Fucker. We’re bound and determined to find what hole this key fits and head for every fitness center, bus station, train depot, and locker room in town, listening to Isaac’s worn-out R.E.M. mixtape that’s been nearly listened blank. When songs from Murmur play — or Mumble, as Isaac calls it — we sing different words to the same songs and laugh that no one knows the lyrics, including Michael Stipe. I mention the Stipe’s Got AIDS rumour and sing a snippet from Endgame in Morrissey’s whine,

319 U . . and Isaac tells me emphatically there’s no way in hell Stipe and Stephen Patrick Morrissey are plowing the fields of love, no matter what Spin says. I just laugh and do my Morrissey Does Metallica impression and hope for less alarming reasons why Stipe has looked so damned skinny since Out Of Time. We grab a 64-ounce Cherry Coke and four barbacoa tacos from Circle K with the $5.17 we have between us, then we hit the downtown Greyhound, key in hand. Before the first try, we realize we’re in the wrong place because the keyholes are straight slots, not circles. We’re told by some janitor with a dust broom mustache that the train station across town has the same sort of lockers, so we’re out of luck with public transportation. The YMCA’s no good, and neither are any of the health clubs or workout joints we try downtown because you have to bring your own lock to all of them. I’m getting over this search, Isaac’s bellyaching for another Cherry Coke, and the R.E.M. tape is starting to drag in my player, so we decide to call it off for the day. I pull onto the freeway, and Isaac starts tapping his fingers on the cracked dash of my car. He’s following Don’t Go Back To Rockville with his beat, then changes rhythm, reverting to some tribal pulse snipped from his drum rampage yesterday. dooma duh DOOM DOOM duh doom DOOM doom “Dude, wait.” I ask him wait for what? “Check it out, what about the airport?” he says, looking at his hands as he pounds the dash. I ask him what about the airport? It’s 20 minutes behind us, and I thought we were done for the day. dooma duh DOOM DOOM duh doom DOOM doom “I’m sure they’ve got lockers,” he says, thumping his feet against the floorboard and tapping his knuckle bones against the glovebox. I tell him I’m done for today. I’m jonesin’ for frosty I.B.C. and free A/C at his mom’s, but he whines like a little bitch, so I bail at the next off-ramp and get back on the freeway in the opposite direction, toward the airport, wincing in time with his dashboard tattoo and the sympathetic vibrations shooting through my achy head. By the time we get there, R.E.M. has been replaced with some early ’80s mixtape of Isaac’s with Rock Lobster and Tainted Love and Stand and Deliver, shit we were never cool enough to like in high

320 T . . school; Isaac and I first bonded over our mutual nerdcore love of Rush and Dungeons & Dragons. I pull into short-term parking in our city’s shitty little municipal airport, but before I come to a complete stop in a parking spot, Isaac plops out and galumphs toward the lockers he believes are near the baggage claim outside hidden behind an ornamental brick wall. When I catch up with him on foot, I can already tell there aren’t any fucking lockers, which pisses me off since he practically forced me at gunpoint to drive all the way out here and didn’t even offer to split the gas, the cheap fuck. I’m about to tell him how much of a douche nozzle he is when he aims for the sliding electric doors of the airport’s main entrance. Whoosh, we’re swimming in blissful air conditioning, and Isaac’s looking all around for these lockers he’s imagined. I tap him on the elbow and say come on, man, let’s blow this joint, but he ignores me and heads toward the lady behind the small ticket counter. Whatever. Fuckin’ dunderhead. I walk over to the gift store in the corner by the coffee shop to see what kind of useless crap they sell trumpeting the name of our redneck town. Beach towels and coffee mugs and pencil cases and pleather golf club protectors and all manner of tacky tchotchkes tagged with the motto of our fair city: Sun, Fun, Stay, Play. Pablum meant to snare the eyes of visiting grandpas in short pants and black stretch socks hoisted to their knobbly knees. I snatch a snow globe encasing an oil derrick, shake it, and watch flakes of white plastic float before a gaily painted image of my hometown. It hasn’t snowed here since kindergarten. The flakes should be brown to mimic the smog sepia-toning the sky and fading the ends of long streets in the distance and masking the mountains surrounding us unless it rains. When I lower the snow globe from my eyes, Isaac is a lazy haze in front of me, waving the key and smiling. I pull him into focus. “Dude, check it out, this place doesn’t have lockers,” he says, beaming, his hands at his hips, arms akimbo. No shit, Sherlock. Before I can tell him the next time he’s so goddamned happy about wasting my gas, I’m gonna kick him in his bloodshot eye, Isaac says, “But the skirt at the ticket counter used to work in L.A.X., and she says this key looks just like the ones they issue for lockers down there.”

321 H . That’s it. That’s why it looked familiar. I picked up my zine friend Sarah O. from Maine in the Los Angeles Airport when she flew in last summer for the Independent Media Expo, and before we caught a Possum Dixon show on Melrose, we stuffed her bags in an airport locker so no one would break into my Gremlin and steal her shit. I smile at the thought of Sarah O. insisting I take a picture of her next to a tumbleweed for the cover of her zine. She couldn’t believe they actually existed, and I told her we used to build forts out of them when I was little. When a tumbleweed burns, it roars into a huge bonfire that lasts half a minute at most then disappears. It’s brilliant, the definition of the word ephemeral. I look at Isaac. He’s all, “Dude, can you say roadtrip?”

***

Jesus, when will that fat fucker get here? I’m at work, watching the clock like a beady-eyed vulture, waiting for the day to breathe its last breath so I can pick at its eyes, waiting for Isaac to get his ass here so we can roadtrip to Los Angeles. Today’s been a long week already, and it’s only Thursday. I always wanted to be the guy who narrated The Jungle Cruise Ride at Disneyland, just like Steve Martin before he got famous. What a great job: spieling scripted tourspeak for slack-jawed rubberneckers in Faux-waiian shirts and double-knit reversible Sans- A-Belt slacks; spitting that same sing-song jive day in and day out; cracking up whippersnappers with Eisenhower era knee-slappers that cracked their parents up; getting friends in for free. I remember this one Jungle Cruise guy when I was nine years old, back when The Matterhorn was an E-Ticket Ride. He had this dry way with words that was so hilariously apathetic. He sounded like Droopy Dog and had the position of every waterfall memorized. “And now to your left is beautiful Schweitzer Falls.” He called them all Schweitzer Falls. When the animatronic hippo was about to lift its head above water and angrily wiggle its ears, he chanted “Hiiiiippo Riiiisin’…” like Jim Morrison in L.A. Woman. And the girls, man, you just know he was bangin’ ‘em like kettle drums. Jungle Cruise guy was the mack.

322 A .

“Now, nothing too fancy, okay? Just a basic business card with my name and my title: Sales Representative. Okay? A little border, some lines, but no frills, okay? And, I don’t know, maybe, like… No, just my name. In bold. Italics. With a type style that’s… manly.” I’m gaping over my Quadra 650 at this reject dickweed in a tweed suit with circa-’76 Oscar Goldman suede elbow patches and a beige knit tie. He’s a wee little tuber, like 5’4”, sporting a sunken chest and a hairline retreating to the top of his woolly shoulders. His comb-over is a majestic display of denial, swooping from one ear to the other and pasted in place with fumy pomade. He’s parked his two-bit pleather briefcase on the tarmac of his Tom Bombadil gut. I pick up my Copy Warehouse pamphlet of typefaces and show him a few I think will project his virility. Helvetica? Nope, too plain. Papyrus, perhaps? Nope, too new agey. What about a newspapery font like Palatino or Times? Nope, too newspapery. I hate customer service. The worst part of this job. If I could just sit at my computer all day and design business cards and letterhead and flyers and brochures without dealing with wienies like Delvin Schmeng here, I’d almost like it. Almost. Except for my boss. And the annoying fact that I’ve been duped into trading 40 hours of my life every week for $9 a pop. It would never occur to me to do this, like, in my free time, like, for pleasure, so they have to pay me to keep me from scratching out my eyes and dashing blindly into traffic. Actually, I hate this job. I hate the concept of jobs. The only thing worse than looking for a job is finding one. I so need a patron. I show him Helvetica again, touting its classic lines and understated yet powerful masculinity, but my old nemesis Comic Sans catches his eye, and he squashes a pudgy sausage on my font book. “That one,” he says, and he smiles importantly. He asks if I can design a logo with an eagle in it, an eagle and an American flag, asks if he can sit beside me and help me design it, says he’s got a Macintosh at home, says it might be faster if he just does it, asks if he can come around to my side of the desk. Oh hell no. This monkey’s got a Mac, and he thinks he’s a graphic designer. I politely but firmly redirect his focus to the tattered clip-art book I shove in his face. Isaac bebops through the front doors, jiggling in a baggy Guadalcanal Diary T-shirt and green & orange madras board shorts.

323 N . . .

Thank God, it must be 5:00. We’d planned to leave for L.A. as soon as I clocked out, and my eight hours are over not a moment too soon. Isaac’s sporting humid saddlebags after walking from the city bus stop three blocks away, and he’s squeegeeing flopsweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. I nod in his direction, smirk, then eyeball the irritating customer as he thumbs through a collection of panthers, cougars, and gun-toting sportsmen in puffy vests. Isaac smiles, rolls his eyes, then signs go to… something… but I don’t catch it all because Mr. Poopy Pants here wants my opinion of the artwork he’s found. I form a peace sign with my right hand, slip my thumb between my pointer and middle fingers, slap them down on the open palm of my left hand, then point my finger at Isaac across the room. He laughs and plops down in front of a self-service PC in the lobby to play on my America Online account. I peruse my customer’s find: a tattoo-lookin’ eagle with its talons outstretched in attack mode. Yep, that says Sale Representative to me, you fat bastard. He wants a font that says the same thing about him the bird does. I assure him Comic Sans is just that font. Ten minutes later, and we’re outta there, slugging I.B.C. from the ice-chest cooled bottle and bailing for the City of Angels. Forty-five minutes later, and we’re starting the steep, twisting incline of The Grapevine, chugging uphill at 35 miles an hour powered by the hamster wheel inside my babyshit-green Gremlin. Neither of us has spoken since Frasier Park. We’re both in our own worlds, bobbing our heads in time to the soundtrack of Singles. Goddamned great soundtrack, so much better than the movie. I gave the CD a rating of Devo in my zine; the shitty rom-com got Winger. Apropos of nothing, Isaac says, “I wish I were a fat white girl.” I ask why, and he says, “So black guys would wanna fuck me.” Oh my God, I can’t believe he just said that, and I tell him so, and he slaps his knee and guffaws. “You know it’s true!” Isaac starts singing along to Waiting For Somebody and slapping a rhythmic hand jive against his man-tits and pasty thighs. He croons at me, then swivel-necks to sing at passing cars through the empty passenger-side window, then swings back to me again. Suddenly, he stops and says, “Hey, so how’s the whole girl thing going with you?” He makes air quotes around thing.

324 D . .

Where’d that come from? I tell him it just ain’t happening for me right now. Frankly, it ain’t been happening for quite some time. The last words of my last real girlfriend were: “Give me my key, take your cream rinse, and get the fuck out.” Great closing line. I ran home and wrote a poem about it. That was over a year ago. Since then, it’s been nothing more than a few scraps of passion and false starts, hardly more than fumbling body parts in the backseat of Gizmo or on a ripped-up couch in the basement of Chaos Coffeehouse after it’s closed and everyone else is upstairs smoking out to Bob Marley. I change the subject, hoping his recent bout of I Wonder If I’m Gay isn’t making him ask about my apparent lack of a love life. I ask him how his sister is doing at that deaf college in D.C. “She’s doing good,” he nods. “Seeing some deaf guy from Jersey. She’s gonna be in a sign language version of a David Mamet play. Should be good. Lots of cussing. You’d even understand it.” Isaac’s sister is the one who taught me my first signed phrase, fuck you, the one with the thumb inside the peace sign. “It’s like a penis between two legs,” she’d said, her husky voice flattened by deafness. “See?” I saw. She was so fucking cute. How they could be brother and sister, I will never know. Isaac was found in some reeds in a little woven basket floating down a river, I am sure. Isaac’s been teaching me ASL ever since. We joke we’re gonna start a sign language band that covers early R.E.M. songs, only we’d wear ski gloves so no one understands what we’re signing. Isaac doesn’t know it, but I wanna get up on his sister with a quickness and figure learning how to sign might give me a chance. “You should think about visiting her,” he says, shoving a small handful of Chili-Cheese Fritos in his mouth. “She asks about you.” He raises an eyebrow, smiles, and continues eating. Hmmm… maybe he does know. I change the subject to the old standby: “Dude, Jasmin, Belle, or Little Mermaid?” Isaac strokes his nonexistent beard. “Tough call. Jasmin’s body is sweet, but her nose is kinda funky looking. Belle is cool, she’s got a great personality, and she’s smart, but Little Mermaid’s fucking hot, dude. Yeah, she’s the one. I’d hit that. I’d split her tail right in half.” “Oh, fully, she’s wicked — she’s like Alyssa Milano with a tail — but she’s a little punk ass. Of the three, I’d take Belle. She’s literate,

325 E . .

pretty, and doesn’t mind a guy with a hairy back, which I appreciate. However, Belle’s not nearly as fine as the kindest of all hotties.” “The red-haired chick on Josie and the Pussycats?” “Nope.” “Veronica on The Archies?” “Nope. It’s Velma. She’s the one.” “The little frumpy chick with the frosted glasses on Scooby Doo? You’re smoking butt crack! No way!” “Way! Beneath those book smarts and that thick sweater, Velma’s a shameless hussy! She’d be all prim and proper when everyone’s watching, but get her home, and she’d pull out that veiny black jelly dong from her rucksack and make you squeal like a flaming piglet.” “Yeah, whatever, but I still think Little Mermaid could kick her bowl haircut-wearin’ ass on the way to my dick.” “Dude, my dick’s so big, it’s got its own gravitational pull.” “My dick’s so big, Stephen Hawking is trying to prove it exists.” “Well, my dick’s so big, it’s got a Wookiee for a co-pilot.” Isaac laughs and says, “Did it make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs? Did it say ‘I know’ when Leia admitted her love for it?” “Fuck yeah it did, then it shot Greedo in the cantina, and then it fucked your dick and made it get an abortion.” “My dick killed a bear.” “Yeah, well, your mom’s addicted to what my dick did.” “Yeah, well, your dick tastes like my real dad’s butthole!” “You would know!” “Only because I tongue-kissed your abuelita’s panocha!” And on and on. This line of thought continues well past the rollercoasters of Magic Mountain and into the undulating smog banks of Los Angeles. We hit all the major stops in a typical roadtrip chinwag, reminiscing about our late ’70s youth. It’s My Mom’s Having A Baby, raspberry Zingers, Six Million Dollar Man dolls, and poking Stretch Armstrong with a fork to watch the red gooey stuff ooze out. Most generations have world-changing events that brought them together and defined them — the Good War, the launching of Sputnik, the Kennedy assassination, Watergate — but me and Isaac were the demographic caught between Woodstock and the US Festival. We have

326 X . . Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here and Afterschool Specials. We were latchkey kids with Evel Knieval action figures and Battlestar Gallactica bedsheets. We didn’t have babysitters, we had HBO, MTV, and the Atari 2600. We weren’t outdoorsy, we were indoorsy. Neither of us has watched teevee since we carted our sets to the top of the Haberfelde Building downtown and sent them plummeting to the alley below with a cathartic kuh-THWACK! Kill your television before it kills you. Before it makes you kill someone else. The frozen arches of L.A.X. materialize through green-brown haze as Isaac pops in a grunge mixtape from three years ago called Sonicgardenpearlhole. We make for the off-ramp and wheel into short-term parking then walk through the crowds to the terminal. I’m rolling the key in my pocket and surveying the scene for anything remotely resembling a locker with a round key hole. We breeze the security checkpoint, rabbit-earing our empty pockets to show we aren’t smuggling guns, and we round a corner to find — “Dude,” Isaac hisses, pointing with his chin, “by los baños.” — lockers. I’m ogling the rows of pale grey metal boxes along the pastel wall next to the men’s room, unable to shake a sudden tingling of my spider sense. Isaac’s oblivious, of course, and marches triumphantly past an orange-robed Hari Krishna to the lockers. I can see him teetering on tiptoes trying to find the same number etched into the key in my pocket: 27. His lips move, counting. I hope he doesn’t find it. I hope the key doesn’t fit. I hope we’re five minutes from revving my jalopy and driving thru an In & Out Burger on our way back to The Grapevine as if none of this happened. I toss a paranoid glance over my shoulder, then look back at Isaac. There he is, waving to me, smiling and leaning against the wall of rental lockers. He didn’t find it. He didn’t find it. He’s just going to tell me the key holes are slots like the bus station. I see the round key holes in the doors of the lockers, just like the round tube of the key. Isaac’s got a pudgy dick skinner on the number plate of the locker just above his head. I look. 27. Shit. “Gimme the key, gimme the key,” Isaac hoarses, as if we’re surrounded by hidden microphones, which we probably are. I hand it to him and watch as he slides it into the keyhole, turns it clockwise, and swings the locker door open with a slow creak.

327 P .

We look at each other. Isaac raises his eyebrows at me, I shrug my shoulders back at him, and we slowly bring our heads together for a gander inside the compartment. A worn leather satchel, scratched from use, edges frayed, finger grips worn into the soft handles. Most of the faux-gold electroplate garnishing the metal hardware has been rubbed and flecked away, revealing dull grey beneath. Before I can think, Isaac reaches in and grabs the bag by the handle, turns toward the public restrooms as the spring-loaded locker door slams shut with a loud BANG! I flinch, then follow. We shuffle past a troop of businessmen combing and grooming and nitpicking their airported suits, then we cram into an empty stall near the very end. I squeeze the door shut behind us, and we crowd around the toilet, our knees pressing against the bowl, big-eyeing the satchel with tense expectation. “Open it,” Isaac whispers. I make a face that says, Don’t be so fucking loud, ass! and push the leather briefcase toward him. He hesitates, fingering the zipper at the top between the handles, then opens it in a slow, dragging pull. We look in, foreheads touching. Isaac whispers, “Fuck.” The first thing we see is money, a buttload of money, packed into bricks with rubber bands and haphazardly piled in a flurry of dirty green. I can smell the money. It stinks like dirty fingernails. The next thing we see is a yellowed plastic bag bundled like a loaf of bread with black electrical tape. Inside, glowing bluish-white in the fluorescent light, is a mass of frosty crystalline flakes, snug in their nest of twenties, fifties, and hundreds. Isaac whispers, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.” We stare for what could be minutes, barely noticing the buzz of cordless razors and the flush of urinals on the other side of the locked stall door. Isaac finally licks his lips and croaks, “Taste it.” Oh, like I’m gonna know how it tastes! I tell Kojak here to fuck himself, I ain’t tasting jack shit, and how’s about we get the fuck outta here before we’re thrown in the pokey for smuggling drugs into an international airport. Hello, federal offense! Hello, faces splashed across every major metropolitan newspaper between here and Bangor, Maine! Hello, Folsom Prison! Hello, corn-holing cellmate!

328 O . .

Isaac goes, “Smugglin’ nothin’. We just walk out.” I remind this imbecile about the security guards and the x-ray bag checker, and he rasps, “They only check you on the way in, you pussy, not on the way out. Just play it cool like Fonzie, and let’s walk nonchalantly the fuck outta here and back to Gizmo.” No fucking way am I transporting what looks to be a fucking pound of cocaine or heroin or what-the-fuck-ever through any fucking airport. I tell him let’s ﬂush the powder and dump the bag of money in the garbage and forget we ever came. “Fuck you,” he hisses, zipping shut the satchel and pushing his way through the stall door. Isaac bumps into some random Willy Loman waiting to use the head, and I shut the door as he tries to barge in. I sit down on the toilet seat, my head in my hands, not caring that I didn’t even wipe the toilet seat ﬁrst. I know he’s gonna get snagged. I know I’m gonna walk out there, and that nincompoop’ll be spread eagle on the ground with a stupid look on his face. There’ll be a shout — “Get ‘em!” — and Johnny Law will snatch me bald-headed. That fucker, man. What am I gonna do? After several long minutes, I stand up, wince at the double-barrel blasts of my knees popping, open the stall door, peek around the corner, then slink from the men’s room with my arms crossing my chest and my head hung low.

***

I walk from the harsh white brightness of the airport restroom and into the pastel blah of the main terminal fully expecting a cluster of billy-clubbing stormtroopers to jackboot my ass into oblivion. Nothing. Nothing more than the usual drone of mumblespeak punctuated by the rhythmic click-clack of luggage wheels across the hard-tiled ﬂoor. A man in a booth handing out religious tracts. A rumpled businessman smoking a stogie and craning his neck to check the ﬂight schedules. A woman yanking a spring-loaded leash that sends her harnessed toddler skittering back within arms reach. A punker boy and his pierced-face girl clip-clopping along in matching oxblood 8-hole Docs and rippy-kneed thrift store blue jeans.

329 S .

Isaac and his satchel of dope and money are nowhere to be found, so I mosey on over to the revolving glass doors leading to the outside — la de dah, just goin’ for a stroll — hands deep in the pockets of my baggy 501’s. No need to worry about me, Bossman. Feeling the tickle of a thousand imagined stares. Outside. Taxicabs and baggage handlers, tourists and business suits, momanddads herding their quacking broods into wood- paneled Oldsmobuicks and Family Trucksters. Not a single snarling drug-sniffing dog or flashing siren to be found. No paparazzi. No news crews. No SWAT teams. No black helicopters. I pass a group of security guards gathered in a corner and instead of avoiding them, I walk right up to them and interrupt their confab about civil war in Rwanda long enough to get the time. They reluctantly tell me — There’s the time, have a nice day, goodbye, don’t get run over by a cab on your way out of my face! — and I cross the street to the parking area, slowly replacing my abject fear with smoldering anger. I leave dark, black smears on the walls of the parking structure as I pass. I’m gonna pull that fat fucker’s card. As I round a corner, I see the fat fucker in question lounging in the passenger seat of my Gremlin with the leather briefcase in his lap, a slick simper pasted across his porky face. He winks at me. I don’t say a word. I don’t even look at him. I yank open the driver’s side door, climb in, crank the ignition, and pull out of the space with a jerk. I fish for some cash to pay for parking, hook a wrinkled fiver, and reel it out of my pocket in time to see Isaac holding a razor sharp Andrew Jackson. I scream and slap his hand — ¿What are you, stupid or just retarded? — and yank the satchel from his grip and send it flying to the backseat. Before I can stop myself, I give him a short sharp shock to the back of his melon for good measure. I crumple my five spot and toss it to the attendant and speed off without my change. I rifle through the TDKs in the middle console, pinch one called Doomcorefuckyou, knock that conversation killer in the cassette player and crank the volume. We head back home without a word, both of us staring straight ahead for miles and miles. We’re past Valencia and starting up The Grapevine before either of us speaks again. I’ve been Bad Mood Guy the whole way, gritting

330 E . my teeth and thought-shouting to the blackest Norwegian death metal. As the tape clicks over and the soundtrack to The Omen begins, Isaac clears his throat and licks his lips. “Dude, I’m calling shenanigans.” He cracks open an I.B.C. from the watery cooler in the backseat, takes a deep drag, wipes his mouth on his sleeve, then says, “You’re pissing my shit off, man. What the fuck do you want me to do, huh? You want me to dump this shit off at the next gas station dumpster? We found a big-assed bag of money. Jesus Christ, who wouldn’t take it and get the hell out of there?” I just shake my head. What-the-fuck-ever, dude. “And what’s up with slapping me back there like I was your kid brother or something?” He takes another swig. “Look, you hatched this caper, Scheme Boy, so don’t climb up my ass with a shovel just because I don’t react exactly the way you think I should.” He unlocks his lap belt and twists in his seat so he can face me. “This money means I can move out of my fucking mom’s house, finally, at twenty-two. I can pay for the rest of my college and maybe even graduate by the time I’m twenty-five. I can finally buy a Vespa so you don’t have to ferry my ass everywhere.” Isaac points his finger in my face. “Shit, I’ll buy you a Vespa, and we can be Mods and get a thousand rearview mirrors and wear British flag shirts. This is fucking schoolbooks and CDs and clothes I don’t have to buy on my mom’s Visa. This is goodbye to jockeying cash registers and busing tables and sweating over toner pigs at the goddamned Copy Warehouse. All in a leather bag so you can carry it. This is the realization of every dream we’ve ever had of finding a sack of cash at the side of the road, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna throw it away, especially since we’ve fucking gotten away with it.” I ask him how long he practiced that speech in the car while I was sweating hamsters in the airport shitter afraid of sticking my head outta the stall door for fear I’d catch a DEA bullet in my ear. “Yeah, well, that didn’t happen, did it?” Isaac says. Yeah, well, fuck you. I tell him it’s the loaf of white stuff that concerns me. Whoever was supposed to get that package is gonna be awful butt-hurt when it comes up missing, and I don’t fancy getting a cap busted in my ass by a murder of apoplectic drug dealers.

331 T . .

He pooh-poohs the notion with a wave of his hand, even as I goggle the rearview mirror at all the lights following us. “They don’t know who we are. They have no idea. How’re they gonna find us?” I ask him if he’s ever heard of The Freedom of Information Act. Isaac blanks, so I tell him just about anybody can get the name and address of anyone renting a p.o. box. It’d take all of two minutes for them to find who I was and how to get to me. “Oh, bullshit,” he says. “That’s bullshit. That’s an invasion of privacy or something. You’d have to be a cop. You’re just making this up. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” Oh, sweet Jeebus. This sucks. This really sucks. Why didn’t that asshole leave a forwarding address? Why’d I have to… BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! “Ahh,” Isaac sighs, turning off the alarm to his wristwatch. “11:30. Time for Letterman.” I spy the watch he’s wearing, and it’s the very same Tag-Heuer diving watch that was in the package. This pisses me off all over again. He’s begging anyone stalking us to notice we’re the ones who fucked up and stole their shit. I’m about to give him what for, but he shoves an open palm at my face. “If you’re so fucking worried about it, why don’t we just Freedom of Information Act this Dr. Patel guy’s address? If he’s still in town, we’ll give him his stuff back, apologize profusely for the misunderstanding, and be done with it.” Isaac points the brown I.B.C. bottle at me and goes, “Would that make you feel better? Would that make you get up offa my dick?” He slurps down the last of the root beer and tosses the empty out the window to shatter on the gritty shoulder of I-5. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.” I don’t say anything. I just keep driving. Another 90-minute TDK later, and we’re back in town. I drop Isaac off at his parents’ house, and as he’s reaching for the briefcase in the backseat, I tell him firmly that I’ll be keeping it until we decide what to do. It’s my p.o. box, so it’s my ass. He glares at me for a moment, white- knuckling the leather handle, then eases up and lets it drop with “Oh well. Whatever. Nevermind.” He slams the door, flips me twin birds through the window, then stomps off to his mom’s front door. I drive home, walk upstairs to my bedroom, and spy a folded

332 H . .

note taped to my door. It’s got my name on the outside in all caps. It’s my roomie Karen’s handwriting. I don’t even touch it, I just open the door quietly, creep inside, and close the door behind me. I walk to my closet and stash the briefcase in the back behind musty secondhand clothes and hundreds of dog-eared zines, jewel cases, cassettes, and empty cartons of clove cigarettes and wadded packs of Black Jack gum. I dive onto my futon, pull the thin comforter over my head, and I lie there listening to the house creak and the still-warm wind whistling through the screen of the open window. I can hear the money breathe in my closet, muffled by the leather sides of the satchel. I’m ignoring it, tossing and turning and trying to find the right spot on my lumpy mattress, but it’s too hot to sleep. The sheets are greasy against my back and Saran-Wrapping me as I toss and turn. Stupid broken ceiling fan. Stupid frugal housemates. I roll over and look at the closet door. It’s open — just a crack — just enough to let ghosts and monsters peer at fright-eyed little boys trying to sleep, just enough to let me smell that money and wonder what it’s doing. I say fuck out loud. I look up at the dust on the unmoving blades of my ceiling fan. I say fuck again. I throw off the cover and drunk-dance past the flotsam on my floor to get to the closet. I plow through the dirty clothes doggy style, shoveling underwear and sweat-stained T-shirts back between my legs like I’m digging a hole in the dirt. There it is. The briefcase. I hesitate just a moment, breathe deeply, scared and excited and guilty. Then I unzip it and look at all the money, spill the bills on my lap, feel their weight, smell the dirty paper. And I begin counting, separating it into two piles. Isaac’s, mine, Isaac’s, mine, Isaac’s, mine… It’s a long time before I stuff the money back into the closet, cover it up with unwashed clothes, and crawl back into my bed.

***

I’m at work the next day, and all I can think about is the money and the people obviously trying to get it back.

333 E . . I’ve gotta cancel my post box. I’ve gotta quit my job and bail, go to Portland like I’ve been threatening, or Austin with Morgan like I’ve been promising, or Athens with Shit For Brains, or some random college town to pull coffee in some random cafe, or cut my hair and change my name and hide in my parents’ basement in Wichita. I gotta figure out what’s what. Ditch the powder and skedaddle with the moolah? Peddle the skag and quadruple our dinero? Who would we sell it to? Neither of us know any drug dealers. We don’t even know what the shit is: I’m straight-edge, and Isaac’s got asthma and can’t swallow pills and is afraid of needles. Do we get rid of everything and never speak of it again? Drive back to L.A.X. and put it back in the locker and throw away the key? Should we… “Excuse me, but do you have our brochure done, yet?” It’s Emma Rose from The Effervescent Refreshing Presence of Christ Church and Bible College. I don’t need this right now. I tell her it’s the very next job on my list of things to do, and she curls her wrinkled lip and informs me I’ve told her this before. I mumble something about patience being a virtue — which clearly does not amuse her in the slightest — and walk from my desk to the phone on the counter. She stalks toward my boss as I dial Isaac’s number. He answers after six rings. I tell him it’s me. He grunts. I tell him we’ve got to resolve this situation before I go nucking futs and ask him to meet me at Chaos Coffeehouse for lunch, my treat. He hesitates, still livid from the gobsmack, no doubt, but then he grunts his assent. I hang up the phone, ready to clock out and get jetty, and turn to find Emma Rose and my boss all up in my grill. “When can we have The Effervescent Refreshing Presence of Christ Church and Bible College brochures done?” my boss asks, his bony arms folded across his pigeon chest. Emma Rose peers from beyond, self-righteousness pinking her powdered face. I tell him I can finish it up as soon as I get back from lunch. “Now. Emma Rose will wait while you finish the proofs.” I tell him that I really am famished and need desperately to eat before I tackle a job as big as the brochure. I show him my hand, show him how it’s shaking, tell him it’s because I haven’t eaten all day, then I turn toward the time clock. He grabs my arm, spins me back around, and says, “No. Now. Right now.”

334 I . I close my eyes, open them (they’re still there), and calmly tell my boss he can stuff The Effervescent Refreshing Presence of Christ right up his scraggy ass. I hear Emma Rose gasp, “Well, I never!” and I snark that’s obviously her fucking problem. I stomp toward the front door, and the boss shouts, “Pick up your final check at five! Minus your bill for those damned magazines from last year!” I pass a table stacked with 20# bond, give a cockeyed tower some chin music with my elbow, and snatch open the front door as a ruckus of reams tumbles to the floor behind me. I catch police something shouted after me, but I don’t flinch. I climb into Gizmo and tear out of the parking lot for the last time.

***

“Okay, we keep the money, ditch the drugs, and everything’s fine. Where’s the problem?” Chaos is uncharacteristically quiet, not yet thick with slackerslang from too-cool hipsters smoking filterless Camels and shooting stick and playing ancient board games borrowed from the shelf against the wall. Now, at two in the p.m., it’s that shady lawyer guy spittin’ game at Bekkah as she pours another latte for Bob the Vietnam Vet. Three angular skater grommets in thrift store flannel are grumbling on the fat sofas near the front window. They look more pissed off and emo than usual. Everybody looks pissed off and emo today. I tell Isaac to shut his fucking pie hole, then I lead him to the back of the coffeehouse. We slip beneath the Employees Only sign guarding the staircase and scuffle to the basement, then we crash on an old couch and love seat downstairs. Boxes are stacked around us. There’s a wobbly ping-pong table against one wall and two dusty futons lining the other. I don’t even wanna know how many people have fucked on those futons. I know I have. I lived here for three weeks back when I got kicked out of the dorms. I probably still have stuff here. Discarded clothing, maybe. Notebooks. Used condoms. I tell Isaac we should find where Dr. Patel works or lives and hand over everything, just wash our hands of the whole thing and move on. He wrinkles his nose, sings “Hey! Wait! I gotta new complaint!” with the coffeehouse sound system above us and nixes the idea.

335 R .

“Like I said, I’m not giving up the money, and I’ll fucking fight you if you try to make me. If you wanna find out who used to rent your p.o. box, fine, that’s your thing, but you’re fucking mental if you think we can just give it back. ‘Oh, hey, we took your stash. Sorry about that! Namaste, bitch.’ No, I don’t think so. Let’s split the lucre, dump the smack or whatever the fuck it is, and forget about it.” I hate this movie. I fucking hate it. I wanna fast-forward to the part where I get the girl and raise a kid and make a living by doing something I love, something that doesn’t require decisions like this. Isaac’s itching to get his hands on that money, and I’m getting a rash just thinking about it, but I hold firm. I tell Isaac I hit the post office on my way to the coffeehouse, and he was right, they won’t give out information about p.o. boxes to just anybody, so we’re outta luck there. I suggest The Yellow Pages, and Isaac grudgingly agrees to check for Dr. Patel’s office address, so we elbow past Vietnam Bob and ask Bekkah for the phone book. She reaches beneath the counter then hands it me, rolling her eyes as Bob launches into another conspiracy theory about Nixon, the C.I.A., and Chile. The lawyer guy just sits there leering at Bekkah’s free-range titties. Thirty-four seconds later, we have the address of the suspected former occupant of my p.o. box: Dr. Vipul “Benjamin” Patel, foot surgeon. His office is downtown, just a few blocks from the hospital and walking distance from this very coffeehouse. “Let’s scope his digs, brother,” Isaac says. He’s got his Secret Agent X-9 look on his face. “I’ll bet we can ease a window open and go through his shit without anyone ever knowing.” This Patel guy has obviously gotten mixed up in some shady drug deal, and we’re getting deeper in shit the more we stick our noses in his business. I should slap an -ed to the end of this whole situation and make it past tense. I can totally see Isaac promising not to spend the money conspicuously then hitting some Skrötum Traktör gig with a fuckin’ yellow zoot suit and gold chains. I should totally walk away from this bullshit money and our bullshit friendship. I tell Isaac yeah, that sounds like a plan, let’s do it, why not? We decide to meet behind the doc’s office at 11. Isaac leaves out the back, and I walk out the front. As I pass the skaters, one of them says to another, “Nevermind is overrated. Incesticide is way better.”

336 M . . I get into my car, crank the engine and pull out, and riﬂe through my cassettes until I ﬁnd one marked Bleach. I pop it into my cassette player. Negative Creep starts somewhere in the middle.

***

I arrive early on my roomie David’s $2,000 mountain bike I snatched from the garage, and I use the extra time to survey the contents in my duffel: crowbar, gloves, black beanie, keychain Maglite. I put on the gloves and beanie and hear a distant squeakawocka coming up behind me. I turn to spy Isaac on his sister’s ancient orange Huffy 10-speed arriving in a flutter of clanks and rust. He’s covered head-to-toe with sweat, his black hoodie soaked from the six-pack of hotdogs serving as the back of his neck to the voluminous crack of his ass, which glistens in the bright moonlight. “Hey,” he says. I nod and say hey. We stash the bikes in the bushes behind the good doctor’s office. A darkened sign topping a tall pole advertises Painless Foot Surgery as his area of expertise, with bright red letters proclaiming his use of The Latest Laser Technology. One side of the sign is a sad foot, all bent out of shape and patched with Band-Aids. The other is a happy foot, radiating happy little pink squigglies. The sign probably spins when the office is open: happy foot, sad foot, happy foot, sad foot. We try a few windows, checking for ease of entry while keeping a lookout for the po-po. After the fourth cursory attempt, we find what looks to be a narrow bathroom window of pebbled glass. I whip out the crowbar and give it to Isaac, telling him to go for it. He sneers, “Otay, Massuh,” and slips the edge of the bar into the seam between the steel bracket holding the glass and the window frame. The window slides open without a pop. It’s unlocked. Wicked. Isaac sticks his head inside, looks around, then asks me for a boost, so I proceed to stuff his doughy ass through the window. “Ow, be careful! Dude, dude, watch the glass! Hey, hold it, push my leg! No wait, there’s a rail on the wall, lemme put my foot on it! Ouch, fucker, don’t let me fall…” I let him fall in a flump of elbows, knees, and curses. Isaac calls me a dick from the tile floor, gathers himself up, then takes the duffel

337 O . . bag from me and stares through the window. I stare back. He raises his eyebrows. I peer over my shoulder at the deserted alley, look down at my shoes for a moment, take a deep breath, then lift myself through the window and close it behind me. The only sounds in this tiny room are Isaac’s breathing and the slight clink of the crowbar against my keys in the duffel. We are indeed inside a bathroom, sanitized and tiled, a handwritten sign taped to the mirror telling people to wash their hands. We creep to the door and slowly slowly slowly open it and look into a hallway empty save for potted plants and a bottled water dispenser. Isaac signs something, but it’s too dark, and I can’t make out what his hands are doing, so he grabs the fabric of my shirt sleeve and pulls me after him as he tip-toes into the hallway. I don’t resist. After a few tries, we find what appears to be the doctor’s personal office. Isaac tries the doorknob, it’s unlocked, so we open it and slink in. I set the duffel down, tighten the gloves on my hands, take the mini Maglite from my pocket, and searchlight the surface of the desk. Isaac opens a file cabinet in the corner by a couch. I sort through papers and assorted doctor’s things — pens, insurance forms, prescription tablets, business cards, a coffee cup hawking some anti-depressant — and stop as I find a black vinyl day planner in a side drawer. With this in hand, I lounge in the fat, high- backed chair behind the desk hoping to find something interesting. Isaac’s rummaging through files while I look through the phone number section. He sees a fax machine on a small table and cracks in a whisper that we should steal it, but I shush him and wave my finger in the direction of the file cabinet. Suddenly, there’s a noise. Shit. Isaac freeze-tags in place. I hold my breath. The ticks of the watch around Isaac’s wrist pound like hammers on nails. The sound of the lobby door opening followed by muffled voices sends us into an ecstasy of fumbling. I dive under the desk while Isaac squeezes under an end table near the couch. Just as we get situated, the door kicks open and the lights flare to life. “Goddamn it, you dot-head motherfucker, I want my shit, and I want it now, or I’m gonna blow your fucking head off!” The door slams shut as do my eyes, hidden in the palms of my

338 S . .

hands. Two people are now in the room besides us, and one of them is pissed. A voice different from the first, with a slight Hindi accent, shouts, “I told you I don’t know, I don’t know, I never received it!” “Yeah, I know, you told me,” the first voice yells, followed by a slap and a panicked moan from the second man. “And I’m telling you I’m gonna cave in your face unless you tell me where my shit is!” I look out from under the desk, and I can see two sets of shoes, a pair of white Adidas shell-toes and some brown leather wingtips. Brown Shoes kicks White Shoes in the shins as the first voice shouts, “Tell me, you prick, or I’m kicking your vindaloo-eatin’ ass!” I look toward the end table and see Isaac’s face, and he’s actually smiling. I raise a finger to my lips and narrow my eyes at him, and he grins and double-guns me the bird. White Shoes says, pleading, “Daniel never sent me a package, I’m telling you! I have received nothing!” Brown Shoes says, “He didn’t send you shit! I sent it! I did! Post office box 1476, motherfucker, right off your business card!” Oh snap. My box is 1467. “All you had to do was get my shit, come back, and give it to me, and Chandler would’ve been fine, but, no, you had to fuck it up!” Another couple of slaps from Brown Shoes and a “son of a bitch!” I look at Isaac again, and he’s covering his mouth like he’s stifling laughter, like this is some teevee show he’s watching, and this is the scene where White Shoes gets the shit beat out of him. I can’t believe this fuckin’ idiot. I look at my watch. 11:28 p.m. We’re gonna miss Letterman again if we don’t hurry up and… …oh Jesus. Letterman. It hits me that Dolt Boy’s watch is set to go off in a minute or so. He’s toast. I start frantically waving at Isaac from under the table, trying to sign A-L-A-R-M. He just smiles at me, making jerk-off hand motions and flipping me off. “Here are the facts. One: I sent you the key. Two: my shit is gone. Do the fucking math!” Another kick, another slap, followed by a moan from White Shoes. “You wanna end up like your friend, huh? I splattered his brains from here to White Plains, and now his body’s soaking up ground water six feet under some farmer’s field right this very second. You wanna see if reincarnation is real? Let’s find out right now, yeah? Let’s see if you come back as a fucking cockroach!”

339 T .

I’m terrified, shaking my head at Isaac and trying to remember the goddamned sign alphabet. I get him to pay attention to me as White Shoes gets slapped again and again. I form the letters… A… L… A… How does R go? Isaac’s finally realizing shit’s about to get real, and he’s looking at me with worried interest. He’s mouthing, “What? What?” “Look, Doctor Feelgood, where’s my fucking shit!?” BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! All action stops. All noises. All voices. I watch helplessly as Isaac fumbles with the wristwatch and kills the alarm. “What the fuck was that?” Brown Shoes hisses. Isaac eyeballs me with a pitiful face completely devoid of the humour of a few moments ago. He signs A-L-A-R-M. Brown Shoes shuffles around the room. He rips open the office door, pauses a moment there, then races over to the closet in the corner and yanks that door open. He whips around, then heads right at me, toward the desk under which I am prostrate. I squeeze my eyes shut and clench my fists. “What the fuck is this?” I open my eyes and see the end table hiding Isaac toppling over, and I hear Isaac’s porcine squeal. He’s snatched up by Brown Shoes, and now all I can see of Isaac is his dirty red Chucks. “Who the fuck is this?” yells the first voice. “I don’t know, I’ve never seen him!” says the second voice. “Oh yeah? You never seen him? You never seen him? What the fuck is that? Huh? Where’d you get that watch, you fat prick? Huh? Look familiar, Doctor Patel?” I hear the sound of Isaac’s body slamming into a wall, and Brown Shoes screams, “You look me in the eye, right in my fucking eye, and you tell me you don’t know where my shit is, and this fat fucking jag- off is wearing… the fucking… watch!” A moan from Isaac. “You see this, Patel?” The cocking of a gun. Isaac, “No, no, no…” White Shoes, “I don’t know him! I don’t know him!” Brown Shoes, “Reincarnation!”

340 P .

BLAM! The protesting screams of White Shoes. The sliding of a body along the wall and onto the floor. “You see that, huh? You think I’m fucking around, huh? Look at me! Look at me! I get my shit back tomorrow night!” More slaps, more kicks, more moans from White Shoes. “Understand?” The door slams shut. The glass in the frame shatters. A moment later a door muffled by distance slams shut. A car engine roars. Tires squeal. White Shoes whimpers, then he walks to the office door, flicks off the lights, and closes the door behind him. Another door further away opens and closes. A car door opens and slams shut. An engine kicks to life. Tires spin on gravel. The engine fades to silence. Silence. Silence. Silence. I put my face in my hands and cry.

***

Wet sticky prickly vibrations rattle my entire frame. I am reduced to thin tissue blown and shaken by rainwind. …jesusjesusjesusjesus they’re gonna come back and kill me too they’re gonna come back and kill me too they’re gonna come back and kill me too jesusjesusjesus i gotta get the fuck outta here i’ve gotta move oh jesus isaac’s dead he’s dead and now they’re gonna come and kill me too i gotta get the fuck outta here… Moments moments moments come and go and I shake and shake. Asthmatic slivers of breath claw my throat raw to mingle and mix with the hot stench of the doctor’s office and the cramped air under the desk. I’m a greasy puddle, a river, a lake. Silence. I’ve gotta get outta here. Now. It hits me clench-fisted in the stomach. I gotta get outta here now right now! Someone is going to come back to get rid of the body, and they’re going to find me, and they’re going to kill me and hide my body, too. I’ve gotta get the fuck outta here. I’ve gotta get the fuck outta here. RIGHT NOW!

341 R . . I back out of the space beneath the desk and scoot the leather chair out of the way with my ass. No thinking no thinking no thinking no thinking. My eyes are still squeezed shut as I rise and flinch at the blast from my stiff knees. …the smell, oh jesus, the smell the smell it’s isaac it’s isaac he’s shit his pants he’s shit his fucking pants i’m gonna vomit… I open my eyes. Isaac’s slumped against the red-splattered wall, a drunkenly splayed sack of ragdoll arms and legs. His head lolls to the side, his mouth a stricken capital O, his half-lidded eyes rolled white, his left hand balled into a hard fist. I see half-moon cuts gouged into the chubby palm skin beneath his fingernails. The watch ticks. …ohgod ohgodohgod ohgodohgodohgod… I’m slumped in the broken glass and gritty asphalt of the alley behind the doctor’s office, holding my poor belly in my arms and björking for God, Christ, and all humanity. I’m empty. Sour electric bile trickles from my lips. My guts are hanging outside of my mouth, intestines drooling from my nostrils and dangling in the dirt. My arms are on fucking fire. …they’re everywhere, they’re gonna get me, what am I gonna do what am i gonna do i can’t go home they probably know where i live they’re probably there right now waiting for me… The shuddering stops long enough for me to remember my roomie’s mountain bike stashed in the bushes. I stumble to my feet and drunkwalk to the flowerbed. The bike is gone. It’s fucking gone. I stare at the blank area between the wall and the bush where a $2,000 mountain bike had once been, then I turn and see Isaac’s sister’s Huffy on its side in the dirt. I heft it up and ready myself to bolt from the bushes — one two three go go go! — and I’m pedaling like George Jetson on the treadmill, I’m fucking gone, down the street in a streak, and I ain’t stopping for nothin’, not even for Buddha.

***

Downtown. Streetlights. Empty sidewalks. No trafﬁc, just me and Isaac’s sister’s 10-speed sticking to parking lots and alleyways and residential areas as much as possible. The only sound is the scrunch of gravel beneath my wheels, the rusty

342 I . . squeakawocka of the cranks, the tick-tick-ticking of ball bearings when I coast, the random scrape of tumbleweeds wandering aimlessly in the wind looking for a spark to catch. I’m running down a mental list of places I can go, couches I can crash on. It’s a short list, buddies and girlfriends who’re now mostly ex-buddies and ex-girlfriends. Ryan and Itchy Dave’s crib? There was always supposed to be a place on their floor. No. Can’t deal. Morgan’s? We haven’t been fuck buddies for a minute, not since she’s been fucking Joey Fuckhead. She used to be like Domino’s. Make a call. 30 minutes or less. Hot and freshly baked. Jesus, who else? Tracy? Yeah, right. She still lives with her mom. Jonathon vamoosed when he joined Korn and got signed by Sony, and Marcus stopped being a SHARP and joined the Navy, and Gretchen’s a phone sex operator in East Bay, and Isaac… I decide to hit Dara’s pad. She’s darkened my doorstep in tears before, and I’ve taken her in, so she owes me. As long as her hip- attachment jazz beau isn’t around, she’ll let me crash. She should. It’s been a long time since she threw me and my cream rinse out. Half an hour later of steady pumping and keeping to the shadows, and I’m at the doorstep to Dara’s apartment. Her little Jeep is in the parking space marked with the number of her pad, and Sax Boy’s Nash Rambler is nowhere to be seen. I ready myself to knock on the front door, then think better of it and go around to the side near her bedroom window. She was always a heavy sleeper. I rap on the glass several times with my knuckle and whisper her name. I stand there in the warm air with my arms crossing my chest, holding myself. Nothing. I knock again, louder this time, and I hiss her name. I hear something. The venetian blinds flutter. I knock again, say her name. Fingers appear between the blinds and pull down the aluminum slats, then Dara’s nappy head peeks from edge of the window. There are sleep-boogers at the corners of her eyelids, and pillow creases wrinkle her face. Her eyes are baby blue. She stares blankly, her brow furrowed, then her eyes widen. “Adrien?” Her voice is muffled through the glass. She wipes the crusties from her eyes with the back of her hand and slides the window open. “You okay, man?”

343 V .

I nod, but the instantly familiar smell of her sultry bedroom wafts through the window, and then my throat swells shut and my eyes blur. I look down at my checkerboard Vans. “Meet me around at the… uhm… around front.” She disappears with a snap of the metal blinds. The door’s open when I get to it, Dara’s bushy head poking out from the blanket wrapping her shoulders. She closes and locks the door behind me, then grabs my arm and leads me to her bedroom. She ﬂops on top of her oak four-poster and groans dramatically. “So, what’s up, Chicken Butt? Some pretty girl got you down?” Her room is warm and humid and littered with wrinkled big girl blouses and executive slacks. A pair of lacy red panties embroidered with Thursday lies crumpled in a corner. I bought those as a joke. My hand rises to cover my face, and I’m crying again, just bawling. Dara makes a sympathetic coo, whispers, “Oh, pobrecito… Pretty girls are mean.” She pulls me down and into her arms. We rock back and forth for a long time, listening to ocean waves playing through her clock radio. When the tears ﬁnally dry up, and we’re looking up at the ceiling fan, she asks, “You wanna talk?” Her foot rests on mine, her hand in my hair. A faint trace of stale Teen Spirit wafts from her underarm. I tell her no, I just need to crash for a while. She sighs. “You sure? I’m awake. You might as well tell me while you have the chance is all I’m sayin’.” She sounds so redneck when she’s too tired to hide the Dust Bowl in the back of her throat. I slowly shake my head, tell her no, really, I don’t have the energy to talk about it right now. I just need some warmth. She looks at me for what seems a long time, then shakes her head, pats my chest and says, “Same ol’, same ol’. I don’t know about you, but I’m goin’ back to sleep. I gotta motor to Hollyweird for my intern thing in the mornin’.” She rolls over to give me a hug. As she does, I kiss her neck just beneath the ear, and she stiffens and pushes me away with one hand on my chest. “Don’t,” she says. “I love you to death, man, but don’t even start. I’ll kick your narrow ass right back into the street.” I stare at her in the dark, feel the warmth of her open palm against my heartbeat. Her hair is longer. She’s dyed it reddish-brown.

344 A . .

“Go to sleep, fucker. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Dara smiles and plunges her head deep into her pillow. She yawns and stretches and rolls away from me then pulls the blanket over her shoulder. I watch the rise and fall of her breathing long enough for it to slow down and become a steady rhythm, then I turn over and pull the thick comforter to my throat and stare at the wall.

***

I’m startled awake in the morning by the nasal bleat of Dara’s clock radio. I slap at it, once, twice, three times, trying to ﬁnd the goddamn snooze button, but the fucking thing is still buzzing, so I pick up the radio and give it a yank, but the cord’s too long, so I pitch the whole fucking thing across the room and wince when it hits the far wall with a great THWACK! followed by the tinkle of broken plastic. Great. Just great. I peel open my eyes and see a yellow Post-It Note on the bedside table beneath the spot where the clock radio sat. “Good morning, Sunshine!” It shouts in ironic spirally letters. “If you’re reading this, the alarm is now lying in a heap near my chifforobe.” I sit up and look, and yes, right at the foot of her antique armoire are the shattered remains of her Realistic clock radio. I continue reading. “You owe me another clock! Again! You bastard! Now get the hell out of my house (smiley face) and call me when you get the chance and tell me the name of that triﬂin’ whore who made you cry so I can smack her senseless! Later!” Another Post-It next to it says: “Pretty girls are mean! Always date ugly girls! They give better blowjobs! Didn’t I prove that to you?” I collapse onto her bed and bury my face in her feather pillow. She still uses the same hair conditioner. I take a deep breath and hold it, then I let it go. I roll onto my back and stretch my arms over my head and point my toes. My knees and elbows snap like thick branches. My calves fucking hurt, too. What the hell? And then I remember the bicycle ride, and I feel something sting on my forearms. I bring my hands to my face and see scratches all over my palms, then turn them over and see my knuckles crusted with dried blood and torn skin. I sit up and stare at the deep lacerations

345 T . etching my forearms. An angry red gouge plows four or five inches down my wrist, and a leathery flap of elbow skin curls away from a deep wound. What the hell happened? The bathroom window. It must’ve been from scrambling out the doctor’s bathroom window. It must have broken on my way out. Isaac. Isaac’s dead. Isaac’s dead, and I still have the drugs and the money at my house, and what the hell am I going to do, and how long will it be before the guy in the brown shoes finds me and kills me too? Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck. On the bedside table is a paper plate covered in toast crumbles and smears of marmalade and margarine. Underneath is the local newspaper. I lift the plate, snatch up the paper, and check the date. It’s today’s. I open the thin local section. Heroin invades Kern County. Los Angeles street gangs recruiting locally. County’s teen pregnancy rate highest in state. I toss the local section and grab the front page. The main headline has been circled in red crayon. The headline reads Kurt Cobain dead at 27. A Post-It Note tacked next to the photo has three exclamation marks in red crayon. I read the whole article, then I read it again. They found his body yesterday morning in his house in Seattle. Why hadn’t anyone mentioned this at the coffeehouse? He was born less than a month before me. Holy fucking shit. I roll off the bed and onto the carpet, then I slowly stand straight and stretch. Everything pops. Everything hurts. I limp to the living room and Dara’s hurricane of a computer desk, grab up her scuffed pink Princess phone, and call Isaac’s home number. After two rings, his mom answers with a perky, “Hello, Kornberg residence!” I can hear the cockatiel squawking from its cage in Isaac’s mom’s living room. Isaac hates that fucking bird. “Hello? Hello? Well, suit yourself.” She hangs up. I dial 411 and ask for Dr. Patel’s office number. It rings three times, then an answering machine kicks in, confirms the address, and says the office hours are 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. It says to call back during those times or leave a message. I hang up and look at the clock on Dara’s microwave. It says 2:47. I look at the calendar pinned to her wall. Today is Saturday.

346 E . .

I pick up the phone again and call my house. It rings three times, four times, ﬁve times — the answering machine is off, so they must be home — and is ﬁnally answered on the seventh ring. “Hello?” It’s my roomie Karen. She’s out of breath. I tell her it’s me, and she sighs loudly. “We’re out back with the dogs. What do you want?” I ask her if I have any messages, and she harrumphs and says, “Actually, you know what? Pay your phone bill, and you can get your own phone reconnected. We told you not to give anyone this number, and… Oh, hey, did you take David’s bike again?” I ignore her and say this is really important, did anyone call for me today? Or stop by? Please just tell me. She shouts, “No! Nobody called! Nor should they! Ever! Did you take David’s bike or not? He’s freaking out!” I tell her I don’t know anything about the bike, and I ask her if she’s sure no one’s called and no one’s come by. She doesn’t say anything. I can hear music in the background. I say her name. I ask if she’s still there. She says, “Some guy came by early this morning. Woke us up.” Shit. I ask her who it was. I ask her what he looked like. “I don’t know, some sketchy older guy. He was rude. I told him you weren’t here. He didn’t leave a message, and he said he’d try back later. I have to go, we’re washing the dogs in the back, and now I have to call the fucking police about David’s bike. Are you sure you didn’t borrow it again without asking?” I ask if she remembers what kind of shoes the guy wore. She says, “What? How the fuck should I know? He woke us up. Why are you fucking asking me what kind of shoes he had?” I ask her to please just answer me. It’s important. Were they brown wingtips? She grunts with frustration and hangs up the phone. I slowly place the handset back onto its cradle. That’s it. He knows where I live. What the fuck am I going to do? I can’t go home, get the stuff and leave town because he’s probably watching the place or having it watched. I can’t just leave town right now, because I don’t have any cash and my Gremlin’s almost out of gas. Besides, where would I go? Fucking hell.

347 T .

I reach into my pocket for my duct tape wallet, search around until I ﬁnd a dog-eared scrap of notebook paper with phone numbers scrawled on it, and I ﬁnd the number for my parents’ house in Wichita, Kansas. I dial the number. “Hello?” It’s my mother. I don’t say anything. “Hello? Is anyone there?” I hang up the phone, stare at it for a moment, then I pick up the handset again and dial 911.

***

My thumbnail is bitten and gnawed to the pink. White slivers of dead skin jut from each side of the cuticle, places my teeth have nuzzled and picked and grazed. Dirt shows through the splintery tip, dirt and dried blood from chewing too close. Wood grain. The tabletop is covered in wood grain substance, some kind of brown-on-brown screen-printed plastic veneer. Lines loop and fold and stretch beyond my thumb. Shapes emerge. Patterns and figures, little wood people, little wood cars, little guns. “So, this is our situation.” I look up at the blur across the table from me, the blur in the beige I’m Not A Cop suit. His voice is loud, louder than it has to be, loud like my father waking me up for school or a principal administering schoolyard justice. I rub the blur from my eyes, and the fuzz coalesces into Lieutenant Dwayne Goettel, who’s a dead ringer for a bald Gene Hackman. “You say this kid’s dead, but there’s no body. You say you broke into the doctor’s office with this dead kid, but Officers Thirlwell and Jourgensen found no sign of a break-in, and no sign of broken glass, and no sign whatsoever of blood or bone fragments or any other sign indicating a fatal head wound.” He leans forward and points a finger at me. He’s chewing gum. “Have you ever seen what happens when someone puts a gun to his own face and pulls a Hemingway? Have you? Look at me. This is real life, so look at me when I’m talking to you. Engage. Have you seen what kind of mess is left behind after a gunshot to the head?”

348 H .

I look up. His eyes are brown, like mine. I tell him yes, as a matter of fact, I have seen the result of a gunshot blast to the head. The reason I’m sitting here is because I’ve seen exactly what happens when a gun is pressed to a forehead and the trigger is squeezed. Goettel sucks his teeth and chews his gum, then he says, “It’s nasty, I am telling you. You can’t just clean that up in the middle of the night and have it look pretty by morning, not unless you hire a crime scene clean-up crew at, what? You say it was around 11:30 Friday night? You called us around 3 the next afternoon? We made the doc’s office by 4:30 and found… What? Guess what we found?” He hits the table with the meat of his balled up fist. “I’ll tell you what we found: diddly-squat. How do you explain that? Sometime between midnight and 4:30 the next afternoon, the crime scene was erased? A little over 16 hours later, and not a smudge of brain, not a speck of skull, not a teardrop of blood?” He shrugs his shoulders and lifts his palms to the ceiling, raises his eyebrows, juts out his chin and holds it there with his eyes wide open. I look back at him without blinking. “I am telling you,” he says. “It takes a professional to clean up a crime scene where there’s been a head shot, and no one’s gonna do it at midnight. Plus, oh, and this is rich, the doctor’s secretary says he’s been back East at a medical conference for the past week. Your missing friend’s mother confirms he’s been scarce for the past two days, but the last time she saw him, he told her you two had some kind of lover’s spat. She hasn’t seen him since supper on friday when he went for a bike ride, so it’s possible we have a missing person.” He eyeballs me a moment, chewing his gum, then he rises slowly from his chair, extends his 6-foot-or-more aging linebacker cop body across the table, points his entire cop frame at me, at my face. “And here you are with a bag of money and a batch of what our lab suspects is a metric shit-ton of crystal meth. You ever hear that phrase before? Metric shit-ton? My son says it all the time. It’s a unit of measurement. It means a whole lot. You wanna know what else it means? Don’t answer. It means felony trafficking. It means get tough on crime. It means San Quentin with an Aryan Nation cellie named Cletus selling your virgin ass for cigarettes to his ace boon coons for 15-30, depending on your priors. You got priors? Don’t answer.”

349 O .

He points his chin toward a piece of paper on the table then snatches it up and holds it at arms-length, squinting. “Criminal mischief. Class C misdemeanor. You kicked the side of a pickup truck with a steel-toed boot and caused, let’s see, $600 worth of damage? A day in county and anger management classes?” I tell him he tried to run me over in a crosswalk. “Aaaaaand another one for shoplifting?” I tell him that was never proven. I quit before there was an investigation. I didn’t steal anything from the record store. The assistant manager just didn’t like me. “Interesting. This was for a candy bar from Safeway. You were, let’s see, 12 years old? The arresting officer shares your last name. You related to this guy?” I nod. My uncle. My dad caught me snagging a Baby Ruth and called his brother to come and arrest me and make me spend a few hours in jail. I didn’t realize he had seriously put that on my record. “Your uncle, huh?” He strokes his chin, staring at me, his eyes flicking up and down. “He was a good cop. Damn good cop. Knew him for years. You Billy Ray’s son, or Ernie’s?” I sigh. I tell him Ernie’s. He smiles and says, “He used to be my insurance agent. He lives in Kansas now? Tell him I said hello the next time you talk.” Greeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaat. Lieutenant Goettel struts around the table and pulls a chair behind him and sits down inches from my knees. He’s so close to my face I can smell his three-pack-a-day dirty menthol habit, can almost feel the tentacles of his tapered mustache scrape against my forehead. Dow Scrubbing Bubbles crackle at the corners of his mouth. His lips are chapped, and his butter cutters are stained nicotine yellow except for one slightly whiter than the rest. I look down at my hands folded in my lap and slouch in the molded plastic chair like a delinquent. He’s staring me down fucking Popeye Doyle stylie. If he asks if I’m still pickin’ my feet in Poughkeepsie, I’m gonna vomit my spleen. I’m so tired of this gulag bullshit. How many hours since they escorted me home and grabbed the satchel from the back of my closet, and they haven’t found dick? Everything at the doctor’s office

350 U .

is gone. Some fucking excellent spic-and-span job, I gotta hand it to the good doctor. He must know some people. I scratch the stiff cut in my arm, look up at Gene Hackman’s doppelgänger, and he’s still staring at me with a slight smirk on his face. I look back down at my hands. I gotta pay my phone bill. I want to go to sleep so bad, just curl up in my great aunt Johnny’s quilt on my futon and drift off for a couple of days, forget all about this fucking French Connection asshole, dickhead, fuckwad, jerk, fascist, fucking prick bastard. “Well, I’d like to hear what you think about all this,” he says, nostrils flaring slightly. Goettel spreads his arms wide to pop his elbows, then he presses his palms to either side of his head. He cracks his neck to the left with a quick snap and twist. It sounds like an office chair rolling over bubble wrap. He smooths his ugly Sears rack jobber and leans back in his chair. He clasps his hands behind his head and points his toes. His ankles crack. “I can wait all day,” he says, his eyes fixed on mine. “I’m getting paid to be here, and I don’t mind making me some overtime.” I cluck my tongue and look up at the light tubes and acoustic tiles. I wanna throw a sharpened pencil into the ceiling real bad and see if it sticks. I tell him I didn’t kill anybody if that’s what he wants to imply. I’d never been in the same room as a gun. Until now. “Yeah, you told me that, you told me like five, six times. Now tell me something I don’t know.” He takes a sip from the coffee I declined earlier when he started this lovely interrogation. Prick. I tell him I don’t know what he wants me to say that I haven’t already said five or six times. He smacks his gum at me, so I ask him what he’s going to do about the drug dealer who’s probably looking to snatch me up like a dingo after Meryl Streep’s baby. “Who, the guy in the brown shoes? I wear brown shoes. Did I kill your friend? Officer Thirlwell wears brown shoes. Half the police department wears brown shoes. Are you telling me the whole police department killed your friend? If you were to look in every closet in every house in the whole city, chances are you’d find, among other things, a pair of brown shoes. Did they all kill your friend?” He pulls out a pack of Kools, tamps it down on the palm of his hand, and draws out the last cigarette with his cracked lips.

351 G . .

“Let me tell you where I stand on this.” He whips out a scratched silver Zippo with a police department shield etched in blue on the surface and lights up. He puffs once, twice, three times, then blows the bluish smoke from the side of his mouth. “How am I supposed to know you’re not the guy in the brown shoes? Metaphorically. You know what a metaphor is? Don’t answer. It’s something that symbolizes something else. Suppose you and the dead kid went into this deal as partners, and when you got the cash, you whacked your pal with 165 grains through the brain bucket.” I ask him why in the world I would come here if that were the case. I ask him why I’m not on my way to Pago Pago or something. He ignores me. “You dump the body in a ditch somewhere,” he continues, “but now you’re afraid you’re gonna get caught, so you come to me with this story to weasel out of a murder charge before we come and lock your ass up and throw away the key.” He takes a long drag, sucking his Kool until the cherry glows red hot. Slow plume out the side of his mouth, dragon breath, then, “Why should I believe you?” I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. I shake my head and look back down at my thumb again. I tell him I don’t know what he wants me to say. I’ve told him everything, now it’s his turn to tell me something, something that hopefully rhymes with: “Here’s the Witness Protection Program handbook. Your new name is Lew Megonigal, and you’re a firefighter in Cape May, New Jersey.” And we sit there, him fellating his coffin nail and me looking at my thumb as if it’s the most interesting thing God ever invented, which, if you think about it, is one of the best things God ever gave us. Where would we soft-skinned humans be without our big brains and these nifty opposable thumbs? We’ve got no claws. We’ve got no teeth. We’ve got no armor or camo. Without these thumbs, we’d be sitting around waiting for some lion to eat us up like wiggly pink bonbons with crunchy centers. And brown bonbons. And black… Goettel butts his Kool on the heel of his beige oxfords and says, “Aaaaand scene.” I look up as he’s rising from his chair, his hand motioning towards the door as he opens it.

352 H . .

I ask him what he means. He says, “I meeean you’re free to go. I’ve taken your statement. I’ve got your phone number. I know where you live. Now it’s time to say goodbye… au revoir…. adios… auf wiedersehen.” I feel like I’ve been dismissed without my year’s supply of chocolate. I ask him where I’m supposed to go? “Well, you can start by ﬁnding a place where you feel safe and spending the next few days avoiding drug dealers with brown shoes. Just make sure we can get a hold of you. Other than that, have a nice day. Don’t forget your pillow at the front desk.” He’s holding the door open, his other hand scooping me out of the room. There’s nothing more to say. I stand up and leave the room.

***

“…manna points something something motherfucker something goblins something.” Laughter. “Eata bagga dicks, bitch!” More laughter. “something ﬁreball, damn!” And I’m awake. I’m on a fusty couch, head buried in the feather pillow I snagged from Dara’s, arms folded around my ears. I sit upright, rub sleep from my eyes, and look around. I’m in Chaos. It’s half full. A group of six heshers by the door are playing Magic, plunking down cards and shouting in triumph or groaning with defeat. Another small group slouches at the front counter chucking slammers into piles of pogs, chatting up one of the waify mannequins Bekkah hires to push caffeine. Tom Waits is on the stereo rasping about how the earth died screaming. In the back of the room, billiard balls clack. The warm air swims thick with smoldering sage, clove cigarettes, coffee, and a hint of kind bud in the background. I look at the sunlight streaming through the front windows, dust motes dancing in harsh light. I turn my head toward the Elvis clock with the tick-tocking hips nailed to the wall behind the counter, then shake my head. I’ve been asleep on this raggedy-assed dumpster- dived sofa since 7 this morning, and now it must be… I look back at the Elvis clock. It says 11:57, but that can’t be right. No one’s ever bothered to set it. They must just like to watch it move.

353 T . I unfold myself from the smelly cushions, bones creaking, joints cracking, and slump to the counter with Dara’s pillow under my arm. They’re talking about Kurt. They’re wondering if Eddie’s next. “Yo yo yo, you get enough sleep, loco?” It’s Louie, chilling in hard-core gangsta baggies and a blue bandana. Shameless Snoop wannabe. Probably thinks a Crip uses a crutch. Red hair and sunburned freckles. Fucking wigger. I lob a groan in his direction and ask the raccoon-eyed coffee wench for something strong. I lean hard on the counter with my elbows, my head hung low. She suggests a Hairy Legs. Triple capp with a shot of Nawlins. I tell her I don’t do chicory, ask her to hook a brother up with a triple espresso, a shot of Jack, and a shot of Bailey’s. Bekkah still owes me for the menus I designed months ago. I ask the barista’s stabby elbows to put it on my tab. I’m beat, and I still don’t know what I’m gonna do or where I’m gonna do it. I’m out of crash pads. There’s no one left, not even a cousin with a couch at this point. I put the pillow in my lap and press my forehead against the countertop and close my eyes tight. There’s always Wichita. Oh hell no. Been there, done that, swore to never do it again, did it again anyway, regretted the whole damned thing. My parents still look at me and see the 15-year-old malcontent they hauled to the psychologist. They still talk to me as if my hopes and dreams are the same blank-eyed shit dribbling from a teenager’s mouth. They wanted me to be an insurance agent. I wanna be a writer. My dad pictures me haunting alleyways in a cummy trenchcoat peddling dirty limericks to school kids. Hey kid, wanna do a line… of poetry? At my age, my father had a job that supported two kids, a wife, a house, a mortgage, a motorcycle, a dog, and a car. Me? I’ve got a music collection that could choke a whale shark comprising CDs and LPs I mostly stole. A computer my parents bought me. A student loan I’ll never pay off. A shitty credit rating that will haunt me until I die utterly penniless. A trail of ex-girlfriends who no longer speak to me. Boxes full of shit that never get unpacked before I move again. A bed that’s just a bare futon mattress on the ground. A best friend I can barely tolerate, but I do because he is the only one I can ﬁnd who will tolerate me. Was…

354 S . . .

“Odelay, vato, you’re lookin’ muy malo, homes.” It’s Louie again. I tell him to piss off, I ain’t your homes, and I keep my head buried under my clasped hands on the counter. He acts like he doesn’t hear me, but drops the Spanglish. “You hear about Kurt Go-Bang? They just fuckin’ found his body rottin’ in his house. Offed himself with a fuckin’ shotgun. He wasn’t fuckin’ around. Dude wanted to die. What the fuck? It was fuckin’ Courtney, man, I am tellin’ you, it was that fuckin’ skanky-ass cooz.” I can feel the ﬁne scratches of the cool Formica surface against my forehead. I roll it like the ball of a thumb across a pad of ink. Back and forth. God, this cafe used to be packed. Where is everybody? Back… and… forth. Fuck it. I’m just gonna go home. They can’t watch the fucking place 24/7. All I have to do is walk in, get my duffel and a change of unders, and I’m outta there. Brown shoes can kiss my ass, and so can the police department. As a matter of fact, this entire lame-assed town can kiss every inch of my pale white ass.

***

There it is. My house. It looks as dark inside as the night nuzzling its windows. Not even the porch light is on. David’s Citroën Snail is parked in the driveway. Karen’s rickety Peugot moped leans against the side of the house near the garbage cans. My Gremlin is hugging a curb on the street. The garage door has a shiny new lock on the clasp. I wonder if the front door does, too. It can’t be much past 7 or so, and it looks like everyone’s home, yet all the lights are out. What’s up with that? I’m straddling Isaac’s sister’s 10-speed and holding Dara’s pillow under my arm. I’m hiding in the shadows of a huge cottonwood in the front yard of a neighbour’s house down the street. It seems too risky to go in front. He could be anywhere, watching, waiting. I decide to pedal around to the street behind ours and climb over the neighbour’s fence into our backyard. Hide the bike in some bushes. Hop the fence into the backyard. Press my face against the kitchen window.

355 T . .

Nothing. Just containers of flour and sugar on the counter. The toaster. A stack of my dirty dishes in the sink, a pink Post-It adorning one of the plates. Sound equipment in the living room. No roomies. No dogs, either. Where the fuck are the dogs? Through the sliding glass door. Slowly. Creep through the kitchen, Dara’s pillow shielding my chest. Tiptoes. No sound. Up the stairs on all fours, looking, listening. My room. Door’s open a crack. Silence. Silence. Slowly poke my head through… …to see my dirty room, same as it ever was. I start to breathe a sigh, but first go to the closet, peek inside for the duffel. Is it… …it is. I sit cross-legged on the corner of my lumpy futon mattress on the floor, smile, sigh, and feel relief drip to the tips of my toes and puddle beneath me on the goldenrod shag carpeting. Everything seems fine. I’m so out of here, it’s not even funny. I plop my head onto the feather pillow and look up at the sagging posters and banners on my ceiling, watch the way they billow like clouds. My hands are clasped behind my head, my feet are kicked back, and I’m thinking about what I’m going to do once I leave for good. I can still smell Dara’s hair conditioner on the pillow case. I close my eyes and think of a song I wrote last year with Bryan and Itchy Dave. I never see them anymore, not since I fucked Morgan, who was Itchy Dave’s girl back then. We were gonna start a band.

this is the last time i’ll ever say goodbye i’ve got no more bridges to burn i’m gonna cut my hair and change my name i’m moving back to wichita

The next thing I know, I’m waking up to someone tapping on my forehead. Without even opening my eyes, I know I’m fucked. “Hey, kid,” a familiar voice says. “Wake up. We gotta talk.”

356 H . .

I hold my breath. I’m about to meet Brown Shoes face to face, and it will most likely be the last thing I ever do. I am a fucking idiot. ***

I open my eyes. Hovering over me is a black blur that can only be the muzzle of a pistol. Beyond the blur, a hand and wrist poking from a white sleeve. Behind that, a face, haloed by my red lava lamp. Brown Shoes. A warm tingle washes over me. Peace at the mouth of a gun. Or piss. And I stare at him, frozen there, just an arm’s reach away, crouching. He looks like a mechanic. Like nobody, or anybody, just some guy. He doesn’t look all that mean or cruel or evil, he’s just some guy who’ll ﬁx your car or sell you tires or check your plumbing. Just some random guy. The top button of his collared shirt is missing. He’s sweating, not from nervousness or exhaustion, I suspect, but from the heat of this room without the fan helicoptering overhead. Brown Shoes is just some guy with a gun pointed at my face. “You awake, or what?” He pokes me in the forehead with the cool tip of the gun. “Shake your head or something. I’m tired of fucking around.” I lie there, staring up at him. I slowly exhale. “Look…” He puts the shaft of the gun to his lips and clenches it between his teeth, then he grabs my shirt with both hands and yanks me to a sitting position in one swift tug. He takes the gun from his mouth and cracks me in the temple with a THUNK I can hear deep inside my head. His other hand lets go of the fabric of my shirt with a push, and he crouches with both of his elbows on his knees and sort of studies me with a strange smile on his lips. He tilts his head. I can’t speak. My mouth’s too dry, all the way down to my guts. He keeps looking at me, his eyes darting all over my face. He presses his lips together and sighs, then he leans in close and smiles. He smiles wider, baring his teeth — he’s got one silver canine — and he cocks his head to the other side like a dog when you whistle and hum at the same time. One breath, two breaths, three. He inhales, holds it, then says, “I just need you to give my money back. And my crank. That’s all, and then I’ll go. We real cool?”

357 E . His eyes are unblinking. I don’t know what to say. He clears his throat, brings his face so close to mine his eyes merge into one floating iris at the tip of my nose, and he says, “Brother, I don’t wanna get mean on you, but I need my shit, yeah?” I say nothing. He withdraws his face from mine and says, “Open your mouth.” Nothing. “Open your mouth so I can put the tip of my Glock 17 into it.” Blank. His left hand streaks around the side of my head and grasps the back of my neck while his right shoves the mouth of the gun into my lips, then he vice-grips his hands together. Hard. My lips are pressed so tightly against my teeth, they ooze apart, and the oily metal clinks against my incisors. The pain is ferocious. I’m clenching my teeth shut, clenching as tight as I can, but I can’t hold it, and the tip of the pistol grinds past my teeth and into my mouth, deep, all the way to his warm trigger finger. My whole body is an earthquake. His hand is not. His hand is cool like Luke. He holds the gun in my mouth, his other hand at the back of my head. He’s crouching there, staring at me in silence as I try desperately to squelch my gag reflex. Drool is sliding down my chin. He finally clears his throat, pulls the gun from my mouth with a moist pop, and says, “Sorry about that, but you need to make a decision. You need to choose one of two paths. Behind door number 1 is you giving my shit back. It’s not yours. You had no right to take it. I simply want what’s mine. It ain’t rocket science.” Brown Shoes clears his throat softly, then continues. “Behind door number 2, however, is me shooting you in the fucking face and going downstairs and doing the same to your roommates, who, by the way, just so you know, are in the kitchen pantry with their hands duct-taped behind their backs. Shame about the dogs. I love dogs. I love most animals, except ferrets. Ferrets are fucking nasty. Even when you demusk them, they stink. Dated a girl once who kept ferrets. Her whole house smelled like shit. Kind of a deal-breaker.” He pauses, licks his lips. He hasn’t blinked once. “It’s up to you, brother. I’ve got no preference. Door number 1’s quicker, but we’ll open door number two if you insist.”

358 C . .

He smiles again. “Capisce?” I swallow hard and dry, slowly nod my head, swallow again, and somehow manage to croak something about the cops. “Cops? What cops? What’re you talking about, cops?” I tell him I gave the money and the meth to the cops. “You what?” he says. “You gave my… You gave it to the cops? Just like that, you just gave my shit to the cops? Who the fuck are you, you gave my shit to the cops? Huh?” He stands up, one hand clenched around the collar of my shirt, the other around the gun, dragging me to my knees as he rises. “Who the fuck is this kid?” he says to the ceiling fan. “What I ever do to him? He couldn’t just leave my shit alone? He felt compelled? It was drugs and money in a fucking airport, for Christ’s sake. Why didn’t he realize it would be a bad idea? Who does that?” I’m on my knees, still on my futon, with Brown Shoes towering over me and gesticulating at the ceiling with his pistol. “Why couldn’t he have given the fucking package to the fucking postal clerk and went about his fucking business? Huh? That’s what I woulda done. What, is he so fucking bored with his own goddamned life he’s gotta mess with mine? It doesn’t make any fucking sense.” He scratches his chin with the back of the gat, shakes his head in silence. The hammer crackles against the stiff bristles of his days-old shave. He looks back down at me and points the Glock at my face. “Motherfuckers like you, my friend, got no goddamned life of your own, so you gotta create drama in order to feel alive. What you need is a hobby. What you need is a purpose in your life. You need direction. You need to get off your ass and make a plan.” He punctuates his lecture with juts of the gun toward my forehead. “You have no idea what brand of fuckery you’ve gotten yourself into, do you? ” I look down at my knees pressed into the quilt on my futon. “Of course you don’t.” He scratches his ear with the sight of his gun. “You’re just bored. Nothing’s on television. I’ve been there.” He looks up at the ceiling, shakes his head slowly back and forth, and softly says, “Yeah, I’ve been there.” He nods his head, smiles, then cracks the butt of his pistol hard across the bridge of my nose with a nauseating crunch.

359 L . . “What about now, you bored now?” He cracks me again with the gun, this time in the temple. “You like this station? Huh? You gettin’ a clear signal?” He hits me again and again, in the nose, in the mouth, in the ear. Blood is spraying from my face, and I’m trying to lift my arms to ward off his blows, but he jerks me around and keeps hitting me. Chunks of my teeth are breaking off and spitting across the room. My nose is a bubbling mass of pain. My arms are losing strength and dangling limply at my sides. I’m sobbing, trying to tell him please, please stop, please stop. I don’t have a single shit left to give. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please stop. Please. “Where!” he screams, crashing the gun into my eye socket. “Is!” butt to the temple. “My!” shaft to the chin. “Shit?” He grabs the slide of his gun and yanks it back with a chick- CHICK, stabs my ear with the muzzle and shouts, “Door number 2!” And then bright light shatters my bedroom window and scatters shadows across the walls. Brown Shoes throws me down, leaps at the window, and empties his gun through the glass. He’s a blurry silhouette on ﬁre. The whole wide world explodes. I fade.

***

I’m blazing down a highway lit by nothing but the Milky Way. It’s just me and Otis and Stevie, me and Marvin and Aretha, me and Gladys Knight & The Pips singing at the top of my lungs about leaving on that midnight train to Georgia at 75-85-95 miles an hour. I’m streaking past marching lines of robot cat electrical towers connected with wires by their ears, playing ski rack or cop car in my rearview since Barstow 300 miles behind me. I’m on the open road and more alive at this very moment than any other in my entire life. The world beckons as I tattoo the sticky black ink of my tires across the asphalt belly stretched between my shitty hometown and my parents’ house in Wichita.

360 U . .

It’s been two months since meeting Brown Shoes face-to-face in my bedroom. Two months since police and FBI and federal marshals and sheriff ’s deputies and seemingly every law enforcement official within spitting distance filled my room with more badges than a rent- a-cop convention and filled Brown Shoes with enough lead to sink 100 Jimmy Hoffas straight to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. I barely remember the light and sound of molten air before I passed out. I woke up three days later with bandages on my face where Brown Shoes cold-cocked me and more where friendly fire had pierced my skin. Three bullet holes in all, two in my right arm and one in my foot. All minor. Three broken teeth. The cops say they didn’t know I was there. The doctor says I’m lucky. Dara says I should be a rapper now that I’ve got bullet wounds to brag about. Brown Shoes, that motherfucker was Swiss cheese. His real name was Marco Ricci, and he was indeed a bad-ass drug dealer. He had entered into some kind of deal with the financially-strapped Doctor Patel and his fellow podiatrist Daniel Alvin Chandler — hence the D.A.C. — but Patel wussed at the last minute, so Brown Shoes kidnapped Chambers as ransom. He sent the diving watch to Patel’s p.o. box to stress the seriousness of the situation, but the package mistakenly wound up in mine. Such a random boner, a boner Chambers paid for with his life. And Isaac. Fucking Isaac. The fruits of the transaction were in a locker in the L.A. airport waiting for Patel to pick them up while Brown Shoes held a gun to Chamber’s head. Little did they know, 5-0 was onto them and clocking the locker. They were quite surprised when Isaac and I showed up. They figured we were small fish and so followed us back across The Grapevine and waited for Brown Shoes to show up. That’s why Lieutenant Goettel at the police station let me go. They were tailing me, watching me, waiting. The rest is front page news. There are so many plot holes, I don’t really understand or believe it all, but I am ready to suspend disbelief and just go with it. What the headlines didn’t shout in capital letters above full- colour photos is sitting on a feather pillow in the passenger seat of my newly tuned up Gremlin: the duffel bag I kept in my closet, the duffel bag that was still at the house when I got released from the hospital, the same one I filled with $270,000 in drug money and

361 B .

buried under a pile of dirty boxers and socks before handing the rest over to the police along with the meth. That’s $10,000 for every year I’ve been alive. My share. The cops got Isaac’s cut. It’s not nearly enough compensation for getting pistol-whipped by an irate dope pusher then shot by a gaggle of flatfoots, and it won’t resurrect Isaac’s hidden corpse, but I’ll take it. Gizmo’s sporting new steel-belted radials and a killer sound system with massive bass, and the cracked windshield has finally been replaced. The passenger side window’s still missing, though. I’ve gotten used to the roar of the wind. I don’t know what I’d do with silence. Patel got nabbed in the Vegas airport with a ticket to Belgium in his hand. His trial would have started in a few months, but he offed himself in county lockup. They found him hanging from the left pant leg of his orange inmate jumpsuit, the right leg tied to the top bunk of the double-decker in his cell. He left a note. The papers didn’t report what it said. He had a pregnant wife and five kids. They never found Isaac’s body, so his mom and step-dad had a closed casket funeral for him. I suppose he’ll be buried in it should they ever find him, right under a headstone engraved with He moved to Athens, Georgia, to play drums with R.E.M. Isaac’s sister gave me a warm hug after the service and thanked me for coming. Her long hair smelled of strawberries and sea salt. I asked her about school, and she said she was gonna be a lawyer. She touched my arm and asked me about school, and I said maybe I would return someday, but not now, not for a while. I was about to ask for her TDD number at that deaf school in Washington, but then I got bashful, shoved my hands in my pockets and stared at my toes. A few awkward sentences later, she waved goodbye and turned to rejoin her family, all of them adorned with black armbands, the men wearing yarmulkes. I watched her walk away, watched her ebony locks flit in the breeze, watched her calves flex as she capered across the green green grass and vanished around the corner of the synagogue. I looked down at her footprints in the moist lawn, her toes less than a foot from mine. I am a fucking idiot. When I got out of the hospital and discovered the duffel amongst my shit piled in David and Karen’s garage, I threw a couple fistfuls of

362 S . clothes into my old sea bag and bailed. Karen and David were livid I wasn’t taking everything they’d cleared from my room, but I FedEx’d them a package with two grand and four months in back rent, so I’m not sweating it. They can sell what they can and trash the rest. There’s nothing left in that shitty town worth wasting another year. Chaos Coffeehouse finally closed after their fifth fund-raiser tanked, and the only indie bookstore in town that sold my zines shut its doors the next day. Both are being turned into sports bars. The day I left, I saw the couple who owns Andy Noise Records posting fliers for their second benefit concert. Cradle of Thorns signed to Triple X Records right after Korn went with Sony, and both groups relocated to Los Angeles. Spike 1000 ditched one of their lead singers and moved north to San Francisco. 2Lazy2Steal bailed for Seattle in a van about five years too late. The only all-ages venue in town booking local bands is becoming an over-21 dance club spinning techno and house, and the bands left homeless are either breaking up or getting hooked on heroin. Oh, and Morgan’s pregnant. Aaaaaand Dara’s getting married. I hate everything. I don’t suppose I’ll find anything different in Wichita besides the parents who only take me in because our last names happen to be the same. They don’t even know I’m coming and are clueless to this past month. I have no idea why they relocated to Wichita out of all the shitty towns in America, but they’ve been there since I graduated high school. They hate my hometown as much as I do. I figure I can hang out in their basement for a while, at least until I stop limping. Then, maybe I’ll take classes at WSU. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll just hide out for a while. Get fat. Grow a beard. Watch a lot of cable. Maybe I’ll write all this shit down and try to figure it out. There are a million stars streaking above me, and it’s so dark my high-beams suck into the void and reflect nothing back but the endless inky yellow ribbon disappearing beyond the horizon. An occasional tumbleweed bumbles across the blacktop, frozen for a moment in the blaze of headlights, then disappears into the nothingness at the side of the road. Man, those fuckers burn out fast.

363 W . . p.o.v. (1994)

My hand hurts really bad. It hurts so bad my eyes water, but I don’t scream in pain. I don’t even flinch. I withdraw my hand from between the frame and the heavy wooden door and tuck the poor thing calmly into my trouser pocket as if nothing happened. I just know it’s broken and will probably swell like a rotten melon, but I turn from the door, smile, and greet my co-workers. I say, “Good morning!” to Jim, and he smiles and bids “Good morning!” back. I look at his secretary Trish, smile, and say, “Good morning!” She gives me a smile and wishes me the same. I slowly walk toward my cubicle with my limp hand in the pocket of my wrinkled khakis, smiling and wishing those I meet “Good morning!” The co-worker who shares my cubical is a large black man named Jeremiah. He’s already at his terminal, dirty brown jacket stretched tightly across his enormous back, waiting for the bells to ring. I look at the wall clock and see we still have ten minutes until 0900. Ten minutes until the bells ring, and Jeremiah is already staring into the terminal with empty eyes and slack jaw. I carefully remove my beige tweed jacket, place it on the hook on the cubicle wall, and sit in my threadbare brown office chair. There’s a thick layer of dust caked on my viewscreen, which should seem odd since I just cleaned it yesterday, but doesn’t since I know the ventilation system blows more soot into our biosphere than it does fresh air. I should get one of those black market nose filters they whisper about, but I never seem to find someone who’s got one. With a minute and a half left before the bells, I blank my eyes and let my chin droop to my chest. Without looking, I know all the people on this floor — all the Johns and Josephs and Jeremys, all the Tanyas and Tiffanys and Terris — are in their office chairs facing their monitors, hands on keyboards, eye unfocused, head bowed. The silence is complete save for the buzz of overhead fluorescents and the ever-present hum of unknown origin that surrounds us.

364 O . At precisely 0900 GMT, the bells ring and are answered by tens of thousands of keystrokes clattering off the dun-coloured walls. Those with working viewscreens mostly type garbage, meaningless and jumbled letters and numbers that will never spontaneously result in a Shakespeare play no matter how many millions of years they type. Those without terminals type with the same stone-faced determination. Some ram their ﬁngertips on the surface of their desks inside empty cubicles with such force they’ve worried furrows into the wood and split their nails bloody. My terminal works most of the time. I type the same sentence, something I learned a lifetime ago, an exercise from typing class: Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. I’ve typed that line of letters so many times, I don’t even have to think, they are stored in the muscle memory of my hands and forearms. I could easily ﬁnish each sentence in a little over four seconds with pinpoint accuracy, but I can’t with my crushed hand. Even the most gentle of movement sends electric shocks from my forehead to my toes. One letter at a time. CLACK! We are running naked through illicit hallways broken and entered through pried windows, giggling, wriggling naked into thick down sleeping bags and hoping we don’t get caught by the security guard or passing cops. CLACK! We are puddle-slapping through midnight sprinklers in the grassy park barefoot, backpack button activists, laughing-happy and sticky with young love made on the itchy sod. CLACK! We are camping in the back of my pickup truck, all arms and legs and lips and rats-nest hair and pillows and blankets and whiskey bottles and the wind and the wind and the wind. CLACK! We are sitting around a large table surrounded by laughter, and we are tossing dice into a box and reading questions from cards and shouting answers en masse and eating popcorn from bowls and dancing rhythmically in our seats to music from a stereo. CLACK!

365 U . . Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to

366 L . .

the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all god help me come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all

367 D . .

The bells sound. It is exactly 1300. My vision clears, and I look at my page count on the lower-left hand corner of my monitor. I am on page 112. I could have easily filled 500 more on a good day, but I must pace myself. Jeremiah’s voice croaks behind me, “Good afternoon, Jonathon.” I think of desiccated leaves crushed under foot. I smile and wish him the same. I flex my hand, and I am shocked at the intensity of the pain that arcs up my spine. I hadn’t noticed it as I was typing. There are ugly purple welts from my wrist to the second knuckle of all my fingers. The swollen flesh throbs with each heartbeat. I follow Jeremiah from our cubicle to the door of the commissary, and I am thankful when he holds the door open and nods me through. He lets it slip from his fingers as I cross the threshold into the harsh white light. The thick metal door is corroded with layers of rust, but the handle has been polished by the grip of countless hands. I catch the briefest reflection from the corner of my eye. I see Jeremiah, the large man grinning, his blue and purple necktie loosened around his crisp blue shirt, his navy blazer slung over one shoulder. I see the work center behind us, a soft blend of pastel greens and salmons and eggshell whites. I see co-workers talking and smiling amongst themselves as they walk in groups of two and three toward the break room. I see my face, haggard, unshaven, dark-eyed with fatigue. I flinch away, my free hand rising to rub the rust from my eyes.

368 B . doug, cale, and the closet king (1994)

“Camper Van Jim Morrison.” We were sitting on our raggedy-assed couch, my roommate Cale and me, watching teevee and playing Camper Van. It was the fall of my sophomore year, and this was the ﬁrst apartment I’d lived in since getting kicked out of the WSU dorms. “Camper Van Janis Joplin.” The game we played was called Camper Van, after the defunct college rock band Camper Van Beethoven. Cale and I spontaneously invented the game one drunken evening, coming up with other composers for the name of the band — Camper Van Chopin, Camper Van Liszt, Camper Van Stravinsky — back and forth until one of us couldn’t think of another composer. Now we do other lists. If one person balks and the other can then name just one more, he wins. “Camper Van John Lennon.” The game that particular night was Camper Van Dead Rock Stars Who’s Names Began With J. “Camper Van… Uhm… Camper Van John Belushi.” “I don’t know if he’d count, man,” I said. “He was an actor, not a rock and roll star.” Cale retorted with, “What about The Blues Brothers? It was a side project, but they put out albums and toured.” He had a point. Besides, the shots of Early Times whiskey were beginning to take effect. I didn’t care. It was Friday night, I didn’t have homework to ignore, and my rent check hadn’t bounced yet. Life was good. “Okay, ﬁne,” I said, “How’s about… Camper Van… Camper Van… Oh, wait, Camper Van Jimi Hendrix.” “Damn!” Cale was burnt. I’d ripped his next answer right out from under him. He slammed another shot of whiskey and thought for a moment, his eyes on the teevee screen. Jeopardy, with shitty reception and the sound turned all the way down. About this time, we heard someone come in through the front

369 E . .

door. The wiggle of the doorknob. The jingle of keys. The creak of the door opening. The climp-clomp of boots down the hallway. It could only be one person: our other roomie Doug. Cale and I exchanged amused looks, then counted slowly to three. One, two, th… We heard the jingle of keys as Doug unlocked his room door, opened it, and closed and locked it behind him. Odd duck, that Doug. I had never actually seen him, not even once, even when he answered our Room For Rent ad in the local paper and moved in two months before. Cale had met him and let him move in while I was out and about, but that was the last time Cale saw him in person. Besides that, we hadn’t spoken to him, and he hadn’t spoken to us, mostly because he was gone in the morning before either of us got up and went straight to his room at night. Cale and Doug communicated via notes on the front door. Cale would leave a Post-It saying rent is due in Sharpie, and the next day there’d be a 7-Eleven money order for the amount taped to a page from a laser printer saying Doug’s Rent. Same thing for the power and trash. No phone, though. Doug had his own phone line installed two days after he moved in, then Internet two days after that. He had his own personal refrigerator in his room, so he never had to worry about sly roomies drinking his milk or scamming his cheese. The only reason I knew this was because Cale saw a moving guy take one into Doug’s room when he first moved in. Doug also had his own car, a Chevy hatchback like the kind they gave away on The Price Is Right in the ’70s that cost $4,000, and since Cale and I hated television and refused to buy cable, Doug had his own hook-up in his room. You could sometimes see a pale light oozing from under his door at night, but never any sound. We figured he must listen to it on headphones. In fact, he must’ve listened to everything on headphones because no sound ever came from his bedroom. Ever. Not even breathing. Cale was sure he saw an IBM clone computer and a component stereo system with Doug’s pile of stuff when he moved in, but we never heard a peep from either of them. He also never got any mail, at least not from our mailbox, so he must have had a post office box somewhere in town. Or maybe he had them sent to his work. If he got mail. If he did work.

370 B . . .

“Camper Van Brian Jones,” Cale trumpeted, smiling proud and knocking back another shot of Early Times. He winced as it went down, then pumped his arm in triumph. Yes! Yes! Yes! Maybe Doug was a trust-funder like Cale, whose parents were rich beyond belief and paid all his bills. Rent. Food. School. Car payments. Gas. Electricity. Insurance. Cale didn’t even need roommates and could’ve been styling in some nice condo, but he chose to live here in this funky townhouse two blocks from the university. Cale’s father had made a fortune inventing things. Not really impressive things that changed the world or saved anyone’s life, but little stupid shit that he’d patent and manufacture in China. His ﬁrst invention was the little green tab that keeps the plastic bag gathered on a loaf of supermarket bread. They’re everywhere. His E-Z Lok jobbers replaced the twistie-ties on most brands because they cost half as much to produce. Cale’s dad raked in crazy dough every year just on those little plastic tabs. The next big idea was a replacement for those plastic packets of ketchup you get at fast food places. His Mess-Free Condiment Dispenser had two small containers of whatever needed dispensing that were crushed together, splooching the product through an opening in the top. What made these special was you didn’t have to bite a triangle of plastic from the corner of the packet anymore. The mess factor was, as his father put it, virtually eliminated. Cale’s dad had been hard-selling the idea to fast food corporations all over the country, and McDonald’s and Wendy’s were test marketing his thingamajig in Denver, Seattle, and San Diego. Dude made millions on these convenient bits of plastic, and he hadn’t even been to college. Cale said his father’s biggest disappointment growing up was that he hadn’t invented Silly Putty. Maybe Doug was a trust-funder, too. Maybe not. As for me, I had worked as a line cook at a greasy spoon ever since I escaped my shitty hometown earlier that year. The diner was a ten-minute drive from our place, so I rode the bus to work. I bought a shitty bike for $20 from a classiﬁed ad and pedaled places too far for walking when I missed the bus. I only used my car for rock shows in Lawrence, so I left it parked at the curb under a huge live oak. My car would remain smothered in grackle shit for the next year.

371 Y .

The townhouse was only a two bedroom, so I slept in the closet beneath the stairs. It wasn’t so bad. The closet was huge, like eight feet long, with a sloped ceiling at least seven feet high at the door and three in the very back. I had enough room for a narrow futon bed, a lamp, and a couple of boxes for my clothes and some books. I had abandoned all my possessions when I bailed for Wichita, and I’m sure my old roomies sold everything they could. All my CDs… I had planned on staying in my car when the dorms kicked me out for a variety of bullshit offenses that were all true, but Cale offered to rent his closet to me for $50 a month, plus a share of the utilities. For some reason, it never really seemed strange that I was living in somebody’s closet. It was actually kind of cool. “Uhmm… Camper Van… Shit… Camper Van…” This next one was going to be tough. Brian Jones was my wild card pick. I didn’t expect Cale to think of last names beginning with J. Who else? Kurt, River, Elvis, Karen Carpenter… No Js… What about the chick from 7 Year Bitch, the chick who was murdered? Fuck, fuck, fuck… And that other chick from Hole? Didn’t someone in Hole die? Before I could speak, the sound of a door opening wafted down the hall. Cale and I exchanged curious looks again. Doug? Out of his room before the morning? Impossible! And yet, there was the unmistakable shufﬂing sound of his feet, the jingle of his keys, and they were heading for the front door. He was breathing heavily, too. Like he was carrying something. All I could see was the shadow Doug cast on the wall from the porch light. Cale and I stared at each other with big eyes and smiles. Cale arched an eyebrow at me, then lifted his head slightly and shouted, “Hey, Doug! You outta here, man? You going to the store or something?” he looked to the almost empty bottle of Early Times, then at me and smiled. “We’re almost out of Squirrely Mimes. If you’re going to the store, can I give you some cash to pick up some more? And a frozen pizza? And some toilet paper?” We waited. All we could hear was Doug’s breathing, bouncing off the walls from the entryway and into the living room. After a moment, his shadow set down whatever he was carrying, something that sounded heavy, and said, “No, I’m not going to the store. I’m going to visit a friend of mine for the weekend.”

372 O .

Cale and I exchanged quick double-takes, mouths agape in shock. A weekend trip? With a friend? Our Doug? Unprecedented! His shadow hesitated again, then picked up his load and shuffled out the door, locking the deadbolt behind him. We waited for the sound of his car taking off down the road, then jumped from the couch and into the entryway. Cale pointed to a set of four indentations in the carpet. “You see these? Wheels from the bottom of a suitcase. Our boy’s going somewhere, and he’s packed a suitcase. Wow! And do you smell that?” Cale pointed to his nose, then sniff-sniffed. I sampled the air. Nothing at first, but then the unmistakable smell of Drakkar Noir made its presence known. Our boy was powdered and rockin’ like Dokken. “Dude, you don’t think old Iggy’s found himself a girlfriend, do you?” I asked. We’d been referring to Doug as Ignatius since he moved in, after the mama’s boy in A Confederacy Of Dunces who lived at home with his mother until he was, like, forty-four and stayed locked up in his room all day. Cale shrugged his shoulders and pooched out his lips, then said, “Alright, you ready to admit defeat?” “Quit what?” I asked, then I remembered it was still my turn at Camper Van. Damn… I was blank. I am so much better at Camper Van Fast Food Restaurants. Oh, oh, oh! Zed Leppelin! The, uhm, the drummer! I blurted out “Camper Van John Bonham!” and Cale started jumping up and down, slapping his knee and yelling “Damn!” over and over. Yes! We finished the rest of the whiskey. Cale couldn’t think of another dead J, and I couldn’t think of just one more to clinch it, so the game was a draw. Cale said he was off to bed, then ran upstairs to use the bathroom before I had a chance to move. The bastard shut the door laughing, because he knew I’d have to pitch a whizz, and he always took a fucking week on the toilet. The downstairs bathroom, the one we considered Doug’s, had been stopped up for the past few weeks, so I had to take a piss again outside in the bushes. The crab apples had been used as a latrine so many times I’m surprised the poor things didn’t shrivel up and die. It was nice outside. A cool breeze blew through my buzz cut, kissed my bare

373 J . face with the scent of trees and grass. Autumn was in the air, and I was taking a nice, fat piss against the building. I closed my eyes and enjoyed it immensely. When I opened them again, I was looking at the window behind the bushes. Iggy’s window. I pushed aside the bushes and tried to peer through the glass. Nothing but the reflection of my eye staring back at me. He’d covered the inside of his window with something like construction paper or blackened aluminum foil. It made me think of the crackhouse down the block with all its boarded up windows and graffiti covering the porch. Hmmm… Queer bird, that doug. Odd duck. I went back inside the townhouse and squeezed into my closet, slipped inside my down sleeping bag stretched across my futon. I reached above my head and clicked the power switch for the black light on the wall and stared at the glowing velvet posters on the ceiling, watched the cheesy ’70s panel van dragons breathe pink fire. The toilet flushed upstairs and the gurgle of water rushing through pipes passed over me. I heard Cale’s footsteps, heard his bedroom door open and close, heard him turn on his stereo. Peter Gabriel’s Passion. Brilliant choice. After about an hour, I rolled over and went to sleep. The next afternoon, Cale and I were bored, so we dialed 1-800 numbers at random, seeing what kind of businesses we could find. The adult entertainment lines were by far the easiest. 1-800-Fuck-You was phone sex, obviously, as were 1-800-Big-Tits, 1-800-Hot-Hole, 1-800-Wet-Lips, and 1-800-My-Pussy. In fact, they were the exact same company, as if some enterprising smut baron reserved all the best numbers at once in one big porno power play. 1-800-Dick-Boy, however, was a Chase Bank Business Line in New York, which cracked our shit up. So did 1-800-Nut-Case, which was some sort of workplace crisis hotline, and 1-800-Hi-Jerry was Jerry’s Chevrolet in Mobile, Alabama. We tried to find devil worshippers for an hour, like 1-800-Lucifer and 1-800-666-Hell, but it got old, so we just sat there on the couch. The teevee was on as usual, one of three staticky channels we got. Some talk show with the sound turned off. Overweight women with big hair and shirtless men with mustaches screaming at each other and pointing fingers like pistols into each other’s faces.

374 B . Cale suddenly turned to me and said, “Dude, wanna break into Iggy’s room with me?” I pulled a whiskey spit take and goggled him like he was insane. “Are you fucking insane?” I laughed, choking. “He’s practically a serial killer! He’ll behead us in our sleep! Besides… his door’s locked.” “We’ll jimmy it. C’mon, I am beset with ennui.” Before I could say a word, Cale was off to the kitchen to fetch a butter knife. We met in front of Doug’s room. Cale knelt in front of the door and wedged the blade between the jamb and the door, near the knob. A wiggle, a twist, and the door was open. Cale winked at me. A warm push of stagnant air billowed from the room and engulfed us both in the humid stank of soiled underwear and dirty socks. It smelled like being trapped in a closet with two wheezing wet sheepdogs. Dirty clothes were everywhere, on the floor, on his bed, hanging from his closet door. He couldn’t have vacuumed even if he wanted to because the carpet was so cluttered with shit. And then there was his computer desk. Immaculate. Not a scrap of dirty clothes on it, not even dust, and all the books and cables and computer things were arranged just so. He had a bad-ass computer chair with gray upholstery and futuristic hydraulics that neither of us remembered Doug bringing in. A sheet of hard plastic beneath the casters protected the almond shag. Lights flashed from under the humming desk and clicks spat in time to the blinks. Cale cat-walked to the computer, choosing his steps like a land mine defuser, and looked over the computer trying to figure out how to turn on the monitor. After a few seconds he ah-hah!’d and flicked the power switch. “The main part of the computer is already on, and the disc drives are humming,” Cale said. “Iggy’s got some shit going on. Maybe he’s hacking the Pentagon. Little bugger’s gonna get us…” “Dude!” I said, pointing to the monitor’s full-colour display. On the screen was a slender column of text and a large graphic of a nekkid lady spreading mad beavage like a Hustler centerfold. As we looked in mock horror, the text scrolled up from the bottom as more words were added to the column of text. It appeared to be some instant messaging conversation of the worst sex talk bullshit variety.

375 R .

“This sick fucker’s online to some sex talk thing,” I said. “No wonder he had that Internet connection installed.” Neither of us even had email addresses at this point. Cale pointed to the hard drives under the desk. “I think those are networked, and look at all the modem-lookin’ thingies he’s got under there. There’s like twelve of ‘em. I don’t think Iggy’s subscribing to some sex line, I think he’s freakin’ running a sex line. He’s into some cyberfreak shit. Yuckin’ fucky. No wonder he locks his room.” Cale opened a desk drawer, then jerked his hand away as if a viper had sprung up with its head cocked and ready to strike. He screamed, “Dude dude dude! The beast with one back!” I peered into the deep drawer and saw a collection of rubber gloves and sex toys, cock rings and pumper things and squeeze tubes of K-Y Jelly. The gloves had globbers of schmeng on the tips and little curlicues of pooby hairs stuck in knuckle cracks. Cale made deep-throated gagging noises like he was about to retch. His hands were held high in the air like he didn’t want to get anything on them. “Let’s get outta here, man, this is fucking gross!” Cale squealed and headed back towards the door. I closed the drawer, switched off the monitor, and turned to leave when I spotted a sheet of computer paper in the laser printer on the ﬂoor. I bent to pick it up. “Wait a second, Cale, c’mere.” I read the print-out to him. It appeared to be a transcription of some conversation through Doug’s cybersex chat room. Two people named GREYWULF and BRIGHTEYES were talking shit back and forth, and they appeared to be setting up a meeting place. “Look! It says they’re going to meet at some pizza place in Lawrence near the campus,” I said. “Iggy’s met some digital dish, and now he’s driving all the way to K State to dip his wick. And look at this shit they’re spitting. ‘The wulf is hungry, he needs to tell, he’ll give you inches and give it well.’” “Ewww!” cale said “Rock You Like A Hurricane?” “Yeah,” I said. “So… fucking… gnarsty… Let’s vacate. I’m gonna need a Silkwood shower to wash all these cooties off me.” I placed the paper back into the printer just the way I found it, and we both left, locking the door behind us.

376 I .

Doug’s shadow came home that Sunday night, toting his luggage and huffing. Cale and I were slumped on the living room couch, watching teevee with the sound turned off and playing quarters. We heard Doug’s bedroom door open and shut, and we tensed, ready for the inevitable shout of “Who’s been in my room!” After a few minutes, Doug’s door opened again, and we heard his footsteps scuffling down the hall. We both hunched down in the fat couch, burying our shoulders in the cushions. I saw Doug’s shadow on the wall and heard his breathing. He cleared his throat and said, “Cale? I need to talk to you.” Cale gave me a pained expression like he’d just swallowed something sour, got up and walked to the hallway to speak with Doug. I couldn’t decipher their mumbles, but it didn’t sound angry. Doug’s shadow seemed to gesticulate a lot while he was talking, something I had never seen it do before. Usually, it just clung to the wall like a water stain. I didn’t know if this meant he was agitated or what, but it meant something. A few minutes later, Cale came back and sat down next to me on the couch. The shuffling sound down the hall told me Doug was returning to his den of iniquity. I shrugged my shoulders at Cale. He smiled and said, “He’s moving out. And no, it’s not because we were in his room. I don’t think he realizes he was violated yet. Anyway, he says he’s moving out by Tuesday. He wants me to give him the current power bill so he can figure his share, and he says I can keep the security deposit since he can’t give me a month notice.” I shook my head. “Maybe he knows, or suspects…” Cale cut me off. “No, man, I think it was BRIGHTEYES. You should’ve seen him. He was grinning this big toothy Hamburglar grin the whole time he was talking to me. I think he’s convinced himself he’s in love, and he’s moving to Lawrence to be with her.” Cale laughed to himself, then he said, “He’s lost a lot of weight. I think he might have been working out this whole time. I totally didn’t recognize him. If I had seen him on the street, I woulda walked right past him and not even known we lived in the same house.” Cale asked if I wanted Iggy’s room once he was gone. He offered to keep the rent at $50 a month. He’d just tell his mom to send enough money to cover the rest.

377 N . .

I thought about it. It would be nice to have more space, but the thought of living in the same room as Doug and his Internet nooky dungeon gave me the heebie-beegees. I decided to stay in the closet. Cale kept the room empty the rest of the semester. In fact, he kept it locked the whole time and told people it was cursed. He got hold of some yellow police barrier tape and crisscrossed the doorway. On the teevee, some Star Trek Next Gen thing was on. Captain Jean Luc Picard’s face was blood red from a blinking emergency light, and the camera’s view jerked all around like an earthquake. “Dude,” I said, tapping Cale’s knee. “Camper Van Jerry Garcia.” Cale yelled “Damn! Damn! Damn!” and slapped his knee. Yes!

378 G . .

the girl on the bus (1994)

She rides your bus every morning. Sits in the very front, in the old people section. She’s pretty. Knit gloves, corduroy jacket, sandals with thick socks. Long light-red hair. Young, maybe 19, 20, long and slender as a willow branch. You don’t know what colour her eyes are, but she smiles your way almost every time she gets on the bus. It’s a Yes-we-ride-the- same-bus-and-I-see-you-every-morning smile, but it’s friendly. She never shows her teeth when she smiles, but you bet they’re straight. And white. You bet she smells like ivory soap and flowers, with a hint of patchouli oil and clove cigarettes. She gets off two stops before you do, at the university, she and her backpack. She almost always pauses just before leaving, her hand curled around the silver rail along the wall, and flashes you a quick I’ll-see-you-on-the-bus-tomorrow smile. Then, she’s gone. You work during the day. The bus drops you off a few blocks from the restaurant. You’re a line cook. 8-3, weekdays. You don’t talk to the other cooks much. You just listen to their music — their banda, their salsa, their cumbias — and fry and flip and mix and stir and scoop and hand the waitresses their orders on greasy plates. During the winter, the owner overcompensates for the cold outside and cranks up the heat. In the dining room it’s nice, but in the kitchen, with the grill and the fryers and the ovens, it’s miserable. In no time, you’re sticky with sweat, greasy balls of warm moisture crawling down your back. The orders are all the same, variations on a theme: Eggs, bacon or sausage, hotcakes or toast, maybe a hamburger steak or a ham steak or a T-bone steak. You don’t have to think about it much. Your hands know what to do. Your eyes, too, taking in exactly what is needed from the scribbled orders ripped from the waitresses’ pads. Your mind wanders.

379 Y . . You wonder what she does. Probably lives at home, in the same bedroom she’s lived in forever. Maybe she lives in an apartment with roommates, two to a room to cut the rent in smaller pieces. Maybe she lives on her own, with cats. Tapestries and beaded things on the walls. A hand-me-down couch and love seat to match in the living room, a mattress on the ﬂoor in the bedroom. Blue lights to replace the bright white ones. No television, but a nice birthday present stereo system. Maybe she buys all her CDs used. Does she work? Maybe she’s a counter girl at some shop. Maybe she works at a clothing store. Not an antiseptic mall store, but a funky vintage Delano clothing store on Douglas. Maybe she works at the S.P.C.A., caring for animals, or at an old-folks home. Maybe… …cheese on their eggs… Marti’s talking. She’s 7-3 today, 3 tables in section 2 and 4 in 3. She’s holding a plate at you, her arm sticking through the window between the kitchen and the dining room. You ask what kind of cheese, she says cheddar, and you grab a handful and sprinkle it on top of her 2-egg scramble. Thanks. She smacks her gum and walks away. You look at the wall clock. 10:30. 90 minutes before your 15- minute break. 90 minutes before you can wash some of this grease from your hands and face, before you can put your head under cold running water and pat your buzz-cut clean again. Cleaner, anyway. You can’t imagine this job with long hair. Like hers. You get an order for a breakfast sandwich, no yolk. It’s for Liza, 10-4, section 5, near the bathrooms on the side. Crack the egg, slop the yolk back and forth in the two halves of shell and let the clear white ooze into the metal Mason jar ring on the grill that fries it in shape. Open-faced English mufﬁn half and a slice of American cheese. Egg on top with a spatula. Ladle the thick gravy, lumpy with sausage, but not too much. Slide the plate of food onto the stainless steel shelf in the window, under the red heat lamp, with the order slip sticking from under the plate like a tongue. Order up. Later, 6:15, and you’re walking the long city blocks to the university, the collar of your blue workshirt still wet from soaking your head. You’re running a late for your 6:30 class, Child Development, a

380 O . . general education class. You like to get there a bit early to ﬁnish the reading you’re usually behind on. Plus, it allows you to sit in the very back, away from everyone. You’re sure the sponge bath in the deep sink does little to hide the fry cook smell. It’s dark outside and cold by the time class ends. You walk to the bus stop two blocks away. Get onto the bus. Go home. And you read. Do homework. Watch teevee. Shower. Go to sleep. In your single bed, wedged against a wall under the window, you look up through the venetian blinds at the trees. At the trees. At the moon. At the stars. The next morning is full of rain and cold. By the time the bus comes to your stop, you are soaked to the skin, shoes bleeding cold water and mud. You slosh over to your usual seat, in the middle, next to a window, and pull out a book from your dripping backpack. Two stops later, at her bus stop, only two high-schoolers get on.

381 U . sorrow, part one (1994)

Harold had been rising slowly through the clouds for several hours. The edges of his pant legs and the back of his flannel shirt billowed and flapped in the breeze of upward movement. He glanced at his wristwatch, then at the unseen earth beneath his red hi-top sneakers. He pulled the brim of his baseball cap closer to his eyes and looked upwards, toward the sun. The thick hush of moist air within the cloud bank began to thin, and, after a few moments, dissipated as Harold rose up and out. A wide panoramic view of fluffy cloud tops below and the darker cloud bottoms above spread 360 degrees around Harold, extending into blue forever. Harold slowed to a stop just above the cloud floor and scanned the far reaches of the horizon, looking left, right, all around. He floated forward slowly as he looked, his dangling feet kicking up white tufts of vapor as he changed direction. The zig-zagging path of his sneakers etched a ski-run trail through the clouds. Momentarily, Harold stopped, taking off his ball cap and wiping the cool moisture collected on his brow with the back of his hand. The air was wide-wide open up here, fresher than any Harold had ever tasted. It was crisp, ripe Red Delicious apple crisp, and it prickled his skin like a blast of cool air from a refrigerator in summer time. He breathed deeply, took off his wire-rimmed glasses and wiped them with the tail of his shirt, then replaced them on his freckled nose once they were clear. Harold checked his watch again, bringing its face close to see through the beadlets of water built up on the inside of the glass case, then proceeded back and forth across the softly undulating cloud terrain. Searching, left and right, all around, his body angled slightly forward as he moved. Harold brought both hands to his mouth, cupping the word he shouted between them. Chinook!

382 R . . He stopped abruptly again, his hands opening and closing, opening and closing, his head angled slightly. Chinook! He spun his body to the left, moving forward a little faster, following his voice. He stopped again, right hand reaching into his trouser pocket and pulling out a yard-long jute rope, one end tied into a fraying loop and the other sporting a chipped metal clasp. Harold slid his right hand through the loop and allowed the rope to hang down beneath his feet, carving a rat-tail trail in the milky froth. Chinook! He stopped again, kicking up cloud as he skidded to a halt. His left hand cupped his ear as he slowly rotated, his eyes panning. Suddenly, harold jerked his head around, leading with his ear. Nothing. Nothing but the wind. He moved slowly forward, his face pinched with concentration. There — way, way in the distance — a sound so slight it could be imagined, yet just above the shushing wind. Harold’s eyes pinched tighter, his body angling towards the sound, his right hand clutching the worn rope. There it was, for sure this time, faint but distinct. The far-off bark of a dog. He moved faster now, cupping his hands to call out, Chinook! His call was answered, this time closer, just over the next hill of clouds. Faster and faster, his arms spread in greeting, his face split into a toothy grin. Harold’s whole body shook, his kicking feet leaving a rippling wake behind him. Faster, faster, up and over a cumulous rise, Harold flew, disappearing behind a mountain of white mist. The clear sounds of laughter, of joyous barking and excited shouts, ﬁlled the space between the clouds.

383 O .

my very ﬁrst real live nekkid lady (1996)

The first job I ever had was in the seventh grade. I answered some sort of ad at my junior high school in my shitty hometown, some photocopied flier push-pinned to some bulletin board asking for boys around 12 years old to sell subscriptions for the shitty local newspaper. I guess this guy Mike Dewey, a fat guy with a beard and a sketchy white panel van, was hired by the paper to increase circulation around the county. He’d pile about ten of us seventh-graders into his van on a Saturday and drive us to some tumbleweed town, drop us off at residential street corners in pairs, then pick us up at designated spots some time later. We made a greenback for every subscription we got. On good nights the best of us would make $12 or so, plus Mr. Dewey would always throw in fast food at the end of the night. The job sounds shady, and I wonder if that shit would fly nowadays. I picture Dewey as Tom Waits smoking a stogie, but he was more Newman from Seinfeld sporting an impressive molestache. I’ve never been involved in organized sports, but I imagine the dynamic between the kids in that rape van was similar to that of any team of sweaty boys on the brink of their teenaged years. As we’d be driving off to some no-name town on the edge of our county map, we’d make fart jokes and fag jokes and sex jokes and harass each other with a mixture of playfulness and viciousness. I was a fey little milksop and so was very often the butt of jokes, but I had a quick wit and a big mouth so I could hold my own most of the time. If I could keep the big guys just this side of wanting to beat my ass in a show of swelling manhood, then I was doing fine. Sometimes I’d carry a Yo Momma’s So Fat wisecrack a bit too far and suddenly have a snarling, huffing 12-year-old boy in the throes of prepubescence in my face, but generally I was tolerated. Not respected, but not reviled. I was funny, so I survived. I remember this one kid — who probably wasn’t any older than the rest of us, but who was surely more genetically advanced than

384 W . . . the rest of us — showing off his newly-acquired bush of pubic hair. I don’t suppose I had any, nor did any of the rest, so we were all suitably impressed by the guy’s bush sticking over the top of his short pants. I don’t remember when I got my ﬁrst pubic hairs. You’d think it would be a momentous occasion, but I was just suddenly bushy as that oaf guy in the van and have been ever since. Could I go back and do it all over again, I’d light a candle or something. We had clipboards with worksheets displaying our spiel about how the prospective customer would save up to $200 a month with coupons alone, which would more than pay for the subscription! Plus, we would tell them, they would help us kids earn points towards trips to theme parks like Six Flags Magic Mountain and Disneyland. We never knew of any point system and often doubted the existence of future trips to amusement parks, but Dewey actually took us to Knott’s Berry Farm once and even bummed us money when we ran out, so I guess it wasn’t all a lie. We’d prattle our spiel in a practiced monotone, show our clipboards with graphics of coupons and roller coasters, and ask disinterested rednecks to subscribe. No money was exchanged, just signatures and sometimes a drink of water or a bathroom visit. I once asked a creepy homeowner who already got the paper for a drink of water. He apparently thought this was an odd request, even though I was a 12-year-old kid stranded in some fetid cowtown 30 miles from my own shit-brown burg on a sizzling-hot summer day, but he eventually presented me with a Mayor McCheese collector cup of lukewarm tap water. The bastard waited for me to take a big swig, then asked nonchalantly why I wasn’t afraid of being poisoned. I froze, cheeks bulging with water, and stared at him wide-eyed. He said something about how many crazy people there were in this world, people who wouldn’t think twice about slipping cyanide into some kid’s Happy Meal and watching as his face turned black and his tongue puffed up like a sick pink marshmallow. I shook my head vigorously, the unswallowed water sloshing against the insides of my bulging cheeks. And the man stood there looking smug at the idea of fucking with this hot, sweaty, thirsty 12-year-old kid, then he turned and walked back into his house and shut the door behind him. I spat the water into his azaleas and took off running down the street.

385 N . We all had stories about fuckers yelling at us or slamming doors in our faces, so we devised a way to repay them: We’d steal their peepholes. You know, those little peepholes in front doors? They’re made of two pieces that screw into each other, one from the front and one from the back. If you had strong fingers, you could unscrew the half facing the outside and look through it like a telescope. Some nights, we’d end up with more peepholes than orders, and whoever got the most at the end of the night was declared not a fag. I don’t remember what I did with all of mine, but I must’ve had a shoebox full by the end of the summer, each one representing some mean person who’d done me wrong or just a knock that went unanswered. We probably chucked them at passing cars. The very best opportunity this job afforded me was the chance to see my very first real live nekkid lady. I had seen pictures before, whether from a ’70s Playboy swiped from the back of my dad’s closet or movies on HBO or some rain-soaked porno found in tatters in a field, but I had never seen a real live nekkid lady before. I was in some town, some nameless town on another scalding hot Central California day, and I was working with another kid who was across the street delivering the same pitch I was. I came to a house with a fence around it and trees in the yard. The front door had little windows at eye level plus tippy-toes, and I peeked through a gap between the miniature blue-and-white checkered curtains. My hand froze just inches from knocking. From where I was standing, one eye pinched closed and the other wide open, hands cupping out the glare, I was granted a gorgeous view of a real live nekkid lady. She was in a bathroom with the door ajar, and she was washing her long chestnut hair in the sink, and she was just as nekkid as any nekkid lady in the history of nekkid ladies. And I could see everything… long slender legs, tight heart-shaped ass like two teardrops dangling from her spine, perky titties with pointy pink nipples, side-view of luxuriant light-brown bush. I stood transfixed for a full minute, then I ran off the porch and across the street to get my partner. After all, what good is seeing your very first real live nekkid lady if you don’t share your good fortune with someone else, someone who could vouch for you and say, “Yeah, huh! Yeah, huh! We did too see a real live nekkid lady!”

386 J . I must’ve been something to see, rushing at my little partner, cheeks flushed with discovery, and babbling something like, “Dude, dude, a nekkid lady, she’s all buck-assed nekkid, and she’s right over there! C’mon!” We ran back across the street and took turns sneaking glimpses at this achingly lovely nekkid lady washing her hair. After ogling for a couple of moments, we were suddenly filled with the desire for greatness, to share this ultimate of preteen experiences with as many of our horny comrades as possible, so we raced down the street to find more of our buddies. We spied two, waved our arms and shouted, “Hey! Hey! There’s a nekkid lady! C’mon!” In under a minute, the four of us were clustered on that little porch, kicking and clawing for a peep at the naked lady. Just as she was finishing her cream rinse and drying her voluminous locks, a truck pulled into the driveway of the very house into which we were spying. Without hesitation, we scrambled out of that yard and didn’t stop until we were safe behind a dumpster in an alley several blocks away. I wish I could’ve seen the nekkid lady’s face when she was told a clot of 12-year-old boys was peering into her window. I hope she wasn’t mad. I hope she kinda smiled. Of course, we were the center of attention when we hooked up with everyone else later that evening. We gave intricate details from four different points of view and related moment-by-moment play- by-plays, and I was declared a hero for sharing my discovery. Even Mr. Dewey was proud and patted me on my back. After that, nekkid ladies started appearing like magic, often inviting the lucky 12-year-old horndog into their velvety boudoirs for further pleasures of the flesh, but none of these sightings was confirmed by more than one person and so were suspect. It was some time before I saw a nekkid lady again, but I did get invited into a lady’s house for Oreos one day late in the summer. I hoped she would take off her clothes and wash her hair in the sink, but she demured. We just small-talked and ate cookies. By the end, after a whole summer of being dropped off at shitty street corners in equally shitty towns, I finally got sick of it and quit. My mother says I used to come home crying because I hated the job and hated the other kids for fucking with me so much. I don’t remember why I quit. I just did.

387 O . .

how I escaped my shitty little town (1997)

My friend Brady was a bone-hard daddy with a mile-long dick and a wallet so thick with old porno movie tickets it took him a full minute and a half to pull it outta the ass pocket of his acid-washed jeans. Brady bragged he’d slept with more women in high school than I’d sat next to, but the only woman I’d ever seen in the company of Brady was the 99DDD Dungeons & Dragons wet dream tattooed on his arm with stainless steel coffee cup titty armor sitting astride a snarling white polar bear and waving a 13-foot long battle axe in one hand and a bloody Viking head in the other. Brady had an encyclopedic knowledge of every porn star who had ever stepped off a Greyhound bus in downtown Hollywood looking for a big break and ended up in movies like Edward Penishands and Star Whores and Das Booty. His collection of Hustler and Playboy and Penthouse and Fat Nasty Nekkid Biker Babes On Crack lined every free bit of wall space in his room and spilled out into boxes and crates and bookshelves in his garage. Brady said he would never get a hot-lookin’ chick to work his wienie like a performing seal works a bicycle horn without the cash, Slash, without the mean green, Jelly Bean, so he was itching, he was ready, Brady was primed for some shit to go down. And then there was Tony Baloney, but everyone called him Grape Ape, but not because he was big, because Tony Baloney was a little scraunty bastard with big-assed radar ears — had more ears than a methamphetamine addict got no teeth — and the funkiest looking head, looked just like a grape seed, so we called his goofy almond- head shaped ass Grape Ape. Tony had been fucked his whole life and ignored by girls and teachers and his parents — hell, everybody except for me and Brady — and he was ready to kick the dust of this shitty town off his Kangaroos and see the world. But, he was poor, and he was stupid, and the only job he could ﬁnd was sweeping the parking lot after the minor league games out at the baseball diamond at the edge of town, and he never had enough money to get ahead. Tony was itching, he was ready, he was primed for some shit to go down.

388 U . .

And then there was me, Plan Boy 2000, with a ﬁstful of Martin Scorcese videos and a head full of bad ideas. I was always the smart one who was gonna work my way through two years of community college as a teller in the very same bank where my dad was the CEO. The very same bank that had big oil paintings of my granddad and my great-granddad on display in thick old fashioned mahogany frames. I was the one with the pretty girlfriend already picking out china patterns and planning backyard barbecues and looking forward to squeezing out spawn like a wild salmon. I was the one who had it made in the shade, Roller Blade, had my future all planned out long before I was a twinkle in my momma’s eye, only I didn’t want any of it, because I hated my parents, and I hated the banking business, and as a matter of fact I was starting to hate my pretty girlfriend, but there was nothing I hated more on this entire planet than this shitty little town, and I was gonna get the hell outta there even if it was in the back of a police cruiser with the lights blazing and the front pages of every newspaper in the county shouting my name in large capital letters. I was more than itching for something to happen, man, I was breaking out in hives. So, I hatched a plan and decided me and Brady and Tony Baloney were skippin’ town with a quickness, only we weren’t gonna slink outta burg with our tails tucked between our legs, no, we were gonna go out with style, with class, with a BANG! that people would still be talking about for years to come. And as my two accessories sat cross-legged on my bedroom ﬂoor, I brought Exhibit A from beneath my bed: a fully loaded semi-automatic small calibre solution to our problems. As their eyes went wide with What the fuck? I told them my plan. It would be an inside job, see, with me working the drive-thru teller at my dad’s bank, and Brady and Tony Baloney coming up in the drive- thru in a borrowed car. I say, “Can I help you?” Brady shows me the gun, and Tony Baloney says, “Show me the money!” The bank’s got a policy drilled in stone, you see, that says, “If they ask for it, you give it to them. Your life isn’t worth the money.” Boom boom boom, I fear for my life! Boom boom boom, I put the money in the cassette and put it in the suction tube! Boom boom boom, Brady and Tony slowly and calmly drive away, and I wait a few minutes before I report it because I’m so nervous at having a gun

389 R . . pointed at me. Hell, I’ll probably get a month’s free counseling out of it and be proclaimed a futhermuckin’ hero, and my comrades will be waiting for me in a hotel room in Reno with three showgirls who look just like the tattoo on Brady’s arm! And my friends are down with this caper, brothers and sisters, they are ready to dig in to my shindig, and little dollar signs light up in their eyes, and Tony Baloney says to me, he says with a shaking voice, he says, “You know, I’ve got a monkey head mask I could wear, and nobody would even know it was me.” And I say, “Goddamn it, Grape Ape, you show up in a monkey head mask, and nobody’s even gonna know the difference, you big goofy cantina scene in Star Wars looking motherfucker. Besides, I’ll take that gun from Brady’s hand and shoot you with it myself! Just stay cool and try not to drool, fool, and I’ll serve up the money like pasta e fagioli!” The big day arrives, and I am cool as a cucumber, slippery as a snake in the green green grass, and I’m working the drive-thru teller like I always do, and everything is fine as fine wine, and the appointed time comes… (dot dot dot) and goes (period). Click clock click, the clock ticks, and my eyes be picking out every white sedan that comes galumphing through the drive-thru, but not a damn one of them is carrying Brady and Tony Baloney. Click clock click, sweat’s beading on my lip, and still no Brady, and still no Tony Baloney. Click clock click, goddamn it, my hands are shaking. Where the fuck are they? My nerves are quaking. Where the fuck are they? The short hairs on the back of my neck be dancing the lambada. Click clock click, I drop two $20 dollar bills onto the teller booth floor and bend over to get them and bump my goddamn head on the table on the way up BAM! And as I rub my head and look outta my window, what should I see? A white sedan being driven by some dumb motherfucker in a goddamned monkey head mask! And the silly motherfucker in the passenger side is wearing a Casper The Friendly Ghost Mask! Believe you me, brothers and sisters, my hands were shaking more with rage than with fear as I pushed the intercom button and hissed through clenched teeth, “May I help you?” And the monkey head just looks at me, and I’m looking at the monkey head, and he’s looking at me, and I say it again, I say, “May I help you?” and the monkey head turns and looks at the Casper The Friendly Ghost head then back at me, then

390 N . nods its monkey head up and down. So I clench my teeth so tight the windows in a thousand counties shatter into a bzillion tiny pieces, and I punch the intercom button, and I whisper, “Take off the goddamn monkey head.” And the monkey head looks back at the ghost head, then back at me, and shakes its fuckin’ monkey head no. So, I hit the intercom button with the palm of my hand and hiss, “Where’s the gun, Peckerhead?” And the monkey head looks down then brings up the gun like it’s a dead fish pinched between his thumb and forefinger, and he shows it to me, he fucking shows it to me! So I pound the fucking intercom button four or five fucking times, and I say, “Where’s the goddamn note?” And the monkey head is still sitting there showing me the gun, and he looks over his shoulder at the Casper head, and I say it again, I say, “Where’s the goddamned note?” And I hear them muttering back and forth, and I see the Casper head climb into the back seat while the monkey head opens the glove compartment door. And I take my knuckle and jab it into the intercom button, and I say, “Do not tell me you forgot the fuckin’ note, you fuckin’ monkey head motherfucker! Do not tell me you forgot the fuckin’ note!!!” And then I feel a tap on the shoulder. “Is everything okay?” The screech of tires muffled by bulletproof glass blends with the crack of my neck as I turn to see the shift manager standing behind me, his eyes darting from me to the teller window then back to me again. I can’t speak. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. “You’re face is all white. Your forehead is soaking wet. Do you need a break, young man?” And I manage to croak, “Yes, I need a break.” And as the shift manager presses his head against the glass of the teller booth and looks at the molten black tire trail embedded in the drive-thru pavement, I slowly walk out of the teller booth and walk through the lobby and walk out the front door, and I keep on walking down the street, and I feel something in the fist of my left hand, and I look down, and it’s those two $20 bills I’d dropped on the floor, so I take a left at the used clothing store and march toward the Greyhound bus station with a brand new plan, and I never look back.

391 A .

garanimals (1997)

When I was a kid, my mother would take me shopping for school clothes every August at a department store called Mervyn’s. We went there because they had a good selection of Garanimals clothes. Garanimals was a clothing line for kids that enabled them to pick their own clothes and be ensured a perfect match. Everything had a tag in the shape of an animal — like a purple giraffe or a yellow zebra or a green hippo — and you simply matched up the tags. My mom would take me to the shirt rack and let me loose to pick whatever shirt I wanted, then I’d bring my shirt back for final approval, and we’d head for the pants rack. I’d hold the tag of the shirt in one hand and flip through all the pants looking for the right tag. Most of the time, I’d find exactly what I was looking for, and I’d give this little shout of victory and bring it back to my mom. It was very empowering to make my own choices, and my mother liked it because I wouldn’t mix stripes and polka dots. I now find myself wishing people came with Garanimals tags. Imagine all the time you’d save by avoiding relationships that were doomed to failure. Instead of banging your head on the wall for months at a time and wondering what you were doing wrong and what you could try next to make this relationship work and going to therapy and counselling in an effort to force things to gel then going through a horrid break-up experience that left you drained and tired, you’d just… know… from the very beginning… whether or not you should be together. Imagine meeting someone in a bar or an art opening or a party, and you start a conversation, and there is laughter, and there are emphatic nods of agreement, and they’re cute, and you’re feeling cute, and you’re making all kinds of eye contact, and suddenly four hours have gone by so effortlessly you’ve barely noticed. It’s time to whip out the tags. You’d reach into your pocket and pull out your orange rhino and show it to them… and they’d kinda smile, nod their head, reach into their backpack, and pull out a pink zebra.

392 L . .

And you’d both laugh a kind of wistful laugh, because you’d both be thinking, “Oh man, that’s too bad, we were getting along great and everything.” But you’d also be thinking, “Whew, that was close.” And you’d be so relieved, because now you’d be able to concentrate on a friendship and not have to muck it up trying to force it into some kind of hopeless romantic entanglement that would leave you both unable to be in the same room together. You’d save so much heartache and frustration. Imagine the joy of finding your true soulmate purple lion and knowing this was the one you’ve been searching for, this was the fabled perfect match. There could be clubs — the Brown Pony Room, the Magenta Kitty Lounge — where you’d be guaranteed a perfect partner. Personal ads would be revolutionized. No more lengthy descriptions to read or cryptic codes to figure out, just Silver Tiger Seeks Same. BOOM, you’ve said it all. Search services could offer help in finding those elusive lemon leopards and tangerine iguanas. Of course, there’d be some asshole who got hold of a bunch of tags. You’d show them your purple lion, and they’d start rummaging around in their backpack, mumbling, “Purple lion… Purple lion… I know had one of those here somewhere…” My Garanimals tag would probably be an orange-striped duck- billed platypus, and the only other orange-striped duck-billed platypus on the entire planet would be some 67-year-old woman in Outer Mongolia I’d never meet in a million years. I’m sure the whole point of living is striving to gain something positive from every relationship, and just because a relationship doesn’t make it to full-blown ‘till death do us part doesn’t mean it wasn’t a positive relationship full of wonderful feelings and emotions and lessons. But, still, knowing would be nice. And I keep thinking about the times when I’d find the perfect shirt at Mervyn’s, and I’d run to the pants section and look through every single pair and not find the right tag. I’d look at everything three or four times, then have my mother look, until finally, with my head hanging low and my shoulders all slumped, I’d heave a heavy sigh and settle for something that sorta kinda matched but not perfectly and hope that no one noticed. Especially me.

393 A . .

everyday magic (1999)

I do this thing with a cup of ramen noodles, you know, like Cup O’ Noodles? They’re chicken and mushroom flavour, and I bought them from the deli down the street from my work about a year ago. I ate them right at my desk as I was working on my computer, and that was that, they were gone. The next day, I’m working at my computer, and I’m hungry, and I start thinking about that cup of ramen I had the day before and how I want another one, but I’m out of cash. Man, I’m hungry, and I start wishing I hadn’t eaten those noodles so they would still be there at my desk so I could eat them again. My stomach lets out this little moan of hunger, so I go to the water fountain to get some water, and when I come back, well, what should be right there on my desk, but a cup of chicken and mushroom ramen. What the hell? I think someone’s playing a joke or something, like they had heard me talking to myself and happened to have another chicken and mushroom ramen around. I can’t figure it out, but I eat it anyway because I’m hungry. The next day, I’m still broke, and I’m running late, so I don’t have time to brown bag a lunch. Again, I find myself in front of my computer wishing I had another one of those cups of ramen, and BOOM! out of the corner of my eye, there it is, a cup of chicken and mushroom ramen. It’s just suddenly… there… and I know for damn sure it wasn’t there just a few seconds before. It freaks me out a little, like someone is just fucking with me. Then I start wondering if maybe I was somehow conjuring the cup of noodles by wishing for it, so I close my eyes and wish for another. When I open them, it’s just the same cup of ramen. No new ramen. Whatever, someone’s playing games, but I eat it, too, because I’m hungry. Well, that was Friday, and that Saturday I wake up in my room and stretch and think to myself about getting some breakfast, and it’s still on my mind, you know, this ramen thing, so I kind of jokingly wish to out loud for another cup of ramen, I actually say, “Boy, I sure

394 N . . .

do wish I had a cup of ramen noodles right about now,” and I’m chuckling to myself because whoever did it at work is gonna have a hard time getting here in my room without me noticing. Nothing happens, so I get up to take a shower, and when I come out wrapped in a towel… There it is on my dresser! A styrofoam cup of ramen noodles! Chicken and mushroom! So, I yell out, “Hey, this ain’t funny anymore! Stop fuckin’ around!” But all I hear is silence. I stare at the Cup O’ Noodles and squeeze my eyes shut and wish for another one, only this time pork flavoured, and I open my eyes, but it’s just that same chicken and mushroom flavoured ramen staring back at me. I close my eyes and wish for a new car, shiny and bright red, no green, a forest green Lamborghini parked right outside my front stoop, then I go over to the window and look down five stories to the street below. Nothing. No car. No soup. Sidewalk. I don’t eat the noodles this time, but the next day I wake up and wish for another one. Nothing happens. So, I ate the ramen and wished for another one. Nothing. No new ramen. Monday morning, I wake up and wish for another ramen, and BADABING! there on my bookshelf next to a stack of Sports Illustrateds is a cup of chicken and mushroom ramen. I guess that’s it. Once a day I can wish for a cup of chicken and mushroom ramen, and that’s it until the next day. I can’t get another one unless I’ve already eaten the one I wished for. I’m not sure yet if it’s the exact same ramen each time, and my wish that I hadn’t eaten it keeps coming true, or if it’s a brand new one each time. It’s kind of annoying, you know, that all I can conjure is a cup of ramen and not, like, a million dollars or a big house on a hill, but it’s still kind of cool. For six or seven months I used to wish for one every day, but I’m getting tired of chicken and mushroom ramen, so I only do it once or twice a week now. Sometimes not even that much.

395 D . .

the butt triplets (1999)

The ceremony began the same way at every apartment in every seaside town where my family washed ashore when I was a kid. The night after the first day of unpacking would be reserved for me and my kid sister Nelly and our new rooms. After all the sweaters and shirts and pants had been unpacked and put away, and all the dishes and pots and pans had been stacked into new cupboards and drawers, and all my father’s crisp Navy uniforms were lined in single file in the hall closet, there would a point where my mother and father would pause and exhale deeply. They would look around the living room with their arms akimbo, surveying the empty boxes turned upside down in a pile in the corner and the stacks of bulging boxes yet to be emptied, and one or the other would look at me and Nelly and say something on the order of, “Well, I guess it’s time for you guys to get started.” This was our cue to grab our boxes and drag them into our own rooms and begin the process of reassembling a space roughly resembling the last one, a place we could claim until the next time we moved to follow our dad’s aircraft carrier up and down the coast. I had exactly three boxes, marked with their contents in black felt tip: Alex (Clothes), Alex (Books), and Alex (Star Wars). This last box was the most important of all, holding within its weary cardboard sides the keys to my grade school identity. I was a freak for anything remotely connected with George Lucas and had every imaginable action figure and spaceship associated with the Star Wars universe. Buried beneath piles of Boba Fetts and Jabba The Hutts and Luke Skywalkers, however, was something even more precious than my favourite metal Star Wars lunch box: the crusty pair of driving gloves my dad gave me that were used solely for playground four square. I grabbed a cardboard flap of this most prized of boxes and dragged it backwards down the hallway toward my bedroom, but then Nelly shouldered past me with her enormous box labelled Nelly (Barbies) and hip checked me against the wall.

396 W . .

“Move, stupid!” she sneered, then she threw her box dramatically to the ground and yelled, “Mom, Bud pushed me!” I dove into my room and closed the door behind me before my mother had a chance to yell at me. I knelt beside my bed, already covered by a blanket and pillowcase set decorated with streaking TIE Fighters and X-Wings, and I gently opened my box. I dug through the characters and accessories, the dioramas and vehicles, reached my arm all the way down to the bottom, felt around, then pinched my pointer and middle ﬁnger around something soft. I gingerly pulled my hand from the mass of plastic to reveal my four square gloves, tied together with a shoelace. I held them in my hand and admired the dirty creases and folds caused by countless battles on the blacktop, the cracks in the knuckles, the scrapes grated into the palms. As I slipped on my gloves and unpacked and catalogued the rest of my treasures, I had no idea I would meet my most dreaded enemies of my entire elementary school career the very next day.

***

Bertha, Buelah, and Bathsheba Butt were the biggest, meanest, most foul-spirited and wicked little fifth-graders in the history of fifth-graders the world over. They were ruthless evil incarnate, a trio of foul thugs ruling the four square court like Tiny Town Mafioso. Only they weren’t so tiny. From a 10-year-old’s vantage point, they were a living, breathing three-headed hydra doling out wanton pain and destruction. Colossal. Gargantuan. Cyclopean. Roget’s Thesaurus doesn’t have enough synonyms for way bigger than you to describe these beasts. The identical sisters weighed 80 pounds each, at least, with fists like concrete blocks and arms rippling with brute strength. I’m sure they could’ve easily bench-pressed 100 pounds, and their butts… Oh, never has a trio of thugs been so aptly named as The Butt Triplets. I was sure you could land jet planes on their backsides, their magnificent and frightening backsides.

397 H .

I was the new kid once again at this, my latest school, after having just moved from Someplace Else for the fourth or fifth time in two years. I was really shy, painfully shy, but I had two strengths that allowed me to insinuate myself into schoolyard societies from Bremerton, Washington, to San Diego, California: I could read four grades ahead of everybody else, and I kicked ass in four square. Picture Mark Spitz, his smooth chest festooned with seven Olympic gold medals, standing before a cheering stadium and soaking up the multinational roar of applause. Swap swimming for four square, and that would have been me on that championship podium. Had four square been a more respected sport, my mom’s mantelpiece would have been strewn with statues of little golden boys holding pebbled four square balls over their heads in triumph. I had mastered all the tricks of the trade: baby bouncies; corner shots; backstops; double-troubles; fakies; spins; and my signature move, the mighty Behind-The-Back Schlebotnick. If I whipped out the Schlebotnick, just forget it, just pick your jaw off the floor and put your eyeballs back in their sockets and march to the hind end of the line, Buster Brown, because you’re outta there. The first thing I did on the first day of some new school was check out my favourite book from the library: My Side Of The Mountain, by Jean George, a great book about a kid who runs away from home to live in the forest with his pet peregrine falcon. Then I would suss out the schoolyard competition at the four square courts. I’d stand at a respectful distance from the line of kids waiting to hop into the first square, rubbing my jaw in deep thought. I’d gauge second and third square strategies and watch the moves of the servers. I’d listen to variations in blacktop lingo and check out the local procedure for calling rules. Then, I’d hop in line and wait. The servers would always think they were hot stuff, especially those holding the position for consecutive recesses, but I’d knock out the second square with a quick cornershot. When I’d advance to second square and the next person in line entered the first square, the server would inevitably announce, “Rules! No corner shots!” And they’d smirk at me as if they had defused my only bomb. The fools. I’d take out square three with a deft fakie with a backspin for sugar and occupy it, smiling like a mercenary when the server

398 E . .

shouted, “Rules! No corners and no fakies and no spins!” They’d try to look smug, but they’d be worried by this point. I remember this one server who tried to ban everything, but I demanded he call them out by name, so he shouted, “No corners, no fakies, no spins, no backstops, no bumpers, no over-heads, no toe- peggers, no double-bouncies, no baby-bouncies, and no punchers!” You should’ve seen the look of triumph in his eyes, thinking he had plucked all the fruit from my cherry tree and was about to chop me down, but I still had my secret weapon whose name only I knew: the dreaded Behind-The-Back Schlebotnick. Once I unleashed the Schlebotnick, victory was mine. I would cement my reputation as king of the four square court by reigning supreme all recess. I was a kind king, however, and took days off to let the other kids play while I sat under a tree at the far end of the playground reading White Fang and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and Blubber and The Cat Ate My Gym Suit and Hello God, It’s Me Margaret. It added an air of mystery, I figured, and a little mystery is almost always a good thing. On the second day of this latest of new schools, I had already claimed the crown and was holding court before an admiring audience when the malevolence made its first appearance. I was playing an easy game, not really paying attention and thinking more about adventures in the forests with pet peregrine falcons, when I heard one of the kids in line whisper, “Uh oh, The Butts.” I looked up and saw several kids get out of line and walk hurriedly to the swing sets. Even the kids in the squares eyed each other nervously and shuffled their feet, finally removing themselves one by one by one until only I was left. I absentmindedly dribbled the four square ball and asked, “What’s wrong? Don’t you guys wanna play anymore? Where are you guys going? Guys?” I managed to grab some kid by the shirt sleeve as he headed for the tetherballs and asked him what was up, and he nodded his head behind me and said, “The Butts, man! The Butts are coming!” I turned and saw them for the first time from across the playground, stalking toward me with faces sour as vinegar and fists clenched with purpose. The kid yanked free from my grasp and ran to the bathrooms as The Butt Triplets took the first, second, and

399 N . third squares. They were massive chunks of fifth-grader, each with shaggy dishwater blonde pigtails held together with rubberbands and tight corduroy pants and T-shirts stretched against their bulky midsections. They had milky blue eyes shadowed by pink neanderthal brow ridges and no necks whatsoever; their heads popped out of their massive shoulders like boulders perched on freckly hills. I was dumbfounded and discombobulated, squeezing the ball against my skinny chest like a drowning man with a life vest. The Butts stared me down in silence for long moments. Finally Bathsheba, the loudest and most ornery of the three, spat on the ground and snarled, “You playin’?” I cleared my throat, shuffled a bit in my sneakers, and bounced the ball a couple of times, my eyes darting from Buelah to Bertha to Bathsheba, then back again. I licked my lips and quietly said, “No rules. Everything goes.” A collective gasp rose from the kids peering from behind the jungle gym and the monkey bars and the rings and the swing sets. This was the schoolyard equivalent of staring someone in the eye and unblinkingly daring them to give you their best game — a no- holds-barred, toe-to-toe, knock-down, drag-out fight to the finish for four square glory — and was usually reserved for die-hard rivalries that brewed to boiling points and demanded public resolution. This, though, this immediate calling out of an opponent was like going to full-scale nuclear war the second the enemy’s troops massed on the border. The Butt Triplets? They didn’t even flinch. They just crouched down like sumo wrestlers, ham hands on burly knees, waiting, expressionless as junkyard pit bulls. A breeze blew over the blacktop playground. I took a deep breath, bounced the ball a few times, then held it tight between my gloved hands. The battle had begun. I served Buelah a purposely easy lob to see what she would do with it. One second she was frozen there like a hunk of granite with the red ball arcing toward her, and the next instant the ball rocketed back in my face. I didn’t even have time to blink and only through sheer force of will did I manage to stop the ball from sailing into the troposphere with a graceless fling of my flailing left hand.

400 T .

And that was the last time I saw that ball. For the next 45 seconds, I only felt it as one after another — Buelah, Bertha, and Bathsheba Butt — pummeled me with jackhammer blows from all three squares at once with 257 four square balls. I abandoned every trick I had ever used and threw all my energy into moving as fast as I could. This was no time for ﬁnesse: This was survival! They pelted me with a monsoon of red blurs, and I was there for each one, using Jedi mind tricks to arch my body and stretch my limbs in never before seen angles to return the ball. It was brutal. Every hit was returned toot sweet with lightning speed. Had it not been for the recess bell, I’m sure I would’ve spontaneously combusted, but the lumbering behemoth that was Buelah snapped into sharp focus and with the four square ball clenched between her ﬁsts and growled, “Just wait ‘till tomorrow.” With that, Beulah chucked the ball at my head, and I barely danced out of its destructive path. The Butt Triplets walked away without so much as a parting glance, and I stood there, gasping and wheezing, T-shirt soaked with sweat, hair matted to my forehead, one shoe kicked off, arms hanging limply at my sides, and thought to myself that Christmas vacation was a million miles away.

***

That night, I glowered at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling — this latest set purchased at the Navy base hobby store just two days before — and tried fruitlessly to think of anything in the whole wide world other than the vile Butt Triplets. I frowned up at the glowing green galaxies of Saturns and Jupiters and crescent moons and the plastic Millennium Falcon dangling by fishing line from the light fixture. My arms were crossed tightly across my chest, and I visualized ghastly public floggings, gruesome sessions of torture and maiming, clouds of black crows and locusts chasing the horrible sisters down the playground and plucking the porky eyes from their sockets. A soft knock at my door made me jump, and, for a moment, I considered not answering, but then I crawled from under my comforter and padded to the door and opened it.

401 H . It was Nelly, a full foot shorter than me and in her Barbie Underoos. I had the old urge to yell at her and tell her to go away and stop bothering me, to yell it really loud so the whole house would wake up, but I stifled it. Things had been really tense lately, and these late night meetings had been convening more often than usual. I let her in and closed the door behind her, watching as she clomped across my room in the dirty pink elephant slippers Aunt Ruby had given her last Christmas. When my father was home, we avoided each other until dinner, which we then ate in silence by ourselves at the kitchen table while our parents ate in front of the television in the living room. When my father was out to sea, we vied for my mother’s attention by constantly bickering and pointing out the flaws of the other. Every once in a while, though, in times of great stress or mutual need, we dropped all the static and talked civilly, big brother to kid sister. “Sometimes I hate Dad,” she said, looking down at her feet as she dangled them over the side of my bed. The ears of her slippers flopped back and forth as she kicked her legs. I sat down next to her and looked down at my bare feet, at the dirt wedged in the nail of my big toe. I told her I felt the same way sometimes, especially when Mom and Dad argued. “Yeah,” she said. The wind blew softly outside my bedroom window, brushing the azalea bushes in the flower bed against my ratty screen. That sound wasn’t scary anymore; mostly it was annoying. The fridge kicked on in the kitchen and my Obi-Wan night light flickered. “Mom cried again today,” she said, still looking down at her feet, fingers clutching little handfuls of my blanket. “Yeah?” “Yeah, I was playing Barbies in your room and…” “My room? Nelly…” She stopped kicking her feet and brandished her palm at me. “…and mom was putting away towels, and I was playing Barbies, and then it got all quiet, and then I heard her crying, and I don’t think she knew I could hear her, but I could.” The fridge buzzed. The wind blew. Something somewhere inside the house creaked. I wished we had a dog.

402 E . “Did you cry, too?” I asked. “No.” She bit the corner of her lower lip and reached down and pulled off one of her elephant slippers, scratched between her toes, flicked a pink fuzzball onto my floor, then replaced her slipper. We sat there for a while, kicking our feet and listening to the night sounds of the house and the world outside my window. After a while, Nelly plopped off my bed and walked to my door, her pointy heel bones clomping through the bottoms of her slippers. She opened the door just a crack, just wide enough for her thin body to slip through. She disappeared except for her hand, curled around the edge of the door and still grasping the knob. “Nelly?” Her hand paused, then a whisper floated from behind the door, “What?” The wind blew again, raking the bush across my screen and fluttering the curtains. “Stay out of my room when I’m not home.” I stared at her hand for a few more moments, then she closed the door between us and clomped back down the hall.

***

The next day was a rainy one, full of storm clouds as bruised and swollen as my mood. I woke up stiff and sore and achy, then I got yelled at by my dad for using all the hot water taking a long Hollywood shower. I ate cinnamon toast in the kitchen with Nelly and tried to ignore the strained mood in the living room. They were talking about moving again, this time to base housing, even though we still had boxes lining the walls of our latest apartment. My mom was upset because she had just enrolled us in yet another school. I didn’t care; I was used to this moving stuff. In fact, if we could’ve moved right at that very second, I would’ve given the idea three cheers and a huzzah. I dreaded going to school. I knew I’d have to swan dive into that pit of vipers known as the four square court and defend my servership, and I felt drained just thinking about it. If I could’ve conjured a good excuse — toothache, brain cancer, arthritis of the eyeball — I might have used it, but I couldn’t back down. I couldn’t lose my spot.

403 T . . I trudged off to school in my old yellow raincoat and prepared to meet my destiny. It rained the whole way, all eight blocks, and by the time I made it to the cafeteria to eat hot oatmeal with raisins and a carton of 2% milk, my cowboy boots were soaked. The ink from my Free Breakfast punch card got all over my jeans and stained the tips of my fingers mimeograph purple. I ate alone at the corner of a long, white table heavy on one end with gabbing, giggling, soaking kids I didn’t know. I usually enjoyed sitting by myself when I ate in the morning, but this time I felt a little paranoid, as if people were sneaking glances at me over their shoulders and muttering hidden snarks from behind cupped palms. I only looked up once in the brief time I ate my meal, and when I did I saw The Butt Triplets across the cafeteria, huddled in a soppy clot at the end of another long table. They sat by themselves and ate in silence without looking up. They weren’t wearing jackets or coats, just limp hooded sweatshirts that dripped into the styrofoam containers of their Free Breakfast oatmeal and raisins. I looked through the foggy wall of windows along one side of the cafeteria and saw the four-square courts on the playground. The grey sky reflected from the surface of the slick asphalt, and crazy circles radiated as drops hit. The rain sounded like stomping feet. My head hurt. I was already starting to sniffle. When the first recess bell freed us from class two hours later, the kids all lined up at the edge of the school buildings, just under the lip of roof that caught the rain and directed it to overflowing gutters. The playground tarmac was covered by a greasy black sea and the tetherballs bounced against their poles and swayed in the wind. The crowd of kids huddled together in a long mass, their hands thrust deep inside the pockets of their jackets and raincoats, hunching their shoulders to keep the moisture from creeping down their necks. It was weird. On most rainy days at most of the schools I’d gone to, the kids tended to stay in the cafeteria, playing chess and checkers and Monopoly or squawking in flocks that fluttered from one side of the room to the other. But here, at this school, everyone seemed to be standing around and staring out at the soggy swamp of a playground, as if they were waiting for something to happen. …oh God…

404 A .

Just then, a hubbub erupted twenty people down the line and several kids scattered as Bertha, Buelah, and Bathsheba Butt burst from the throng and stomped through the curtain of freezing rain falling from the roof. They marched without hesitation toward the four square courts. Bathsheba was in the lead, kicking rainwater into a huge spray with her dirty white tennies and headlocking a red four square ball under one arm. I looked down at my cowboy boots, soaking in a puddle inches deep, then looked down the line of dripping school kids. They were all staring at me, every single one of them, and they didn’t look away when I met their gazes one by one by one. …oh God… I looked back down at my soggy hands, then back up at The Butt Triplets who were standing in the ﬁrst, second, and third squares of a water-logged four square court, then back down at my hands again. I sighed a big shivering sigh, held it, then took my Han Solo backpack from my shoulders and handed it to the little red-haired kid standing next to me. “Can you hold this for me?” I asked. “Yeah,” the kid said, and he held the straps with both hands. I took one last deep breath and stepped through the curtain of rain. Bathsheba glared at me when I took my spot in the server position, spitting venom through tiny eye slits, then held out the four square ball. When I tried to take it, she snatched it from my grasp and sneered, “I triple-dog dare you to let us call rules.” What kind of trick was this? This wasn’t… You weren’t supposed to be able to do this! The server was supposed to be the one who called rules, they knew that, so… What was this? What kinda… Bertha, Buelah, and Bathsheba Butt said nothing. They stared me down like gargoyles, and I tried my best to stare right back. A triple-dog dare ignored welcomed chicken squawks and a profound losing of face. There may be some debate about the legitimacy of a double-dog dare, but the triple was sacred playground doctrine. I had no choice. I told Bathsheba she could do whatever she wanted; it wasn’t like other people hadn’t tried this nonsense before. The crowd behind me began to mutter, blending with the wind slanting the rainfall.

405 L . . The Butts looked at each other, nodded their heads as one, then began rattling off a vast litany of styles and power moves they intended to ban from this game: basic plays every newbie knew by heart; advanced shots only the most veteran players could employ; obscure tricks I hadn’t seen in three or four schools; plus a slew of esoteric strategies I had never even heard of, like googlies and bone crushers and bloody marys and piggly wigglies. They went on and on, rattling off move after move, trick after trick, each Butt contributing every iota of four square lore they knew. I stood there with my arms crossed, resisting the urge to scoff openly at this last minute act of desperation. When they finally stopped, I reached for the four square ball and snapped, “Okay, fine, you done now? You satisfied now? Can I have the dumb ball now?” Bathsheba stepped toward me, but as I reached for the ball, she yanked it from my grasp and held it over her head with one hand. “No sir, we ain’t done yet,” she scowled, then she spat, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and moved closer to me. She curled her finger and beckoned as if wanting to whisper something in my ear. I looked over my shoulder at the crowd of people behind me — it seemed the whole school was watching, including a few teachers — then craned my ear closer to Bathsheba’s mouth. She screamed, “And no Behind-The-Back Schlabotnicks!” My eyes opened wide as halos, my gasping mouth melted down my chin, my hands clawed at my face. I became a fifth grade dramatic interpretation of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Before I could even mouth the word how, Bertha answered my question by jumping up and down and pointing and shouting, “It was on your PeeChee! We saw it written on your PeeChee! Ha ha, you wrote it all over your PeeChee!” The Butt Triplets then did something I had never seen them do in the brief history of our rivalry: they laughed, big bellowing belly laughs like pregnant hippos choking themselves on some cruel joke. In between laughs, they gulped air to power even more laughs. Oh the humanity! Of course, they were right. On the yellow PeeChee folder in my backpack, I had doodled all over the basketball player guy, changing him into a championship four square player with my name scrawled

406 K . on the back of his jersey. Over his head was a bubble that said, No one can stop the Behind-The-Back Schlebotnick! Die! Die! Die! How The Butts had seen it, I’ll never know, but there I was stripped of my secret weapon, and it was all my fault because I fell for the most devious trick in the book. In front of the whole, entire school, too. I was so embarrassed. Had this happened the year before, I would’ve run from the playground with my face covered, but I fought against that urge and stood my ground. As her sisters continued to laugh and mock me, Bathsheba reached over and handed me the four square ball. There was nothing left to do now but serve the ball and play the best game I could, given the wind and the rain and the cold and the fact that every single bit of support had been snatched from me. I bounced the ball twice, wincing at the dirty spray spattering my jeans, and crouched down in my server position. I reached around and pulled up the rear end of my pants, rubbed the rainwater from my eyes, then I hit the ball to Buelah in square two and readied myself for the ﬁrestorm to follow. And Buelah hit the ball gently to Bertha in square one, who then hit the ball gently to Bathsheba in square three, who then returned the ball gently to Buelah once again. I kicked up water in tiny tsunamis each time the ball switched sisters, realigning myself to receive the ball, but each time it avoided me and gracefully arced to one of the triplet. This continued, back and forth, back and forth, and I found myself muttering, “C’mon… C’mon… Gimme the ball… Gimme the ball…” But they kept it up, lobbing the ball to each other in a gross mockery of four square, the kind of four square you play with little kids, not with each other. They acted like I wasn’t even there, like they were just hanging out, just wasting time, as if the whole school wasn’t watching our every move. I straightened up a bit, with my hands on my waist, and said, “C’mon, guys, stop messing around, and let’s play some four square.” Then Bathsheba started chanting, “La la la! La la la! La la la!” in rhythm with the movement of the ball. Buelah joined her, then Bertha, playing little kid four square with that stupid, irritating, sing- song nonsense blending with the soppy applause of raindrops.

407 E . . .

“La la la! La la la!” they sang, like little kids playing four square on the sidewalk outside their grandma’s house, as if everything in the whole stupid world didn’t depend on this very game. I couldn’t believe the insolence. They were disrespecting me, mocking me, in front of the whole school. They were afraid, dammit, afraid of giving me their best game because they had already tried that, yeah, and I had beaten them at their own game, yeah, and now they were trying to keep me from exercising my right to be server by messing around with the stupid ball like a bunch of stupid… And then I saw it, the tell, the giveaway move, and my Jedi mind powers turned the entire scene into slow-mo. Buelah’s eyes twitched toward me — PINK! — and her nearest shoulder dipped ever so slightly. Her knees flexed, the muscles in her calves bulged, and she took in a deep breath. The ball sailed through the tattered veil of rain from the soused hands of Bathsheba, whose mouth was caught in mid-La but whose eyes had also twitched toward me — PINK! In that split second, it was finally obvious to me what they were trying to do, and I had almost fallen for it! My muscles tensed and snapped my body automatically to the proper ready position: my legs spread wide, my body low to the ground, my arms bent like capitol L’s, my hands open and flexed for impact. And then Buelah’s body relaxed and gently returned the ball to Bathsheba, who then lobbed it gently to Bertha, who then tossed it gently back to Buelah once again. They knew I was onto them and knew I wasn’t going down without a fight. It gave me no small amount of pride to know they had to resort to such blatant trickery to beat me. This game could go the whole recess for all I cared, I wasn’t about to let them win. And that’s when I sneezed. It seemed like such a simple thing, such an innocent little sneeze. The wind had blown spray from a splash of the four square ball into my face, much as it had been the whole game, only this time a few molecules of grit had snorted right up my left nostril. My eyes never wavered from the job of protecting my square, but my left hand jumped up to scratch my nose and left behind the rubbery tang of the four square ball. Some mucous membrane behind my eyeballs twinged. I snuffed sharply. I snorted. I sneezed.

408 R . .

It couldn’t have been more than a millisecond, maybe even a trillisecond, but when I opened my eyes again, I saw Bertha, Buelah, and Bathsheba Butt angled toward me with their bodies frozen in the ready position. I twitched, my eyes ping-ponging across the scene, from Buelah’s hands to Bertha’s hands to Bathsheba’s hands, and I couldn’t find the ball. I stood tall and looked back over my shoulder and saw the four square ball way in the distance, way over by the tetherballs across the playground, still bouncing and skittering along the wet blacktop on its way for the back fence. I looked back into the faces of the kids crowded by the school building, the wide eyes, the gaping mouths, and the utter silence told me I didn’t need to ask if the ball had been out of bounds. I looked back at the three sisters. They looked back at me. The recess bell rang, and The Butt Triplets relaxed and straightened. They turned and walked back to the classrooms without a word. It was over. I had lost. After all those years at the top of my game, I had finally lost my crown. I shoved my hands deep into my pockets with a grunt and watched my cowboy boots slosh through plashes on their way back to the school building. When I crossed the wall of water spewing from the rain gutter and into the shelter of the overhanging roof, I saw my Han Solo backpack face down in a puddle. I lifted it and felt the weight of liquid inside. I unzipped the main compartment and poured ink-stained water onto the sidewalk, and out flopped the gloves my dad had given me, my four square gloves, limp and swampy as dead frogs. In all the hullaballoo of the deathmatch, I had forgotten to wear my lucky gloves. No wonder I had lost. I zipped up my backpack, snaked my arms through the straps, and turned away from the sopping gloves to start my walk home three hours early. When I let myself into the apartment with the key hung from a chain around my neck, my mom was bustling around with her arms full of boxes. She took one quick look at me as she walked into the hallway, then shouting over her shoulder, “I was just about to come get you! Get off the carpet, you’re soaking wet.” Nelly was sitting on the love seat in the living room watching cartoons with her Barbie backpack at her side. She was supposed to be at school, too.

409 S . .

“Are we leaving?” I asked Nelly. “Yeah,” she said, never taking her eyes off the teevee screen. “Mom! Bud’s gettin’ water all over the carpet!” My mom’s muffled voice rattled down the hallway in response, “Honey, I told you not to get the carpet all wet! If you ruin the carpet and make us lose the deposit, your dad’ll tan your hide!” I sighed. I couldn’t wait to get this school behind me and move on to the next one. I dropped my backpack onto the floor and started extracting myself from my waterlogged clothing. Half an hour later, my mom drove my sister and me back to school to start the procedure of checking out. There were papers to sign, I imagine, and forms to fill out and medical files to be returned so we could give it all to the next school. Nelly and I waited in the Pinto with the windows cracked and listened to oldies on the radio. She sat in back in a kid’s seat and played with her Barbies, and I sat in front and read an Encyclopedia Brown book from last year. After about an hour, my mom came back and got in the car, then we pulled out of the parking lot for home. The rain had stopped by this time, and the playground was filled with kids on recess. Through the school’s chain-link fence, I could see The Butt Triplets in one of the four square courts quietly lobbing a red ball to each other. The other four square courts all had quartets of chatty school kids, but The Butt Triplets played with each other in silence. We stopped at the corner for a stoplight, and Bertha, Buelah, and Bathsheba Butt looked up at the same time and stared directly into our car and at me. It was the last time I would ever see them or this school. When the light turned green and my mom made a wide left turn toward our apartment, I could’ve sworn Buelah waved.

410 O .

mosaic (2000)

“Okay, we’re doing sad today,” Ethan said, pulling the Polaroid instant camera from his backpack. “Sad?” she said. She was a college student — little round glasses, sweater, free- ﬂowing shoulder length hair, backpack — who just two minutes sat at a cafe table with friends, sipping iced coffee and neglecting homework. Now she stood with her back against a brick wall in the alley behind the cafe, tilting her head slightly and smiling. Ethan dropped his backpack to the ground, put the camera to his eye, and walked a few paces toward the girl. “Yeah, sad. Yesterday was lonely.” She dropped her gaze, her arms crossing her chest, her hands cupping her elbows. She tapped the tip of her sandaled foot to the ground, then kicked it back and placed the ﬂat of her foot against the brick wall as she leaned. The sun glinted off the silver ring coiled around her pinkie toe. The ring was formed into the shape of a ruby- eyed snake swallowing its own tail. Ethan stared a moment at the ring, tracing the intricate scales with his gaze. Her toenails were the same sky blue as her eyes. “You like my toe ring?” she asked. Ethan shook his head slightly and mumbled, “Hmmm? Oh, uhm, yeah, the ring. It’s nice. I used to… I used to have a friend who had one just like it. She bought it in the Lower Haight in San Francisco.” “Oh, I got mine on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. Maybe it’s the same type. Does it have little red eyes like mine?” Jesus, Ethan thought, I can’t remember. Ethan lowered the camera and sighed, then rubbed his eyes with his free hand. Without looking up he said, “I’m doing this art project. I ask people to portray an emotion — sad or mad or happy — then I take their picture. Would you like to some others I’ve taken today?” He reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a small stack of photos. They were smaller than the average instant photo, longer

411 F . .

and less square, rather like large Band-Aids with photos stuck in the center. He handed them over to the girl, and she took them with slender fingers and flipped through them, reaching up to twirl a tendril of hair that had fallen over her glasses. She pulled a photo from the stack and said, “I like this one. He’s sad, but kinda silly.” “Yeah,” Ethan said, “I had to coach him a bit. He wasn’t getting it, but I asked him to kinda pooch out his lower lip, like he was pouting. I think it worked. It’s cute.” “He looks like a little kid,” she said, then handed back the stack of snaps. She flipped her bangs from her face, shook her head, and smiled again. Her long hair matched the honeyed glow of the sun. She crossed her arms and bit her lower lip lightly. “So… Sad, huh? It’s gonna to be kinda hard pretending I’m sad on such a beautiful day. You should’ve waited until it rained. I think it’s going to rain the day after tomorrow. Can’t you do happy today? I could give you a really good happy today.” She cracked a huge cheesy grin and held it. Ethan brought the camera to his eye and moved one step closer. “Nope, today’s sad. Think about something that makes you sad.” She looked back down, hooked her thumbs in the belt loops of her baggy corduroy pants, and bounced a few times against the brick wall. Her smile was bright and full of white. The harder she tried, the wider she smiled. “I don’t know… This is kinda weird,” she said. She tried again, pressing her lips together tightly and furrowing her brow. She turned her head to the side and down, toward her shoulder. She stuck out her lower lip. “Yeah,” Ethan said, “exactly like that, only, like, not at all.” She laughed and grinned broadly. “Think of something really sad. Think about… I don’t know… Disease… Famine… Think about all the starving refugee children.” She crossed her arms and stomped her foot lightly on the ground, then pooched out her lower lip again. “I’m trying,” she said. “Give me a second. I have to find my motivation.” Ethan moved a step closer. Her head and the curve of her puka shell necklace were centered in the viewfinder with the rough red stone of the brick juxtaposing the creamy smoothness of her skin.

412 F . He moved a step closer. “Just think about something that makes you sad,” he said. “Okay, okay,” she said. “We’re doing sad today. I’ll be sad.” “Think about… Think about that cat you had when you were growing up, that cat who was always there for you waiting on the comforter of your big four-poster bed, that cat that always understood what you were going through and exactly when you needed warm furry kitty love. Think about how important that cat was to you, how many times you relied on it to get through the hard times of growing up. Did you have a cat like that when you were growing up?” She smiled, but her teeth were hidden behind her lips. Her hands reached up again to gently cup her elbows. “No, but I had a dog who was kinda like that. She was my best friend. Inga.” “Inga,” Ethan said. “Right… A poodle?” “Cocker spaniel,” she said. “We had her when I was little.” “Right… A cocker spaniel named Inga.” He stepped closer. Her face ﬁlled the frame. His camera reﬂected inside the deepest blue of her eyes. “Remember when inga died? How it broke your heart?” She looked at him through the camera lens, and her smile slowly faded. She stared for just a moment, then dropped her gaze. Her head tilted to the side, then turned toward her shoulder as it rose to meet her chin. She closed her eyes. The corners of her mouth tilted downward ever so slightly, ever so slowly. Ethan snapped the picture.

413 E . .

Ethan walked down the street with his backpack slung over one shoulder and headphones pumping ragged drum and bass, the frenzied squall of electronically-mangled guitars and feedback fueled by machine gun drum machines. Cars passed noiselessly. Ethan scanned the faces in the crowd of passing college students, looking for the next photo. Not just anyone would do. There had to be a certain look in the eyes, a certain set to the mouth. That was kinda fucked up, Ethan thought. It’s not her fault she looks like her, even sounds like her. Ethan passed a shop window and caught a brief glimpse of his reﬂection. He hadn’t shaved in a week or more. His eyes looked tired. Then the image was gone. He passed the used record store, and Ethan saw a tall, skinny skater boy exit and walk in his direction. He recognized the kid and his ratty green combat pants, his scrappy high-top sneakers wrapped in black electrical tape, his choppy green hair, his thrashed wooden skateboard. When their eyes met, the kid smiled big and raised his hand in greeting, his lips moving silently. Ethan reached backward into the side pocket of his backpack and slid his middle ﬁnger along the edge of his CD player’s volume control. The world around him faded back in. “…fucking guy,” the kid said. “He can kiss my fucking ass and keep the fucking CD for all I fucking care, motherfucker.” “Uhm, no, I’m just, you know, doing my project,” Ethan said, bringing up his camera and pointing to it.

414 R . .

The kid snapped his fingers. “Oh yeah, yeah, how’d you like my picture, huh? That was pretty fucking good, man, I was cracking my shit up. What day was that again? Scream, some shit like that?” Ethan cleared his throat, and said, “No, that day was angry. All of last week was angry. Today is sad.” “Sad?” the kid said. “Fuckin’ take my picture. I can be sad.” The skater kid rubbed his hands against his face, then dropped his hands by his side to reveal a distorted grimace. His mouth cracked open and his tongue lolled to the side, his eyes pinched shut and the veins in his neck bulged into sharp relief. The skater kid stood there, his face frozen. Ethan covered his mouth with his hand and coughed. The skater kid cracked open one eye, then, without moving the gaping hole of his mouth, said, “C’mon man, take my picture.” His tongue flopped like a trout. Ethan looked down at his camera and shook his head. “Look, I appreciate your help, but I’ve got all the snaps I need for today.” “Oh dude, let me check ‘em out, dude, dude, dude,” the skater kid said, reaching out grabby hands, clenching them, snapping them like crab claws and giggling maniacally. Ethan reached into his breast pocket and handed him the stack of Polaroids. The skater kid flipped through them, laughed out loud, and shook his head as he looked at the faces. “Damn, son,” the skater kid said. “These folks is mad sad. I know this fool here with his lip all stuck out. I think he’s gay. He goes to my school. His name is something like Gaylord Gay-Gay.”

415 E . . Ethan fiddled with the headphones slung around his neck and looked into the traffic passing in the street. Downtown by the college was busy at this time of day, and the noise was grating. The sun was too bright. The back of his shirt was sticky against his backpack. “Dude-bro, check it out, this chick right up in hurr is hella cute. Who is this chick?” The skater kid held out the picture of the girl in the cafe that Ethan had just taken. Ethan shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Some girl sitting in the cafe by the campus. I never got her name.” “You know who she looks like, don’t you? She looks just like Jen, dude, like she could be her sister. Isn’t that weird?” Ethan snatched the photo from the skater kid’s hand then grabbed up the others. He put them together, smoothed them out, then stuck them back into his breast pocket. “Look, I’ve gotta go.” Ethan moved to the side of the skater kid and put his headphones back on. He reached backward to turn the volume up as the skater kid said, “Whoa, hey, shit, dude! I’m sorry. Hey, I didn’t mean nothing by that, man. Hey…” Ethan walked past the skater kid and cranked the volume until the passing traffic faded into harsh electronic cacophony. Ethan walked home without stopping or looking up. He let himself in the back door of the Victorian he shared with three college students and three cats. Two of the cats — his Louie and Ella — curled around his ankles and meowed as he stumbled his way over them through the kitchen and into the living room.

416 D . He sat on the dusty thrift store couch with a huff and a puff of gray dust then turned toward the answering machine on the end table. The light signaling unheard messages was blinking. It blinked five times, then paused, then blinked five times again. Ethan pushed the playback button and lowered his headphones to curl around the back of his neck. He plunged his head into the velvety bosom of the sofa and closed his eyes and listened to the whir of the machine. The first message was for his roommate Chloe, something about the Women’s Center on campus. He leaned over without looking and ran his fingertips across the face of the answering machine, searching lightly, then pressed the save button and the skip button. The next message was for him. “Hi, guys! This is a message for Ethan. This is Shawna. Hey, we haven’t heard from you in a while, and we’re starting to get a little worried about you. We miss you. Give us a call.” Ethan’s eyes were still closed as he reached his hand to the answering machine, ran his fingertips across the face of the control panel, then pressed the delete button. The next message was for him. “Ethan, you fucking fuck! What’s up, man? Mikey and Lydia are in town for an acoustic set at The Big Sky Saloon. Come by, man, let’s have some beer. We can…” Ethan hit the delete button. “Hi, this is Melinda. Give me call when you get…”

417 T . . He pressed delete again. “Ethan, this is…” Delete. Ethan opened his eyes and looked up at the red and grey ceiling tiles. He followed the filigree to curling fleur-de-lis, traced winding vines hammered by some forgotten tinsmith. He breathed deeply. He tapped his fingers on his leg, then he flipped the headphones from his neck to his ears. The music screamed in the stillness of the empty house. The music was the same he’d been listening to all day, all week in fact, hard-edged electronica full of glitchy distortion and the kerrang of sledgehammers and anvils. It hurt to listen to it so loudly. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the day’s photos. Each person looked back at him from the Band-Aid shaped photos with a look of sadness, some with squint eyes and frowns, some with downcast gaze, one with her arm pulled across her eyes as though she were hiding. Ethan reached over to the phone and dialed. After four rings, an answering machine picked up. A woman’s voice. “This is Jen and Shawna. We’re not here right now, but if you leave a message we’ll call you back.” The machine beeped. Ethan placed the phone on the cradle. Her voice is still on the recorder. After three months, it’s still on the fucking recorder. Shawna needs to take Jen’s voice off the fucking recorder. It’s fucking morbid.

418 O .

He raised himself from the dirty couch and walked across the empty living room and opened his bedroom door. He walked across a mat of dirty laundry, newspapers, magazines, school books, plastic bags, and boxes, and he stepped onto the mattress he used for a bed. The blankets were pushed into a jumble and covered in kitty hair. Ethan reached for the dented Zippo on his pillow and snapped his fingers against the flint to spark a flame, then he lit the cheap candles he bought from the Espiritualista last month. They were encased in glass with colour pictures of the blessed virgin on the face. He reached for a pack of incense, lit a stick on the candle flame. He looked at his wall, the one alongside his bed. Every available space on the white surface was covered with little Band-Aid shaped photos, hundreds of them, tiling the wall from ceiling to floor with faces. Each was marked with a date, a time, and an emotion, and each was arranged in chronological order. There was a line of anger along the top, with random people biting their lips and baring their teeth and narrowing their eyes into slits. There was a colony of fear in the corner, and patches of lonely spread throughout like blotches. Mostly, though, there was sad, long and wide streams of sad flowing into oceans of frowning mouths and down-turned heads and hands rising to cradle faces. Ethan looked for an empty spot, found one in the bottom corner, and knelt in front of the mosaic. He reached into his breast pocket and brought out the day’s photos, flipped though them until

419 G . he found the girl at the cafe. He stared at her face, her hair, her shoulders, her eyes. Ethan sighed. The incense curled warm tendrils of sweet smoke under his chin; he could feel it float along his cheek and nose, tickle past the tiny hairs of his eyebrows and his bristly widow’s peak. His eyes burned. He reached up to wipe them. They were dry. He reached for a stick pin in the box on his bed and began sticking the photos on the wall, one by one, with the snapshot of the girl in the cafe filling the last empty space. Ethan looked up at the wall, then reached for a framed photo on the floor near his pillow and slumped into his bed. He stared at the photo in the flickering candlelight. It was a couple: Ethan standing behind a girl with long sandy blonde hair, blue eyes, and little round glasses. His arms were around her middle, and his head was on her shoulder. They were both smiling very broadly. The sky was bright blue behind them. Ethan closed his eyes and held the framed photo against his forehead and felt the cool glass. He imagined what it must have been like, vaulting face-first over the steering wheel and into the windshield. It must have been quick. That’s what they all said: it was over before she knew what happened. Ethan pinched his eyes shut and pressed the face of the photo frame against his forehead until the krink of breaking glass cut his skin. He dropped the frame onto the carpet and bled slowly, trails of red crawling down his cheeks. Ethan shook his head at the three remaining blank walls in his room.

420 I . .

temp hell (2002)

I SHOW UP TO WORK ON TIME, AND I VALUE HARD WORK.

This phrase is glowing at me green from a computer screen. Beneath these words are five choices from which I am to choose the degree to which I agree with the above statement: Strongly Disagree; Disagree; Sometimes Agree; Agree; and Strongly Agree. I am in the lobby of another temp agency in Wichita, Kansas, and I am in the third of what will be four hours taking tests measuring my ability to use such helpful programs as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint. This particular test seems to be scoring my morals and work ethic on a five-point scale. Let’s call it Microsoft Homeland Security. The first questions are easy. It’s obvious which answers they want. They want to know if I am a hard worker, if I am prompt, if I am worth the money client companies will pay for my services. I agree with these questions with no reservation because I truly believe I am a hard worker who is prompt and worthy of payment for services rendered. They want me to click on Strongly Agree. I do. The next question flashes on the screen.

IT IS OKAY TO STEAL OFFICE SUPPLIES SUCH AS PAPER CLIPS AND PENS FROM THE BUSINESS TO WHICH I WILL BE ASSIGNED SINCE EVERYBODY DOES IT.

I smile at this one, look around the temp agency office to see if anyone else can read this and thinks like I do that it’s a ridiculous question, but no one is looking over my shoulder, of course. The agency representatives are busy answering phones and faxing resumes and e-mailing resumes and filing resumes while the hopeful temps in this office are busy with their own tests. The only sound besides the hushed tones of the representatives and the clicks of the

421 V . keyboards are my barely stifled giggles and the sound of my eyeballs rolling around in their sockets. Why ask such a question? Do they think someone would actually answer using any choice other than Strongly Disagree? Maybe that’s the point: not to weed out dishonest temps from honest ones, but to weed out the reasonably intelligent ones from the few so incredibly stupid they would not know enough to click Strongly Disagree even if it were untrue. Or maybe they want to find out who would try to bullshit their way through this whole test, answering each question the way they thought the company wanted them to answer rather than answering truthfully. If you picked Strongly Disagree every time you thought you were supposed to, maybe it would red flag you for trying to scam the system. I click Strongly Disagree. I hate this process. I have been here since 7:56 a.m., and I am barely halfway through with the testing. I always test in the high 90 percentile on these programs evaluating basic office skills, but for some reason their version of Excel testing kicked my ass with all kinds of questions I couldn’t fake. Usually, you can figure out how to answer their questions by simply rooting around the program and figuring it out, but this version of the testing program fails you the very moment you click on something you shouldn’t have, so I was all huffy and flustered by the end of it. Now this computer wants to rate my levels of moral turpitude.

I TRY TO GET MY WORK DONE IN A TIMELY MANNER SO THAT I CAN TAKE IT EASY THE REST OF THE DAY.

How do you answer a mindfuck like this without getting it wrong? Of course, I want to say I work hard to get my tasks finished as quickly and efficiently as possible, but I don’t want them to think I do it simply to make time for myself to flake off. Seems if you Disagree with this one, it means you don’t work hard and can’t deal with deadlines, but if you Agree with it, then it makes you a slacker who only works hard so you can fuck off the rest of the day. I have no idea how to answer it, so I click on Sometimes Agree. I’m sure I’ll be docked for it. Why can’t these all be essay questions?

422 E . . I have a headache. I haven’t eaten today. I’m getting cranky. This computer interrogation ﬂapdoodle is so demoralizing, as if the wetware working here can’t be bothered with actually interviewing me, so these lines of ancient DOS code written in ’96 will decide whether or not I should be trusted with a fucking fax machine.

IF I WAS OFFERED A BETTER JOB ELSEWHERE WITH HIGHER PAY AND MORE BENEFITS, I WOULD RESPECT MY COMMITMENT TO THE AGENCY AND NOT ACCEPT IT.

First, it’s were, not was, and second WTF? The application I signed said any job assignment I receive will be At Will Employment, meaning they can terminate my employment At Will with no warning for no reason. And yet they think I would actually turn down a better paying job with more benefits because of some misbegotten sense of duty to some company who forces me to sign a contract confirming they care fuck-all about me? What brand of blockhead would Agree with such a cockamamie statement? A blockhead who needs a job. I click Strongly Agree. I need a job. Everywhere I go, the temp agencies are jam-packed with underemployed techies displaced by the deflated Internet bubble, techies who type faster than me, who know more about computers than me, who have been out of work longer than me. I need this job, I need any job, and I need it quickly, so fuck it, I’ll tell this computer anything it wants to hear.

I WOULD NEVER SURF THE INTERNET, CHECK PERSONAL E-MAIL, UTILIZE ONLINE SOCIAL MEDIA, OR MAKE PERSONAL PHONE CALLS WHILE ON THE TIME CLOCK.

This one evokes a snort of derision from me, something between a chortle and a guffaw, like a steam furnace backﬁring in the basement of my throat. The agency’s quiet hum of desperation has been momentarily dispersed, and everyone is staring, even the agency reps shouldering phone handsets and typing while they talk. I cover my mouth with my ﬁst and cough loudly, sniff a little, and shrug my shoulders, and the heads turn back to their tasks at hand.

423 Y . If anyone perused my blog, they would see 5 or 6 new posts created during work hours every day for months at a time, and if they were to go back in time and look over my shoulder as I was supposedly entering data or answering phones, they would see three or four browser windows opened at once — The New York Times, my Livejournal, my e-mail, The Onion — and they would’ve seen two or three IM windows opened as well, with me typing 165 words per minute as I carried on several virtual conversations and wrote e-mails and somehow ﬁnished my work all at the same time. “Goddamn, that boy types fast,” my co-workers used to say. I click Strongly Agree.

I HAVE NEVER ABUSED MY ACCESS TO SUPPLIES OR OFFICE EQUIPMENT SUCH AS COPY MACHINES OR FAXES TO ADVANCE MY CREATIVE ENDEAVORS.

Oh my god, I could never in a million years answer this question with even the slightest amount of truth and expect to be employed anywhere ever again. My entire creative career has been based on pinching ofﬁce supplies whenever and wherever I can. If I ever make it big, I swear the ﬁrst thing I’ll do is send Paul Orfalea a check for $25,000 with a note that says, Thanks Kinko’s! Why do they even bother posing this question? Isn’t it painfully obvious what answer they want from you? What is the point of even asking this question? It’s such a waste of my time. My head is throbbing. I click Strongly Agree.

THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM ENSLAVES THE WORKING CLASSES AND TRANSFORMS HUMAN BEINGS INTO MINDLESS DRONES WHO EXCHANGE THEIR SHORT LIVES FOR DIRTY SCRAPS OF PAPER AND PROMISES OF A BETTER LIFE AFTER THEY ARE DEAD AND BURIED.

I stare, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, hands limp at my sides, my scalp tingling. Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! Danger!

424 O .

“What the fuck?” I actually say this aloud, I interrupt the murmur of the temp lobby with a full-on, “What the fuck?” I don’t even have to look. I know everyone is staring at me again, boring holes in the back of my head. The bosses with the keys to the kingdom must surely be aiming scythe-sized question marks in my direction, answering my “What the fuck?” with a corresponding “What the fuck is wrong with Señor Tourettes?” I don’t turn around to look, but I hear one of the agency reps say, “Uhhm, sir? Can I help you with anything?” I don’t turn around, I just clear my throat, cough, and say, “No, I’m ﬁne. Sorry about that. I just need a drink of water. I’ve got a touch of that ﬂu that’s going around. Can I get a drink of water?” I turn and see a stern lady with a phone pinched between her shoulder pad and her cheek. I can see foundation caking the back of the handset, lipstick streaking the mouthpiece. I can smell her two packs a day from across the room. She jerks her head toward the water cooler across the room, then continues with her conversation. I try to ignore the eyeballs tracking me as I pussyfoot to the cooler, slide a paper cup from the top of a stack, press down on the blue spigot, and drink lukewarm water. I crush the cup, toss it, then turn and slink back to my computer. On the screen, the computer now says:

ARBEIT MACHT FREI.

I turn to the guy sitting next to me. He’s shaking his head at the Microsoft Word simulation. I very nearly ask him if he’s fucked with my computer, but I don’t, I just turn back to my monitor, ﬁnger the mouse, and click Strongly Disagree.

IN THE LAST THREE MONTHS, I HAVE FRATERNIZED WITH DRUG USERS, HOMOSEXUALS, DEVIANTS, GOTHS, SATANISTS, FEMINISTS, AND/OR HEATHENS.

My head really hurts, and my brow is harvesting greasy BBs of sweat that drool down the crow’s feet at the corners of my eyes and

425 U . . mingle with unshed tears. This is fucking weird. I don’t know why I’m even bothering with this fucking test. I don’t want a job this bad. I want to go back to my girlfriend’s apartment and slip inside her warm queen-sized bed and pull the pale green comforter to my chin and watch the plants sway in the breeze of the ceiling fan on high. I click on Sometimes Agree.

IT IS RIGHT AND GOOD TO WORK MY WHOLE LIFE FOR A SERIES OF CORPORATIONS THAT CARE NOTHING FOR MY HUMANITY, THEN DIE QUIETLY WITHOUT A STRUGGLE SO NO ONE GETS UNCOMFORTABLE.

Gotta get that gold watch, get that retirement plan set up while you’re young, get those golf clubs out of the garage and get those tired bones in the SUV and head for the fairway with the other castoffs, gotta watch Matlock until your hand clutches your chest and your wife says, “Honey?” The American Dream is a panacea keeping you drugged for 65 years while corporations suck your blood. After they unplug you, they don’t give a shit what happens as long as you don’t make a scene, don’t embarrass us, don’t go unquietly into that good night. I click Strongly Disagree.

I BEAR ONLY A PASSING RESEMBLANCE TO THE PERSON I THINK I AM, AND NONE AT ALL TO THE PERSON I COULD BE IF ONLY I WEREN’T SO AFRAID.

Like I need some antiquated software to tell me this shit, like I need anyone to tell me what I already know, what is so painfully obvious, not only to me but every member of my disappointed family and every friend and lover I’ve let down since I was a kid. How could anyone in this society do anything but click on Strongly Agree? I click on Strongly Disagree.

WHAT I CALL LOVE IS ACTUALLY FEAR OF BEING ALONE.

426 M .

Oh, fuck this. I am so out of here. I don’t even read the questions anymore, they’re all a blur. I just cover my eyes with one hand and click the mouse in the same spot with the other, hovering over Strongly Disagree. I don’t care what the questions ask, I don’t care what my answers reveal about my inner workings, I just want this fucking horrid test to be over, I just want to go home, I just… “Sir?” I lift my head and look to the sound of the voice to my left, and there’s the employment agent with the blastoma breath so close to my face I can see red capillaries wriggle in the whites of her eyes. I say, “Hmmm?” She says, “Sir, your test is over. You’re all done.” I look at the screen. It says:

TEST COMPLETE

I ask her, “Uhmmm… Well… How’d I do?” She says, “Well, let’s see.” She walks back behind her desk to the printer near her terminal and pulls out a sheet of paper, looks it over, then walks back to me smiling. “Looks like you did great!” she says, nodding to the paper in her hand. “Ninety-ninth percentile. That means you qualify for just about any job we have. Congratulations! Check with us on Monday, and I am sure we can place you in an assignment.” I stand up, shake her hand, and walk toward the front door.

427 U . . lord of the breakfast club, part one (2004)

SCENE 36. EXT. — A MEADOW IN RIVENDELL

MERRY, PIPPIN, and ARWEN huddle around a raging ﬁre, rubbing their hands against the heat and staring deeply into the ﬂames.

ARWEN (to no one in particular) You know what I wish I was doing?

MERRY Oops, watch what you say, Pippin here is a cherry.

PIPPIN (to MERRY) A cherry?

ARWEN (staring off into distance) I wish I was on a swan-shaped ship sailing into the western sunset.

PIPPIN (whispering to MERRY) I’m not a cherry.

MERRY (whispering back to PIPPIN) When have you ever gotten laid?

PIPPIN I’ve laid… lotsa times!

MERRY Name one!

PIPPIN She lives in Bree. I met her at the Brandywine Falls. I am sure you wouldn’t know her.

428 L . MERRY Ever laid anyone in the Shire, or around here?

PIPPIN shushes MERRY and motions toward ARWEN.

PIPPIN Oh, you and Arwen… did it?!

ARWEN (spinning around to face PIPPIN) What are you two talking about?

PIPPIN (to ARWEN) Nothin’! Nothin’!

(to MERRY) Let’s just drop it, we’ll talk about it later!

ARWEN No! Drop what? What’re you talking about?

MERRY Well, Pippin’s trying to tell me that, in addition to numerous hobbit girls in the Brandywine Falls area, presently you and he are riding the green pony of love!

ARWEN (to PIPPIN) You little furry-footed pig!

PIPPIN No, I’m not! I’m not! Merry said I was a cherry, and I said I wasn’t! That’s it, that’s all that was said!

MERRY Well, then, why were you motioning to Arwen?

ARWEN You know, I don’t appreciate this very much, Pippin.

429 T .

PIPPIN He is lying!

MERRY Oh, you weren’t motioning to Arwen?

PIPPIN You know he’s lying, right?

MERRY Were you or were you not motioning to Arwen?

PIPPIN Yeah, but it was only… it was only because… I didn’t want her to know I was a virgin, okay?

MERRY and ARWEN stare at PIPPIN.

PIPPIN Excuse me for being a virgin, I’m sorry.

ARWEN laughs.

ARWEN Silly halﬂing, why didn’t you want me to know you were a virgin?

PIPPIN Because it’s personal business, it’s my personal, private business.

MERRY Well, Pippin, it doesn’t sound like you’re doing any business.

ARWEN I think it’s okay for a hobbit to be a virgin.

MERRY looks surprised.

430 I .

PIPPIN You do?

ARWEN smiles and nods.

MERRY looks disappointed and amused at the same time. He gathers up his backpack and walks away from the ﬁre into darkness.

MERRY I’m tired of hanging around here with you dildos. I’m having ﬁfth breakfast by myself.

Fade to black

431 P .

lord of the breakfast club, part two (2004)

SCENE 239. EXT. RIVENDELL — DAY

GIMLI and LEGOLAS kiss. LEGOLAS rips a patch from GIMLI’s cloak and climbs upon his horse to ride away. We see FRODO take off a mithril earring and put it into SAM’s hand. They kiss and FRODO climbs aboard a sleek white swan ship, which sails into the western sunset. We see SAM put the earring in his ear.

CUT TO:

SCENE 240. INT. MORDOR — NIGHT

We see SAURON pick up a scroll and begin to read.

FRODO (VOICE OVER) Dear Sauron, we accept the fact that we sacriﬁced thirteen months of our lives marching across Middle Earth to defeat you, but we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient deﬁnitions.

CUT TO:

SCENE 241. EXT. RIVENDELL — DAY

We see SAM walking towards us as FRODO’s monologue continues.

FRODO (VO) (cont’d) But what we found out is that each one of us is a hobbit…

ARAGORN (VO) …and a ranger…

432 L . . .

GIMLI (VO) …and a dwarf…

LEGOLAS (VO) …and an elf…

GANDALF (VO) …and a wizard.

FRODO (VO) Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, The Fellowship Of The Ring.

We see SAM walking across an open ﬁeld outside Rivendell as he thrusts his ﬁst into the air in a silent cheer. Freeze frame.

The strains of “Don’t You Forget About Me (Elvish Remix)” swell as Enya’s voice is joined by a children’s choir and panpipes and ﬂutes and ﬁddles and drum loops provided by Moby.

433 E .

microwave (2005)

The stage is set with a table and two chairs. BRYAN is at the table reading a magazine with a coffee mug at his elbow. ANDREW enters with a huge fuzzy lump on his neck. He sits in the chair across from BRYAN, pulls a magazine from his backpack, and begins reading. BRYAN looks up casually, then reacts when he sees the huge fuzzy lump on ANDREW’s neck.

BRYAN Dude!

ANDREW What?

BRYAN ’Dafuck is on your neck?

ANDREW Dude, chill…

ANDREW tries to cover the lump with the collar of his jacket and looks around sheepishly to see if anyone heard BRYAN’s outburst.

BRYAN Dude, nothin’, it’s fucking huge!

ANDREW I know, I know, be cool, man. My microwave oven is all fucked up. I think it’s gone and infected this pimple I had on my neck.

BRYAN Pimple? That’s not a pimple! That’s a fucking big-assed radioactive tumor! It’s got fucking hair and teeth!

434 S . .

ANDREW I think it’s got a pulse.

BRYAN A pulse? A fucking pulse? You need to get that shit, removed, man! It’s gonna keep growing! I’m sick to my stomach just looking at it.

(Beat)

Does it hurt?

ANDREW Not really. It’s actually… It’s actually kinda… warm… and soft… kinda like… kinda like a cat.

BRYAN Like a cat? Sweet Jeebus! You need to get that thing removed! It could turn into cancer! It’s worse than cancer! It’s got teeth and hair and a pulse! You gotta cancerous Siamese tomcat growing out of your neck, man! You think it’s hard gettin’ a girlfriend now, wait ‘til she gets a load of tumor pussy!

ANDREW Jeez, man, it’s not that easy. I’m really light on funds right now. I think I’m just gonna wait it out and see if it goes away.

BRYAN Wait it out? Dagnabbit! Are you gonna wait until your tumor’s using the goddamned potty box? Get out of here with that thing, it’s grossing me out. Get outta here before somebody sees you and calls the tumor squad!

ANDREW Fine, whatever…

ANDREW slinks off while lifting his collar to hide the fuzzy lump.

435 T . .

BRYAN goes back to reading his magazine, then lifts the card from table. The card says TWO WEEKS LATER. He puts the card back down and continues to read. ANDREW walks onto the stage with ZARA-TUMOR curled onto him and her face buried in his neck. She does not walk, but merely hangs onto ANDREW as he walks for both of them. ANDREW walks up to the table where BRYAN is reading his magazine. BRYAN slowly looks up and reacts.

BRYAN Oh my Zeus!

ANDREW Dude…

BRYAN Is that your tumor?

ANDREW Yeah, and I think it’s getting worse.

BRYAN Ya think? It’s not only got teeth and hair, but now it’s got eyes and… and… fuckin’… boobs… Bloody hell, man, you’re turning into some kind of freakshow! You need to ﬁnd a doctor right now and get that shit cut off, because… because… Dude?! Have you looked at yourself in the mirror? Have you seen it? The horror!

ANDREW Yeah, I know, but… it’s weird… I’ve been thinking I don’t wanna have it removed anymore.

BRYAN You don’t want to have it removed anymore? You have a tumor! Growing out of your neck! Shaped like a human being! Either have that shit removed or… fuckin’… go on tour. I don’t know, teach it to play piano and sing like Karen Carpenter or something. Take up the banjo or… accordion…

436 H . .

ANDREW You see, here’s the thing. We actually have a lot in common.

BRYAN You mean, besides blood ﬂow?

ANDREW I mean… When I play my favourite music, it kinda starts… I don’t know how to say this… It’s kinda starts purring. I think it likes the same music I like, and when i watched Dog Day Afternoon the other night, I could’ve sworn it whispered, “Attica.” I’ve been dressing it so people won’t stare as much, and I think it likes my style.

BRYAN It’s a fucking tumor! Granted, it’s kinda cute… as far as tumors go… It’s actually kinda hot… But you see, it’s not some girl you picked up in a bar, it’s a tumor growing out of your fucking neck!

ANDREW Be cool, man. I don’t want you to hurt its feelings.

BRYAN Feelings!? It’s! A fucking! Tumor!

(Beat)

Does it play video games?

ANDREW It totally kicked my ass at Guitar Hero 3 last night. She nailed Through The Fire And Flames… on expert.

BRYAN This is… this is really… You say it was your microwave?

ANDREW Yeah, I think it’s broken.

437 E .

BRYAN Could I… uhm… could I… borrow… your microwave?

ANDREW What? Why?

(ANDREW is suspicious, holds ZARA-TUMOR)

BRYAN Oh, I don’t know… I was just… thinking…

ANDREW Well, I guess you can. Just be careful. And don’t blame me if you suddenly have a ferret growin’ outta the side of your neck. Just go over to my house and pick it up.

(ANDREW gives BRYAN his keys)

BRYAN . Thanks, man. Don’t, uhm… don’t mention this…

ANDREW Don’t worry.

BRYAN leaves. ANDREW remains at the table reading a magazine with ZARA-TUMOR on his knee. ANDREW picks up the card on the table and shows it. It says TWO WEEKS LATER. He replaces it and reads the magazine. BRYAN’s voice is heard offstage.

BRYAN (off stage) Dude.

ANDREW (looking around) Dude?

BRYAN (off stage) Over here.

438 Y . .

ANDREW Are you hiding in the bushes?

BRYAN (off stage) Is there anyone else around?

ANDREW (looking around) No, it’s just me. What are you doing?

BRYAN enters stage. BIG FAT GUY-TUMOR is attached by the face to BRYAN’s neck. BRYAN drags himself awkwardly to ANDREW’s table. ANDREW is horriﬁed.

ANDREW Great Scott!

BRYAN (practically crying) Your microwave is totally fried!

ANDREW I’ll say! Goddamn, it’s huge! And what’s that horrible smell?

BIG FAT GUY-TUMOR lifts a leg and farts loudly. ANDREW is horriﬁed. BRYAN is mortiﬁed. ZARA-TUMOR wafts her hand.

ANDREW Vomitus!

BRYAN It ate all the butter last night while I was asleep!

ANDREW While you were asleep?

BRYAN I think it’s ﬁgured out how to walk, and it just drags me behind it and does its unholy deeds as I sleep. The other night…

439 W . .

ANDREW Yes?

BRYAN I am so sorry to say this…

ANDREW Out with it, man!

BRYAN I woke up around 3 a.m… and I was… Dude, I was in your bed!

ANDREW What?

BRYAN And my tumor and your tumor…

ANDREW (stands up from table in shock with ZARA-TUMOR) Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

BIG FAT GUY-TUMOR and ZARA-TUMOR slowly raise their arms toward each other in mute yearning.

ANDREW Jumping Jehoshaphat!

BRYAN It wasn’t my fault!

ANDREW I am so gonna return that fucking microwave!

ANDREW/ZARA-TUMOR storms off stage leaving BRYAN and BIG FAT GUY-TUMOR alone. BRYAN stands there for a moment, then slowly puts his arms around his tumor, who then puts his arms around BRYAN. The lights fade as “Close To You” by The Carpenters plays.

440 O . .

seesaw (2005)

BRYAN wakes up on stage with a big chain around his leg. He grabs at it, tugs it, he screams, he shouts.

EVIL GUY is heard in a computer voice like the one Stephen Hawking uses, like the one in Radiohead’s “Fitter Happier.”

EVIL GUY (voice-over) Hello, Mister Johnson. Let’s play a game. Let’s say I have your wife and children held hostage, and let’s say I have a gun pressed to their foreheads, and you alone can save them.

BRYAN You bastard! Where are you? What do you want with me? You’d better not hurt them, or I will kill you!

EVIL GUY Ha ha ha! Your loyalty to your family is very touching, Mister Johnson, Now let’s see if you can use that loyalty to keep them alive. Behind you is a backpack. Retrieve the backpack.

BRYAN scampers around dragging the chain on his ankle and ﬁnds a backpack just off stage.

EVIL GUY Inside, you will ﬁnd a slice of cherry pie. You have exactly one minute to eat that slice of cherry pie without using your hands. If you cannot do this, Mister Johnson, your family dies. How much do you want them to live? Your time begins now.

BRYAN dives into the pie and eats it voraciously as the EVIL GUY laughs a cruel and wicked computer laugh. BRYAN ﬁnishes the pie in mere seconds and throws the plate across the room.

441 U .

BRYAN (face covered in pie) There, you bastard, I finished it! Now let my wife and daughter go before I find you and eat your guts like pie filling! Like Pie Filling!

(Pause)

EVIL GUY So… uhm… you ﬁnished it already?

BRYAN Yes! It’s all gone! All of it! Now let my family go!

(Pause)

EVIL GUY Did you use your hands?

BRYAN huffs and raises both hands over his head to show they are free of any cherry pie residue.

EVIL GUY Well, I’ll be damned. Very good, Mister Johnson, well done, well done indeed. However, that was only the ﬁrst test of your loyalty, the ﬁrst test of how badly you want to live, how badly you want your family to live. Behind you is a small brown paper sack.

BRYAN You promised! You said if I ate the piece of cherry pie…

EVIL GUY Silence! Do not upset me, Mister Johnson. My trigger ﬁnger tends to twitch under stress, and i am sure your wife would not appreciate the consequences. Now… the brown paper sack.

BRYAN reaches off stage to pick up the brown paper sack, which he opens to reveal a Rubik’s Cube. He stares at it dumbfounded.

442 L . .

BRYAN I am dumbfounded! What the fuck is this?

EVIL GUY It is a Rubik’s Cube, Mister Johnson.

BRYAN I can see that, dumb ass! What do you want me to do with it?

EVIL GUY You have exactly ﬁve minutes to solve…

As EVIL GUY is talking, BRYAN is ﬂipping the Rubik’s Cube around, and he solves it in a few seconds.

EVIL GUY … the Rubik’s Cube before I…

BRYAN There! There! I solved it! I solved your stupid Rubik’s Cube! Now keep your promise, you son of a bitch, and let my family go! If you hurt one hair on their heads, I swear to Krishna, I will ass-fuck your heart!

(Pause)

BRYAN Hello? Are you there?

EVIL GUY You’ve already solved it?

BRYAN Yes! See! It was easy! It took, like, two twists and a turn!

EVIL GUY I don’t believe you. Hold it up so I can see.

443 D . BRYAN holds up the solved Rubik’s Cube, turning it back and forth to prove that it is indeed solved.

EVIL GUY God damn it.

BRYAN Now let me go! You gave your word!

EVIL GUY Silence!

(Pause)

EVIL GUY Okay… Behind you, Mister Johnson, you will ﬁnd a duffel bag.

BRYAN No! No, sir! This is bullshit! I keep doing everything you tell me, but you’re not keeping your end of the deal! What happens when I do this next stupid little test in ﬁve seconds? Huh? What then?

EVIL GUY Oh, Mister Johnson, I hardly think that will happen. The ﬁrst tests were appetizers before the main course. Behind you…

BRYAN Yeah, right, a duffel bag, and now I’m opening it. Are you watching, you fucking dick? And what do i ﬁnd? Oh, look, it’s a riddle! Let me guess, I have three fucking hours to solve your fucking riddle, or my family fucking dies, right?

(BRYAN reads note sarcastically with arms outstretched)

“A box without hinges, key, or lid, yet golden treasure inside is hid.” You stole that shit from The Hobbit, bitch! It’s an egg! An egg! Big fucking deal! Oh, let’s see what else you’ve got behind me…

444 M .

BRYAN dives backstage and pulls out several boxes, bags, backpacks, and containers, and he spreads them across the stage. He solves each stupid little puzzle in mere seconds, mocking the EVIL GUY and cursing as he does it. One is a Magic Eye 3-D thing, another is a maze, another is one of those truck stop puzzles with the twisted nails. In the end, the remains of all the tests are strewn about the stage.

BRYAN There! I solved all your stupid little puzzles! You are the saddest excuse for a psychopathic serial killer in the whole wide world! Who did you plan on kidnapping and testing with these stupid tests? A blind three- year-old with stumps for arms? You gonna hold his binky hostage?

(Pause)

BRYAN Huh? Answer me!

(Pause)

EVIL GUY You don’t have to be so mean about it.

BRYAN Oh, I’m being mean? You kidnap me and chain me to the fucking wall and hold my wife and daughter hostage, and I’m being mean?

EVIL GUY Look… I’m just trying to do my thing, you know? This is my ﬁrst time, and I’m just trying out some new things.

BRYAN Dude… Your tests were fucking lame! I mean, a Rubik’s Cube? I didn’t even know they sold those any more! I haven’t seen one of those things since the eighth grade. If you had only bothered to… I don’t know… mix it up a bit, I might still be trying to solve it, but you didn’t even try to make it hard.

445 E . . EVIL GUY At least it was harder than those Rubik’s Snake things. Remember those? They were so easy.

BRYAN I don’t want to fucking talk about the goddamned Rubik’s Snake, bitch, you’re tests are lame! And look! This chain? It’s not even locked!

BRYAN frees himself easily from the chain.

I knew it all along, too! I just didn’t wanna hurt your feelings! And I knew you were lying about my wife and kids, because, oh, guess what? I don’t have a wife and kids! In fact, I’m gay! Didn’t you do research?

(pause)

EVIL GUY I was just… I was…

EVIL GUY starts to emit electronic sobs.

BRYAN Oh, Jesus Christ! Now you’re crying!?

EVIL GUY I can’t help it. Everything I try just turns to shit. All I want is to be good at something. Just one thing. Is that so wrong? Is it so wrong for me to want to be good at something?

BRYAN Well… shit… Maybe you should try something else, because this whole… psychopathic serial killer thing… Man, it just doesn’t seem to suit you. You might need another hobby.

EVIL GUY Yeah, I guess so… Maybe I can go back to school… ﬁnish my thesis… open a bookstore with a cafe like I’ve always wanted…

446 A .

BRYAN Look, I’m just… I’m gonna head out. You, uhm, you take care of yourself, okay? Keep looking. You’ll ﬁnd your special purpose.

EVIL GUY Yeah… man… sorry about all this…

BRYAN exits the stage. Lights go out.

(Pause)

EVIL GUY Call me?

447 N . .

6 michael (2005)

pissed1 on jesus2 juice3, we4 bounce5 on michael’s6 bed7 and watch8 dirty9 videos10

1] By pissed, I mean the English11 slang12 term for being drunk and not as a synonym for angry, and yeah, we were so drunk. 2] This would be the son of god in Christian14 religions15 and not the short guy16 with the mustache33 who cares for Michael’s6 garden23. 3] Actually, it wasn’t juice, it was wine17. 4] It was me18 and Macaulay Culkin19 who were there at the time because Jesus20 hadn’t arrived yet. 5] And by this, I mean we4 were jumping up and down on the bed7 clad only in the tighty-whitey underwear21 and rainbow toe socks22 Michael6 had purchased for us the afternoon before. 6] Yes, that Michael28. 7] It was this huge king-sized four-poster bed with dark maroon sheets and an impossibly ﬂuffy maroon comforter scattered with throw pillows and stuffed animals. The weirdest part was the gigantic26 painting of Michael6 rising up out of the sea on a clamshell clothed in nothing but a diaper24. 8] To be honest, we weren’t really paying attention to what was on the big screen teevee25 because we were too busy spraying each other with canned whipped cream31 and watching Michael6 watch32 us4. 9] At ﬁrst, we thought the videos were showing us4 on the big screen teevee25 because they featured two boys in their underwear jumping up and down on Michael’s6 bed7, but then there were shots27 of some lady with ugly legs wearing spiked heels and stepping on the heads of mice42. 10] Michael6 used a Betamax machine25. I remember the tapes being very small, and Michael6 kept bragging about how much better they were than regular VHS tapes. He was so proud of that machine. 448 M . .

11] I love english slang. When I read the Harry Potter books43, I always make sure to get the UK versions with all the British slang12 intact. 12] Here are some of my favourite British slang words and their meanings: pram = baby carriage; trainers = athletic shoes; jumper = sweater; candy floss = cotton candy; whingy = sad and whiny; pissed = drunk; shag = to have sex. 13] I have to admit now that I wasn’t really drunk because I was afraid of alcohol and only pretended to drink it. Mostly I spilled it on the carpet and dumped it in the sink when I went to the bathroom44. I am pretty sure Macaulay Culkin19 was very drunk40. He always drank a lot in that house. 14] Michael6 told us that he was a devout Jehovah’s Witness45 and that it was okay to drink the wine because it was the blood of the lord. That’s why he called it Jesus Juice. He also had some kind of medicine he sniffed called God Powder. 15] I’ve tried all kinds of religions, but none has ever really fit. I tried Methodist, Mormon, Catholic, Baptist — even this one church where their thing was singing without musical accompaniment since the Bible never mentions singing to music — but the whole thing creeped me out. I never felt like I could get a straight answer from anyone. They would all just lapse into this rote Godspeak like recruiter robots for the lord. My views have since been influenced more by non-western beliefs like Buddhism and comedians like George Carlin. 16] Jesus Gonzales-Ortega said his first name like this: Hey-Suess. He was always around when we4 were with Michael6, so much that we started calling Jesus juice14 Hey-Suess Juice. This would crack Michael6 up. He would laugh and laugh and laugh. He loved Dr. Suess, and he would point at his books and say, Hey Suess! 17] We were never told what kind of wine it was, but I tasted something many years later called port46 that was very similar. It has a very high alcohol content. 18] My name is Bill, but at the time, I went by Billy. I was 12 then and in sixth grade. I am 24 now and just finished by bachelor’s degree in English literature. Michael6 paid for my college. A lot of people40 think he did it to keep me quiet. I am not sure what I think. 19] Yes, that Macaulay Culkin. We were the same age at the time, and even though we had fun when were playing together with Michael6, I always felt a little jealous of him since he was so rich and famous and so obviously favoured by Michael6. We never talked or hung out outside of The Ranch47 because I wasn’t famous, I was just some kid who had cancer49 really bad. 20] This would be the short guy16 with the mustache33 who cares for Michael’s6 garden23, not the son of God in Christian14 religions15. 21] I had always worn boxers, but Michael6 preferred that we wear tighty-whities because he said they offered more support. Plus, he said they were more attractive 449 U . . to women. Mac19 already wore them, but Michael6 bought me several packages so I could wear them, too. I haven’t worn them since. 22] Michael6 bought these for us, too, and I still have several pairs in a box. 23] The gardens were filled with all kinds of amazing examples of topiary, these large bushes trimmed to look like elephants and giraffes and other exotic animals. There was even a maze30, and in the middle was a giant bushy tree carved into the shape of Michael6 holding a small child. There were benches around the leafy Michael6, and I used to sit on them and read comic books29 for hours at a time as Jesus20 manicured the bushes. 24] Well, it might have been some sort of loin cloth, but it sure looked like a big adult diaper to me. 25] It was a Sony, I believe, which was Michael’s6 record company at the time. 26] I mean, it was really big, by far the biggest painting I had ever seen41. 27] I found out much later these were known as crush videos. 28] Michael was a Soul/R&B singer whose early fame for musical brilliance was over-shadowed by his eccentricities and relationships with young boys4. 29] I really liked Thor and Spiderman a lot, and Michael had loads of comics in his mansion, way more than you could ever read in your whole life40. 30] Now that I remember the maze, I am reminded of the one in The Shining38. 31] Michael6 taught us how to suck the air out of cans of whipped cream and hold our breathe until it made us feel light-headed and funny. He said it was even better than Jesus Juice, but it just made me feel dizzy and sick to my stomach. I threw up on Michael’s6 carpet in the bedroom, and he was livid. It was the only time I had ever seen him angry. 32] Michael6 would usually be dressed in a dark forest green smoking jacket sort of thing with these absurdly pink house slippers he thought were a gas, and he would sit there on a big orange faux-leopard skin bean bag chair and encourage us to jump on his bed, laughing and shouting, “Shoot more whipped cream on him! Jump higher! Higher!” I still remember the look of pure joy on his face. 33] Who has mustaches these days? Mustaches are weird. Cops seem to have a thing for mustaches. It must be some vestige of ’70s masculinity. I think it makes a person look cheesy and cheap. Whenever Sean Penn37 is playing a character that is unsavory in some way, he almost always wears a mustache. 34] I think if Michael6 had been truly guilty of the crimes that are alleged, he should’ve gone to prison36, but only if he had gotten counseling while he was in there, because if there was anyone who needed counseling, Jesus Christ, it was Michael. It’s a moot point now51. 35] I remember hoping the people who made Michael6 go through all the court 450 L . stuff are happy now. I wish Michael6 had left America and stayed the rest of his life in a country48 where people would have left him the fuck alone. 36] If Michael6 had gone to prison, he probably would not have lasted very long. He would have probably died there. I don’t know if Michael6 molested anyone, but I do know he never molested me. It was Jesus20 who did it while we were in the garden23. he did it five or six times before my cancer was healed. 37] Sean pean is one of my favourite actors. His movie The Assassination Of Richard Nixon was amazing. 38] The scariest movie of all time40, especially those scenes with the creepy little girls and that elevator gushing blood. 40] I cannot confirm this. 41] Which is not to say I had seen all that many large paintings as I was only 12 at the time, but still… it was huge. 42] I think they were mice, but they could’ve been rats. 43] Don’t get me started. 44] You’ve never40 seen a bathroom as opulent as this one. The sinks were literally gold. Not just golden, but made of solid gold. The toilet had a seat that was not only covered in velvet, but it was self-heating. the spigots for the sink we shaped like the arching necks of swans with the water spilling gently out of their mouths. And the tub? Wow… it was as big as a jacuzzi. We4 took many bubble baths together with Michael6 sprawled on the carpet, and the suds nearly touched the ceiling. 45] While I would never want to disparage anyone’s religious beliefs, I have to say that the whole no blood transfusions thing kinda weirds me out about Jehovah’s Witnesses. I asked a Jehovah’s Witness once if she would let her children die if they were in need of transfusions, and this Jehovah’s Witness said, Better to let the body die than the soul. I don’t know if I believe in that50. 46] Port is a very sweet wine with spices and a notable raisin flavour. It’s higher in alcohol content than most wines, according to the guy at the wine store. 47] It wasn’t really a Ranch; It was more like an amusement park. My favourite part was the garden23. 48] France? Sweden? Luxemburg? 49] I got better. 50] To be honest, I am not sure what I believe. 51] Michael died. I was shocked when I read about it, although I was not surprised. what a sad ending, just as he was launching a comeback. 52] Michael loved solving the Cryptoquip in the newspaper, but he would always cheat and use an Internet cryptogram solver like www.rumkin.com.

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haiku I have written more than a thousand haiku in my time, but this was the first. in fact, this was pretty much the first poem i ever wrote. it’s at least the first poem i ever wrote that i can still remember. it came to me in the 7th or 8th grade, which means anywhere between late 1979 to early 1981. since the newest poems in this collection were written in 2011, i have placed this oldest of all my poems in 1981 to make an even 30 years of writing. this haiku was created for an english class during a poetry unit, one of those lessons where you write a poem using all the senses — anger smells like, anger tastes like, etc. — or you pick a word and make each letter the beginning of a line describing the word, stuff like that. i might have those oldest of old poem at the bottom of some box somewhere in my mom and dad’s garage in wichita, but it’s a mess in there, and it would take forever to find them. i remember writing something about hate smelling like motor oil, and i remember this one. well, okay, i remember very clearly the last two lines, and i remember it was inspired by seeing a little dust devil in either a parking lot or a dirt field. i can’t remember the first line at all, so i made up the first five syllables, but the last two lines are solid in my mind. i like the idea of my 44-year-old self collabourating with my 12-year-old self to write this haiku. i like that idea a lot. and it’s not a bad haiku, either. shoot, it’s better than a lot of the ones i’ve written. ode to poison mushrooms Frankly, i wrote exactly one poem during my entire time in high school, and it didn’t come until my senior year. i was in the top-level english class, but i rarely spoke and was even more rarely called upon. the class comprised some of the most popular kids in my year, and lots of them were in plays together or on the staff of the school newspaper or yearbook, or they did sports and stuff, so they all knew each other, but i wasn’t really someone who occurred to anyone. the teacher asked the class to write a poem one day, just out of nowhere: go, write a poem, any poem about anything, you have five minutes. this is what i came up with, inspired by the long series of nightmares i was having about nuclear holocaust. a teevee movie called the day after had freaked us all out, and reagan-era america was all about the possibility of dying in an icbm strike. the teacher gathered up all the poems, and he stood in front of the class perusing them. he would find one that struck his fancy, read it aloud, then he would reveal who had written it. most of the poems he read were from the ruling class of kids, the popular kids, and everyone would giggle and laugh when a familiar name was mentioned. then the teacher came to one and paused, smirked a little to himself, and he read my poem aloud. people seemed to be quite impressed with it. he asked the class to guess who had written it, said they would never guess who had written it in a thousand

Y . . years. names were shouted, all names of popular kids, of known smart kids, artsy kids, pretty much everyone in the fucking room except for me. i was dreading what was coming next. he said my name, and the whole class went silent, and they all turned their heads and stared at me without saying a word. it was awful. not only did i cringe at the idea of being singled out, but it was obvious not a single person in that room expected anything out of me, the quiet kid in the corner, the brooding kid who never spoke, not a single student and certainly not the teacher. his surprise underlined my utter lack of status. it may have been they all said i had done a good job, maybe the teacher said it was about time i started to show a little of myself, but all i remember is being mortified. i spend a great deal of my life being inspired by mortification and awkwardness. the line about shifting shafts of shining light was stolen from an homage to jacob’s ladder by rush. stranded Can’t tell you it was ripped from an old diary stained with the tears of my 12- year-old self, nope, i wrote this shit at 19 while i was in millington, tennessee, trying my best to survive a year of navy technical school. easily one of my favourite awful poems i have ever written. and i was fucking 19! have you seen the kind of work 19-year-old poetry slammers are writing and performing on a regular basis nowadays? fucking brilliant exposés of the military/industrial complex and shit, and i was all searching / for a love / i am never to find. oh, had there only been slam poetry back when i was in high school! what poems would i have been able to write! i got started fairly late and didn’t put pen to paper until after i graduated high school and joined the navy, so the shit poetry you’re supposed to get out of your system in junior high didn’t get flushed from my pen until i hit my twenties, and my writing still largely sucked until the cusp of my thirties. i was 29 before i hit my first poetry slam in ’96, and i was 32 when i wrote my biggest hit — ¡the wussyboy manifesto! — in 1999. back to this poem, yeah, i wrote it while in the barracks on a navy base. it was kinda like living in the dorms on a college campus. most rooms slept five: two bunk beds and a single bed. however, i managed to somehow get fucking plantar warts on one of my feet, and the painful treatment consisted of applying acid patches that ate through the thick layers of skin on my heel. apparently, those kind of warts grow wicked roots that can twist around your bones! yikes! the medics claimed my plantar warts were so deadly communicable that i was quarantined to a five-person room all by myself for several months. at first, it was awesome being the only squid in the entire barracks with a room all to myself, but it started to really suck spending all my time alone. the schooling i was getting was self-paced, so i’d spend all day in a cubicle staring into a monitor and taking timed tests that were graded by computer. i spent hours and hours not speaking to anyone during the day, then i went back to the barracks and stayed in my room alone all evening. i would go days without speaking to anyone, and i only left the base three times in the 366 days i spent there. i would read and listen to music all night and write 30-page letters to my high school sweetheart kelly back home. there was a phone center on the navy base where you could pay by the minute to use a phone in a little booth, and i would stay there for hours talking to

L . kelly. i spent so much time there, i struck up a friendship with the lady working behind the counter. i would hang out with her on breaks as she ate sandwiches from a bag. she was in her 30s and married and had kids, and i was 19 and totally alone. she was the only friend i had for most of the year and a day i spent on that dreary navy base. i begged the people who ran the barracks to let me have roomies during my last month before finishing technical school. they finally relented, and i roomed with two really great guys who became my friends. we even went camping once, and i had a great time, but that was in my last two weeks on that base, then i was shipped to a base in virginia beach, virginia. god, that was such a lonely time. epiphany Oh, this poem is so... so... bad... there always comes a time in a long performance at a high school or college about 90 minutes into the show where i will do a selection of really bad poetry i wrote when i first started. i do it so we can all get a laugh at my expense, and i encourage the audience to shout the rhyming lines before i get a chance to say them, but i also do it to show that we all write crap like that in the beginning no matter how good we end up being years later. i’d like to think i’m better at expressing myself now than when i wrote this poem, which was included in a letter to my long-distance girlfriend kelly. i really missed her, so i had to write about it. at one time, i’m sure i was really feeling this poem. as sucky and cliché as it is, i was freakin’ feeling that shit. it meant something to me, and it was so important that i wrote it down and showed it to my girlfriend to express my innermost feelings. i also sent her lyrics from pink floyd’s the wall. emo much? lone Now, this poem? oh so horrible it makes me laugh out loud and roll my eyes. the image of a lone wolf roaming the countryside is so clichéd and cheesy, and, of course, the poem is called lone just in case you didn’t get that i was comparing myself to a wolf. i felt it, though, and, to be honest, that shitty poem still pretty much describes my life right now so many years later. at one point, this crap verse perfectly described how i felt, and i meant every word, and maybe i still do. erosion Very old, but not too horrible, i mean, it doesn’t make me cringe like so much of the stuff from that time period. i have always tried to keep a tight grip on the elements of my life and soul and personality that retain the magic and glow of youth, a magical way of looking at and interacting with the world around me that embraces joy and wonder and mindful naiveté. you create the world you live in, and if you want to live in a world full of mean people who are out to get you, be mean to you, hurt you, steal from you, make you sad, beat you down, then that’s the world you will live in. i choose not to live in that world as much as i can. i live in a world where i have couches across america waiting to whisk me off to sleep and people who can’t wait to tell me stories and listen to mine. oh, the things we think are important when we are young and don’t know any better! i guess that’s what this poem is about, holding onto those things.

L . . ennui, go on Every guess is as good as mine on this one. i wrote it, apparently, the year after i graduated from high school and joined the navy for six very long years, which means it was probably written while i attended technical school in millington, tennessee. i have no recollection of my daily life then, no idea what i did in my free time, but i know i listened to a lot of music. i was really into the police at the time, and i was a few years away from loving u2. hold on. i’m going to put on the police right now. i’ll be right back. (pause) aww yeah, i just put on synchronicity, and walking in your footsteps is playing. oooh, i used to love the police! i had everything i could get my hands on, and i’m not talking just the albums, those were easy, i am talking about the 45s with the b-side songs you couldn’t get anywhere else. i would prowl record shops looking for their singles. it took me forever to get everything, and then the fuckers went and release a boxed set of the whole shebang, so now any schmuck can go and get a complete collection of the police in one easy shot. oooh, that burns my butt. i paid $50 for the ﬁrst 45 they ever put out. fuckers. anyway, this piece is awful and reads more like song lyrics than a poem. it has a little reggae rhythm going, i suppose. i still sometimes look at life this way, or, rather, i rail against the aspects of society that want us to live our lives this way. the part about thinking about those eyes of blue should have really been about eyes of green, since that was the colour of my long-distance love kelly’s eyes, which were emerald green, but it didn’t rhyme, so i changed the eyes to blue. whym Really thought i was the shit when i wrote this poem! i thought i was really onto something with this writing stuff. i walked with a bounce in my step for a week knowing i was capable of writing this poem. i’d feel better about it now had i written it at 13, but i was 21 or 22 at the time, and it’s kinda really not that good. life So... so... so... deliciously awful! i wrote this while i was still in the navy about a year before i discovered industrial music, like skinny puppy and ministry and foetus and all the sturm ünd drang of wax trax! records, and it reads to me like the lyrics of a song from kmfdm or front 242 or something ripped from the secret diary of one of the trench coat maﬁa. oed 1 & 2 Agony! oh please do not make me talk about these two poems. please! they are just wretched, just craptastic! bend her over like auggie doggie? who writes that shit and calls it poetry? dear lord, apparently i did. i had never studied poetry, so what the fuck did i know? and to add insult to injury, i stole a line from a song called hemispheres by rush. the part about fools against their foolish brothers? yeah, i stole that. i once submitted the lyrics to the trees by rush to my high school literary magazine, and i totally got busted by one of the student editors and mocked by those who knew i had done it. you just can’t sneak rush lyrics past another high school nerd. you just can’t do it!

A . abrupt This one started because my long-distance then-girlfriend kelly used to say “too bad so sad” all the time. if i complained about there being no crunchy peanut butter in the cupboard, for instance, she would say, “too bad so sad.” one day her younger sister complained she didn’t have a car, so i singsonged, “too bad, so sad, you wish you had... a car.” it cracked us up for some reason, probably because you are expecting another word that rhymes with bad, but instead you get car. the phrase stuck with me for some reason, and it eventually morphed into this little tidbit of wannabe cut-and-paste. i had heard about william s. burroughs and david bowie experimenting with a technique where you type out a poem on a piece of paper, then you cut out all the words and phrases and rearrange them to create a totally new work. i suppose i was mimicking that style when i wrote this screed. mmm mmm, pro patria! I get it! 13 lines in the first stanza! and 13 in the second! like the american flag! and it’s on page 13, meaning it was the 13th poem i had ever written! groan! i was influenced by wilfred owen’s poem that says dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, latin for it is sweet and good to die for your country. i wrote this for a creative writing class i took while i was in the navy. i really like wilfred owen’s work. he was a soldier in the first world war who wrote in the trenches, and he died a few days before the end of the war without having published any of his work. his lover, who was a fellow officer — scandalous! — gathered all his writing after his death and got it published posthumously, then wilfred owen’s work got famous. he is now considered one of the premiere battlefield poets. minuet On an air base in virginia beach, virginia, is where my navy time was largely spent between 1986-1991. i worked the graveyard shift from 11 p.m. - 7 a.m., and i took a creative writing class during the day at the tidewater community college. i wrote a series of dreamlike pieces where i was trying to be all surreal and stuff, and from what i remember, this was right around the time salvador dali died because this kid i knew in class wrote one about him, the same one, i think, with whom i was supposed to see love and rockets and the pixies (see the notes for heroin). turns out, i was born on salvador dali’s birthday, may 11. it’s also the anniversary of the births of modern dancer martha graham, lead singer of the animals eric burdon, and infamous bullshit artist baron von munchhausen. sexuality Non compos mentis, this one, a surreal bit written for a creative writing class i took while i was in the navy. i have often felt anti-sexual, anti-romance, anti-everything, and i have reacted to someone actively flirting with me with disdain, like i am so not in that space right now. this poem seems to be an exploration of an invitation and a rejection. the line she said something foreign under her breath was ripped off directly from a song by roger waters called 4:30 a.m. (apparently they were traveling abroad) from his album the pros and cons of hitch hiking.

B . . routine I’m always getting people asking me where i get inspiration for poems, and i always have to admit i really have no idea. they just come, and i write them down. i think if i question the muse too much, she will stop putting out, so i try to remain open to suggestion and grateful whenever a poem taps me on the shoulder and lets me know it’s ready to be written. like this poem. where in the hell did it come from? and what inspired me to write it? it was one of a series of surreal poems i wrote for the creative writing class i took while i was the navy. i love it, actually. it’s just fucking weird, but it’s delivered as though this type of thing happens all the time. heroin Sure do loves me some music! more than just about anything else other than my kitties and kissing. when i go on tour, i often disappear into my headphones, and it’s like the whole wide world around me becomes distant and moves in slow motion. i’ll close my eyes and squish my head into my feather pillow pressed against the bus window, and i’ll dive into the space between beats. i’ll melt into the song and focus on nothing but the music. i won’t even hear the lyrics, i’ll just hear the sound of the voice as an instrument. i can spend hours elsewhere. i wrote this piece about how i get sucked into music during a creative writing class i took while i was in the navy. a friend of mine in the class heard me read it before it was titled and remarked, “whoa, i didn’t know you did heroin.” i decided music was my heroin, and it was perfect, so that became the title. that kid — i can’t remember his name — was so cool. he was a guitarist in a little punk band who turned me on to vivisect vi by skinny puppy, the land of rape and honey by ministry, and nail and thaw by scraping foetus off the wheel. those albums totally fucked up my whole perception of music, and i was crazy about those bands for a long time after, especially foetus, which lead me to be crazy about nine inch nails a few years later. me and that kid in the creative writing class had tickets to see love and rockets open up for the pixies, which would’ve been an amazing show since they were both at their creative peak at the time — this was 1988 — but when it came right down to it, i ﬂaked. dude left frantic messages on my answering machine since i had the tickets, and each message was more and more angry. me and the kid stopped being friends after that. i’m not sure why i ﬂaked. it kills me that i didn’t go, because both the pixies and love and rockets broke up after that tour. for the record, i have never done heroin or any other hard drug for that matter.

ﬂyboy Loves me some kitties! this didn’t really happen, no, and i don’t think people should go out and do horrid things to their cats. i love my kitties very much, and i would kick the ass of anyone who even for a moment suggested they should do something as wretched as this to mah bebes. i wrote this poem way before i had ever performed a poem in front of other people, way before i had even been to an open mic poetry reading or had even heard of such a thing, but it’s interesting to see a sort of spoken word style and cadence even this early in my writing career. i do this piece even now and people crack up. i had a cat named ivan at the

I . . time who was such a sweet little shelter kitty, and he would do this crazy dance whenever i ﬂicked a q-tip at him that cracked my shit up. plus, he would lie on his side, and i would call him, and instead of getting up and walking, he would pull himself along the carpet with one paw, scooting his way across the room to me on his side, and i thought that was hilarious. lazy pussy. i had to take ivan back to the pound when the stupid navy made me go on some stupid ship for 14 months. poor kitty. i think i just wrote this out of nowhere, not for a class.

flashlight I joined the navy because i wanted to be involved with computers, however once i got there, i wanted nothing more than to be a college student, which is why i started taking creative writing classes. it felt so nice to be around people who weren’t in the military, because i had very quickly come to hate everything about the navy and everyone in it. i hung out with a group of students, and i didn’t tell any of them i was a squid; it was my dirty little secret. i started dating a girl who was a friend of a guy in the creative writing class. her name was dori holland, and she was a cute but crazy/dramatic actor chick. it was like having this whole secret life away from the navy. i grew the hair on the top of my head really long, so long my locks leapt from my forehead all the way down to my chin, and i would keep the sides and back all trimmed up military nice. i’d hide it all under the ball cap i wore while working on the navy base, but when i got done with work blam! that shit came out and fell over my face all flock of seagulls stylie. i also had my ear pierced, and i would take out my earring and shove a piece of transparent plastic into the hole while i worked. one time i was hanging out at the local mall, and some squid from my work center who outranked me walked right past without recognizing me, and i felt triumphant. the local cool kids hated most navy guys, and i didn’t want to be associated with them at all, so blending in made me feel great. i wrote this poem during that time as an assignment for the creative writing class. it’s another poem about god. the teacher said i was trying too hard. lycanthropy Klutzy d&d nerd like me? or maybe a twilight fan? then you should know the title is the mythical malady that transforms a man into a werewolf during the full moon. i wrote this for that creative writing class i took while i was in the navy, and the instructor once again accused me of trying too hard. i remember he liked the echoes drip and run and fade part, though. whatever. look at me now, bitch! truelove Egad! this over-written piece of crap is one of only two poems to have graced the pages of a publication i didn’t print myself. a little zine from ohio called impetus printed it, and i was so excited! i thought for sure my writing career was going to take off, so i bought one of those little word processors that was, like, an electronic typewriter with a little viewscreen and a flip-down keyboard, and you could save things to a little disc? suffice it to say, the writing career that was supposed to be launched by this poem is still struggling to burst into fruition.

C . . rage So unbearably bad! i don’t really remember much about this ancient poem. i was in the navy when i wrote it, getting ready to spend a lot of time aboard the aircraft carrier uss saratoga (cv-60) in preparation for a long deployment at the end of 1990. hostilities broke out across the border between iraq and kuwait as we headed across the north atlantic ocean in august of 1990, i think, and all of our ports were cancelled as we rushed to the red sea for what was to become the first gulf war. interestingly, my best friend zara lived in kuwait at the time, and her family had to flee into syria to avoid the iraqi army. i seem to think this poem was written for a creative writing class, but i am not sure the date matches up to the time when i was enrolled in the local community college. i remember at one time thinking this was a damn good poem, although now i see overwrought purple verse. love poem, no. 9 Early pile of dookie pooped while i was deep into my industrial music phase. it’s so melodramatic, so like the shit wannabe-poets shout into open mics all over this country. you just know the guy reading this poem would have skinny jeans and pointy shoes and a cardigan covering a faded thrift store t-shirt of some obscure indie band and thick black nerd glasses and an ironical trucker hat with a beaver on it and a ’70s porn star mustache. he’d shriek the whole thing and force the seven people in the audience to cover their ears, then he’d chuck the mic onto the stage with a bang! and storm out of the coffeehouse and stalk down the street as if reading this piece of shit had taken so much out of him because he was really feeling it, man, he fucking cracked open his rib cage and forced you to see the ugliness inside, and now he’s so spent he’s gotta ride his fixie to his favourite dive bar and drink some pbr, and he would know deep in his hipster heart that his poetry was more realer than all the bullshit other people spit at open mics. and fuck slams, man, fuck assigning scores to poem, mostly because all his shit scores poorly at slams because no one can stand being yelled at for three minutes at a time, only he would say he got bad scores because he refused to pander to the lowest common denominator. oh, this poem is deliciously bad. i love it! lincoln logs and rabid dogs Xeroxed aircraft carrier poetry. even though i wouldn’t visit an open mic poetry reading until ’92 or a poetry slam until ’96, i consider this piece my very first performance poem. i wrote it while aboard the uss saratoga sometime around ’89 or ’90, and it was the first piece i ever memorized, even though i had no reason to memorize it at the time since i had never performed in front of and audience nor had i even known such a thing was possible. i wrote it on the rudimentary computers they used in my work center on the ship, and i printed it out on a shitty dot matrix printer. i still do this piece every once in a great while, maybe every year or two. i thought the world of this piece when i finished it, thought it was the best thing i had ever written, and i considered it proof that i was a good writer. when i hit my very first poetry slam at the taos poetry circus in ’96, this was my second- round poem, and it scored well enough to get me into the final round.

W . . . equalizer This is one of the oldest poems that i still like and occasionally perform. it was written while i was in the navy, probably while on the aircraft carrier uss saratoga around ’89 or ’90. it was during my brief write everything in a solid block of text phase, which, i have to admit, was inspired directly by ogre from skinny puppy, who wrote his lyrics in the same fashion on the liner notes to their albums. it was also inspired by a line in a song by scraping foetus off the wheel where jim thirlwell talks about carrying an equalizer in the glove compartment. i just want to take this opportunity to say that jim thirlwell has been my favourite musical entity for more than two decades, and i have everything he’s ever done that i can get my hands on. if you have never heard of the man or his various incarnations of foetus — you’ve got foetus on your breath, foetus art terrorism, foetus interruptus, etc. — then you really ought to check out his website at www.foetus.org. he also scores movies and television shows, such as the amazing work he’s done for the venture brothers. he’s a fucking genius. back to the poem... although i wrote it nearly three years before i had ever witnessed an open mic poetry reading, it became one of my first sorta hits once i started in early ’92. you never know who you’re fucking with, who is a walking time bomb waiting for the right series of events to trigger a mental explosion, so you should pretty much be nice to everyone just in case. i feel like i am sometimes that guy, the quiet guy who will explode one day when the wrong person fucks with him one too many times. i hate mean people. wendy Halfway think maybe this was written during a creative writing class i took at a community college way back in ’88 while i was in the navy. or maybe not. maybe i wrote it after i had been discharged and moved back to my hometown of bakersfield, california. either way, it’s about kelly, my first real true love. we dated for five or six years, depending on how you figure those things. it was totally fucked. i was such an immature shithead, and she was an angel who deserved so much better than the scraps of affection i had to offer between bouts of operatic depression. it’s hard to remember what it was like to love her. when she finally had the courage to break up with me, i was so miserable for so long, but i am so glad she did it. she deserved better. kelly and i had nicknames for each other from high school; she was wendy, and i was peter pan, the boy who never grew up. ouroboros Egyptian (or greek, not sure, maybe norwegian) symbol for eternity. that’s what the title means, the image of a snake eating its own tail. it can also mean self- destruction, which is nice since it’s handily shaped like a wedding ring. this poem was written around the same time as wendy and was about the end of my relationship with my high school sweetheart kelly. i don’t think our life together was ever as bad as this depicts. at least, i hope it wasn’t. it was pretty cold at the end, though. our cat ivan wouldn’t even sleep between us anymore. i nicked the line about masturbating with her body instead of his hand years and years later for the piece called how to make love. i like this one a lot. it’s pretty accurate.

O . . aspartame Navy time was over when i wrote this poem, and i was in the middle of sowing wild oats with anyone who would allow me near them. i had gotten out of the navy after six years, and the early ’90s d.i.y. youth culture of alternative rock and coffeehouses was in full effect. i sowed a lot of pent-up wild oats, and the detritus of each connection littered my bedroom floor. i dated a dancer/choreographer girl who was pixie cute. our first kiss was new year’s eve on the top of a building overlooking downtown bakersfield, my shitty hometown. immediately after the kiss, she sighed, smiled, and said, “i totally thought you were gay!” we dated for a couple of months. toward the end, she was playing the part of anybodys in west side story, and she really wanted me to see opening night, but i had to work, so i could only check out the first half. she got really pissed. the next day, i went over to her house to sweeten her up, and she ripped open the door and growled, “gimme my key.” i stared at her, shocked, then reached into my pocket for my keychain, removed her spare, and handed it to her. she snatched it up then handed me a small paper bag and said, “now take your cream rinse and get the fuck out.” she actually said that. i had long hair down to my shoulders at the time, and i did indeed have a bottle of conditioner in her shower. i was stunned, but also more than a little delighted. not only had she totally dissed me, but she did it by uttering one of the most unforgettable closing lines ever. i immediately ran home and wrote a poem about it, about all the shit you collect as you date one person then another and another. i could walk down the street with remnants of five or six relationships on my person and not even realize it. aspartame, by the way, is the artificial sweetener known as nutrisweet. echo Full disclosure: context is the really interesting thing about this piece, because in 1993 when it was written, i was getting so much action, you don’t even know, jack, you have no idea. i was macking on, like, everything that moved. i kept track, too, and i had sex with 33 different people in the three years after i got discharged from the navy. holy crap! when did i have time to be lonely if i was fuckin’ all the time? okay, wait, i’m totally rocking michael jackson’s thriller as i type this, and wanna be startin’ something just kicked off, and i cranked the volume. i love this song! say what you want, but michael jackson made a fucking amazing album with thriller, and off the wall was terrific, too, and people forget how many good songs are on bad. anyway, yeah, i fancied myself quite the ladies man back in the day, and yet i wrote this, which is all about loneliness, all about the emptiness left behind. it reminds me of the conclusion i arrived at after three years of rabid humping: it didn’t make me happy. i wanted love, not random hookups, and the thrill of flesh only made me feel lonelier. the woe to him part is from ecclesiastes, my favourite book in the bible, and that’s where the title comes from, too. there is something lonely about an echo. you want to pretend it’s someone else talking to you, but, in the end, it’s only your own voice. i love thriller. when i was the dj for the austin poetry slam, all i had to do was drop anything from this album, and it didn’t matter who you were, you would rock the fuck out.

R . . appliance envy Unclear on this one. i imagine it was about dating a foodie, someone who is really into making all kinds of homemade dishes with fancy ingredients. i imagined what it would be like after the break-up when she was gone but all her culinary tools and exotic foods had been left behind, reminders of a relationship gone bad. i wrote this piece in a period of time when i had been hitting open mic poetry readings for a while and was moving away from page poetry and more into what i thought of as spoken word. i used to perform it in this high-pitched whiny voice that my girlfriend at the time hated. i would practically yell it, too. we all yelled back then. that was the style. yelling. sometimes i still find myself yelling all the way through a piece for no apparent reason, and in the middle of it, i always think, why the hell am i yelling? another irritating non-style is reciting a piece so quickly that no one can understand what the hell you are saying, as if the poet is trying to fit a four-minute poem into three minutes and ten seconds. i would prefer they write a tight two-minute poem and breathe it into three minutes, using the empty spaces between words as punctuation. volume and speed can’t hide bad writing. plastic Come on, more kvetching about god? a friend i had at the time named melinda would call stuff like this coffeehouse poetry, a derisive term she made up meaning it had probably been written by some black beret dickhead smoking cloves and moping to morrissey on headphones. i still feel this way, though, like... i hope the rare times i pray, most often during plane flights, actually connect with some sort of higher power, but we will never know. we’ll live our lives until we die, then we’ll either know or we won’t, and that’s that. death scares the shit out of me. darn Killer bad memory means i don’t remember much about this poem at all. i don’t even remember reading it out loud, although i must have since it was written at a time when i was hit open mic readings in my hometown coffeehouse. it’s weird looking into a mirror and thinking, wow, that’s me. i am looking into my own face. that’s what i look like. that’s what other people see. i’ve spent a lot of time staring into mirrors, both literally and metaphorically, and it’s just so weird struggling to connect the person in the mirror with the person looking through my eyes at the world. i have this concept of self that relies very little on how i look, and when i catch a glimpse of myself, it almost sends shivers down my spine. aging is weird, too, because i still do and think and act like i always have, but the face in the mirror is showing signs of age. crow’s feet scratching at the corners of the eyes. salty goatee. bad knees. it’s weird. aging can do a tongue ballet in my bunghole. asbestos Many know asbestos, of course, is a substance that was widely used throughout construction projects during the industrial revolution and after due to its inflammable nature, but it was later banned because it also happened to be incredibly carcinogenic. asbestos was so widely used, it’s still being cleared from

D . . old buildings to this day. i used it as a metaphor representing the danger of dealing with anger by being shitty to someone else, as if you are transferring the anger to the other person so you don’t have to feel it any more. this is such a self-defeating way of dealing with anger, like a cancer that eats you both up. it reminds me of an old saying: holding a grudge is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die. i recall that saying often, especially when i am all pissed off. i think this poem is pretty much bloody awful. it’s like i’m trying to write nine inch nails lyrics or something. i can imagine rhythmically shrieking the words in a harsh screamo style as a drummer kicks the double bass action and a guitarist churns out power chords. squirming blind white raaaaaaaaaage! jeez, this is bad. glue Egregious remarks about a chubby couple inspired this piece, some snarky asshole cracking wise about how ugly they would look while fucking. i thought that was so rude and awful. who the hell cares what they look like when they make love as long as they love each other while they do it? i would hope they make each other feel sexy no matter what society may sneer about them. i was trying to illustrate the inherent beauty in lovemaking no matter what the people look like. listening to oak cliff bra I was digging around an old journal and found this pifﬂe scribbled on a forgotten page. i have a terrible memory, especially for words, and especially lyrics. i tend to listen to voices in music like they are instruments, and i rarely seem to know the words to songs, even ones i’ve been listening to forever. i used to love edie brickell and new bohemians, and i had a huge crush on her even though she’s hella tall and leggy. i could never seem to remember the lyrics to this little song she did on her second album, ghost of a dog, so whenever i felt like singing it as i walked down the street, i’d make up my own words and sing them to the melody. that’s how i came up with this little scribble in some old notebook. it makes me smile. listening to deep in the heart Wow, i used to love me some u2! the cool thing about them was that they out with lots of collectible songs, little extra songs not found on proper albums but released as a b-side to a single that only came out on, say, a 45 or ep or soundtrack. i used to have a vast collection. one of my favourite rare songs was deep in the heart, a b-side to i still haven’t found what i’m looking for from the joshua tree album. i just made up my own lyrics to sing along with bono, and this is that. insinuation A moldy oldie i pretty much haven’t seen or even thought in years and years, easily since the ’90s when i wrote it during my coffeehouse days in my shitty little hometown, crashing on couches with friends i barely knew, hooking up with random cute girls, trying to ﬁll all the holes in my heart but only making them bigger and bigger. i had just enough charm and wit to talk my way into a lot of beds and couches, but not enough to keep from wearing out my welcome.

P . new town, new school, new job, new life Nearly everything changed for me right around the time kurt cobain shot himself. i was starting to feel like it was time to move on from my shitty little hometown of bakersfield, california. i had been there for three years, ever since i got out of the navy. there had been a golden time for a little while filled with coffeehouses and poetry and rock shows and getting drunk and fucking, but by the time the voice of our generation silenced himself with a shotgun blast, everything cool about the city was changing. the nü metal band that became korn got signed by sony and left town, and that started a flurry of bands bailing bako for bigger cities. the ones left behind all seemed to get hooked on heroin. the indie bookstore closed. the indie music store closed. the coffeehouse was closing. the dive bar that hosted punk shows closed. and then the two girls i had been dating both dumped me on the same day, which was april 8, 1994. i remember the date because kurt cobain’s body had been discovered that day, and it was all over the news. yesh, my early ’90s was dying, and i needed a fresh start, so i transferred to chico state university in northern california, about 90 minutes past sacramento and about three hours north-east of san francisco. i was accepted, then i faxed every print shop in chico. i got exactly one call back. i drove up to chico the first time for the interview and got offered the job, so i found a room to rent in the local paper, met the people living there, and put down a deposit and drove back to bakersfield to get my shit. within a week, i was in a new town going to a new school with a new job, and i didn’t know a soul in the entire place except for cale wiggins. he had been working the counter of the coffeehouse in bakersfield, and when he heard about my plans to leave town, he asked if he could go with me. i hardly knew the guy, so we bought some whiskey and got drunk on the tip-top of a parking structure overlooking downtown. the deal was sealed. a week later, we packed our lives into a u-haul trailer and bailed. i remember walking down the main drag in chico right after i nailed the job interview and thinking about how that town and everything in it was unknown to me, but i felt deep in my gut i would surely make that town my own in the months to come. i felt like i would get to know that town like the back of my hand. and you know what? it kinda happened that way. i ended up running the chico poetry slam and getting crowds of 100+ every tuesday for two or three years, and for a while there, i was quite well-known, thank you very much. i had a blast... mostly. it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

floss This one would qualify as my first appearance on the charts if poets could be said to have greatest hits. this is my creep, my working man, my roxanne. it started as a column for the zine i did at the time, and it just happened to be the perfect length for a slam poem, even though i had never even heard of slam at the time. i first read about the concept of competitive poetry in a late-1995 los angeles times article about the 10-round poetry boxing match held at the taos poetry circus in new mexico, and i made a roadtrip to attend the very next summer. the circus comprised several days of events, and some people i knew from the los angeles open mic scene had come, too, so it was mad fun. there was an open poetry slam

L . where anyone could sign up and rock out, but i had never heard of slam, and i was hella skeptical about the competition aspect of it. i turned down the organizer of the slam, but she cajoled me until i relented and signed up. i had no idea what the rules were or what was popular or appropriate for a slam poem, so i just did this piece about how much i love to floss my teeth. it went over like gangbusters, and i ended up making the third and final round and placing third out of 30 poets. not bad for my first time! the poet who won that particular slam was an albuquerque slammer named kenn rodriquez, who would become a good friend of mine, and the timer/scorekeeper was matthew john conley, who would become my touring partner for a couple of years. matthew was also the person who re-introduced me to haiku. this poem about floss was my very first hit, and it became a sort of signature piece for me. for a while there, i was the guy who does that poem about floss. it’s found its way onto quite a few dentist websites over the years, which is delightful. and yes, i really am that freaky about flossing my teeth. partyboy Sorority chicks are, for the most part, foreign to me. however, the first friend i made on the staff of the student newspaper at chico state university was a tall blonde white girl sorority chick named lisa. she was the editor of a special features section of thematically-linked articles — like the frat issue and the belief issue — and i wrote stories and columns for her. she was actually really cool despite being pledged to a greek organization, and we would hang out at her place every week to watch melrose place and friends. we were buds until she was about to graduate and move away, and then we kinda hooked up a little bit. it was nice. she told me all the secrets of her sorority, like their secret song and secret handshake and stuff, and she made me swear to never tell. she moved away, and i never saw her again. i should google her sometime. anyway, lisa took me to an honest-to-god frat party, the only one i had ever attended (and the last), and it was muy lamo. she knew everyone and butterflied around while i stood against a wall next to a plant. i sorta tried to mingle, but no one would talk to me, and i felt so out of place, so i left without saying goodbye and slunk home in the dark and wrote this. siena vision Charming next magazine. what a great memory. i started escaping my shitty hometown back in the early ’90s by visiting open mic poetry readings just over the grapevine in los angeles. i would often hit a section of l.a. called melrose that had all these cool shops and alternative nation vitality. i would check out the funky book shops and coffeehouses and record stores and pick up loads of zines, which were often lying in bundles on street corners and in the doorways of businesses. one of the rags i picked up was called next magazine, and it covered the open mic poetry scene in southern california. it had a calendar of events, and i would choose one at random and make the four-hour round trip from my hometown to get my name on the list and read. the very first one i did wasn’t even an open reading, but i begged the host to let me spit since i had driven so far, and she relented, and i killed it. in the audience was a dude named bowerbird intelligentleman, and

A . he is still part of the extended poetry slam community to this day. i see that cat every year at the national poetry slam. it’s so funny that he was there to witness my very first l.a. reading. anyway, the poetry was always god-awful, just horrible diary poetry with no sense of performance, and the very worst of all was this cat named belowsky, pronounced buh-lau-skee. he would do the worst faux poetry in this fake-sounding english accent, and i used to refer to him as blowfish. oh, his work was laughingly odious, and he delivered it with such utter belief in self, such arrogant swagger, that it was hilarious. check out www.belowsky.com. i wrote this piece in honour of belowsky’s over-blown style while sitting in caffe siena in my little college town of chico, california. it was the venue where i would eventually run the chico poetry slam, only by that time, the space was called moxie’s. there was an art exhibit at the time featuring painted ceramic faces on the walls. i giggled as i wrote it, picturing exactly how ol’ blowfish would deliver it. i would perform it that way, too, in a screechingly absurd monty python accent and an irritating spoken word cadence. so bad! years later, i was living in austin and kicking back at ego’s bar waiting for the austin poetry slam to start, and i heard the unmistakable sound of belowsky, and it was him! it was blowfish! apparently he was on tour, and he came in to do a spotlight feature before the slam, and oh, he was still so awful, and he used the same voice! i quickly whipped out this piece and told the audience i had written it for belowsky years before, and i read it in his same style, and the crowd was howling because they had just seen him perform. oh, it was so funny, but he took it well and didn’t seem mad or anything for me taking the piss. that was probably around 2003 or so, and i doubt that i’ve performed this piece since. i stole the part about the click-clack and scrape of dishes on silverware from a failed poem called the ballad of michael i could never quite get to work. commerce Ready for another poem written in the shrill accented voice of blowfish, meant to be screeched in a song-song spoken word rhythm like a member of monty python? i have no idea what inspired this rant, which appears to be championing feminism while at the same time attacking some random woman for not measuring up to the speaker’s standards, which, really, what the fuck is that all about? i found this hiding on my hard drive in some ancient file format that needs translating by openoffice, and i was delighted to find it. i had totally forgotten about it. new poem about a coin And this is such a major cop-out on the title, right? this very minor piece came to me as i walked down the street and noticed a dime rattling around in my sock. no idea how it got there. this whole poem was conjured during the walk, and it was finished by the time i got home. i don’t think it was about anyone in particular. it’s okay, i guess, but i can’t remember the last time i read it out loud. the miracle corner pocket luck shot This poem, now that i think about it, was first inspired not by a friend named bryan but by this girl named cheryl i was kinda sorta dating while i was in chico,

Y . . california, in the mid-’90s. it came to me during a heated pool game wherein she kicked my ass and made the eponymous shot, but when i wrote the poem, i changed the main character from cheryl to bryan, this cool guy i knew at the time with whom i’d end up forming a writers group. i suspect it was because bryan had written a poem about seeing me dancing at a club surrounded by a clutch of hot girls. i made him the central character in this poem as a thank you for painting me as such a mack daddy. i hardly remember cheryl, but i do remember something she said the first time we had sex. i was all trying to be suave and shit, talking some nasty smack, trying to get her turned on with my words, and she huffed and said, “will you just shut up and fuck me?” so, i did. another thing i remember about cheryl was this one time when we were lying nekkid in her bed, and she covered her body all the way up to her neck and started going, “i’m just a head! i’m just a head!” then she lowered the blankets to her hips and covered her head with a pillow and said, “i’m just a torso! i’m just a torso!” this cracked us the hell up, and i named a subsequent collection of poetry i’m just a torso. bookends Can’t judge me! I started a writers group in my little college town of chico, california, sometime in the spring of ’95. to be perfectly honest, the only reason i did it was because i really liked this cute poet chick named trish. little did i know, this guy i knew in the group named bryan, the same one in the miracle corner pocket luck shot, also had a crush on her. immediately after our first group meeting, trish and i went on a long walk through this huge meandering park full of live oaks. bryan was pissed, and he quit the writers group in a huff. later that night, trish and i got together to watch the scent of green papaya at my place. we sat a very respectable distance from each other on the couch, but when she took a break to hit the bathroom, i scooted all the way over to one end. i figured if she liked me, she would slip right up next to me. otherwise, she could sit far away, and then i would know she wasn’t feeling it. she came over to the couch, paused for just a moment, then she cuddled up next to me for the rest of the movie. we made out on my bed that was nothing more than a mattress on the floor, and it was so nice, just like in the poem. we dated for about two and a half months, but then as we got closer to her graduation date, we started having problems. she would ask for my opinions on her poems and then get pissed if i offered even the most gentle critique. she got mad jealous that my poetry, which is closer to spoken word than verse, would get more positive attention at readings than hers. she said her writing was real poetry and mine was bullshit. she would say things like, “i refuse to demean myself by standing on a chair and waving my arms,” as if i ever resorted to that. and then she got hella jealous and suspicious that i was cheating on her with poetry groupies. i think she was just preparing herself to leave, and she didn’t feel we were far enough along in the relationship to continue after graduation. she was moving back to her hometown in the bay area, and i still had a few years before i finished school. she asked me not to attend her graduation ceremony, and that really burned me up, and then she blew off our dinner plans afterwards. she called in the middle of the night to break up with

A . me, but i had already been to her place to pick up my shit and return her key. it was done. oh, and this is something weird... the one time she took me to visit her parents, i walked into the living room, and her parents froze. they full-on glared at me, and it was so awkward the whole time. i tried desperately to engage them in conversation, but they weren’t havin’ it. they seemed to hate me on sight. i noticed a big family photo on the living room wall over the fireplace of the whole family, and there was some dude around trish’s age. i asked who it was, and trish’s mom got up from the table and left the room, and the father said they don’t talk about him anymore. trish later told me it was her step-brother... who had molested her. he was short, a little portly, had a shaved bald head and a goatee and earrings in both ears. take a wild guess how i looked at that time. awkward! here’s a lesson: if your girlfriend admits you’re the spitting image of the step-brother who molested her, just run, man, just fucking run. wiping the salt from the corners of my mouth Here’s the only poem i actually wrote during the writers group i formed in chico when i was trying to get up on trish. we did an exercise where we randomly picked a word or phrase from the dictionary and used it as inspiration for a poem. my phrase was salt fresh. i have no idea what it really means, but it made me think of that time when a cut is not quite healed, when salt would still burn if you rubbed it into the wound. i pictured talking on the phone with a former girlfriend and having her say she just wasn’t ready to be friends. been there. state of the art Early poem i had totally forgotten this one. it had been self-published in an old collection of my poetry called an ecstasy of fumbling, the title of which shares its origins with sarah maclachlan’s fumbling towards ecstasy, which is a poem by world war one poet wilfred owen. in that poem, owen describes soldiers in trenches scrambling to put on their gas masks as a cloud of death wafts their way, saying it was an ecstasy of fumbling. to me, it sounds just like a first date and accurately describes the joyous awkwardness of first kisses. this poem only appeared in that old collection, and i no longer have copies of it, nor can i find the original pagemaker file for the master copy on my hard drive, so it’s long been a lost poem. i finally found it again after one last sweep of my imac, and there it was, and it made me laugh, because it really is kinda pungent like a ripe cheese. i have no idea what the title is about. i have often given poems nonsensical titles by writing down the very first word that comes to mind, and i think that’s what this was, some phrase that just popped into my head. i would later rail against the capitalistic nightmare of the american dream in my poem mission statement, and i think that one robs ideas from this poem and expresses them more successfully. bigman Silently is how i used to perform this one, holding up big printouts of the words so the audience could say them in that creepy dull monotone usually found in churches. i don’t think i’ve ever done this one out loud... weird, huh?

N . . the politics of just friends After chico state university graduation broke up me and trish, i decided to spend my summer vacation that year with my parents in wichita, kansas, where they had moved after i graduated from high school and joined the navy. it was the first time i had ever been to kansas, and i hadn’t seen them in a while, so i moved into a spare bedroom in the basement and got a job at kinko’s. once i returned to chico state university in the fall, i got a call from the opinion editor of the student newspaper asking me to write for her in the new semester. she sounding so cute, and we ended up talking for an hour even though we had never met and the call was supposed to be about newspaper business. when i met her the next day in the newsroom, she was all done up and totally cute, kinda like a ’90s version of velma from scooby doo, or maybe even daria from that mtv cartoon, kinda like cute nerdgirl. i was all about her, too, and we hung out at her place a few days later. i kissed her on the couch. as soon as we finished smooching, she goes, “that was awesome. i love how you held my face as you kissed me. no one’s ever done that before. are we boyfriend and girlfriend now? because i totally want to be. do you want to be? you do? awesome! i gotta go call my mom.” she was so funny. when we were about to have sex the first time, she asked me to turn on the radio so her roommate wouldn’t hear, and i told her whatever song played the first time we had sex would forever be our song. i turned on the radio. stairway to heaven. awww yeah! we just about died. yes, the first time we had sex was to led zep. i really liked her, but she was really jealous, and that was a drag. she was always suspecting me of cheating on her with girls at poetry readings (just like trish had), and i never fucking did, so it was a real pain. we dated for about seven months, then we broke up right before summer. we tried to be friends, but it was just too difficult. a lot of her humour was based in bitterness, and she fucking unleashed her bitterness on me when we broke up. she’s married now and has a kid. she is now my facebook friend. she would later appear in my poem scars, part one, and in a series of bitter ex-girlfriend haiku that were jokingly dedicated to her. roadtrippin’ Crazy-assed majesty of the road! i wrote an early version of this one while driving to new mexico for the taos poetry circus in ’96. and i mean while actually driving, with a knee on the steering wheel, pen in one hand, journal in the other, driving down the highway at 95 mph. it’s been rewritten several times since then, including an ill-advised version with me singing to the songs on the radio during the trip. ugh, i really don’t need to be singing in any poem, believe me, and that version was immediately scrapped. there was a soul music version and an ’80s version, and i performed them both exactly one time each before tossing them forever. when i rock this piece, i change the name of the band on the t-shirt of the narrator to something i think the audience would appreciate, and that helps keep it current. the fourth paragraph is inspired by lloyd dobler’s answer to the question what are your plans for the future? in the movie say anything, you know, when he says he doesn’t want to sell anything, or manufacture anything, or sell anything that’s manufactured, or manufacture anything that’s sold? basically, he just wants

D . . to hang out with ione skye. i love that movie. this is probably my most-performed piece out of anything i’ve ever written, and it’s certainly one that i’ve read on a regular basis ever since i wrote it. it doesn’t have any cussing in it, so i can do it for high school audiences, and it captures that romantic notion of poets being on the road, so it’s a good establishing poem. i can do this one for old people, young people, black people, white people, men, women, children, and everybody gets it, and it is often the very first poem i will perform in a long set. pueblo dog Righteous loathing inspired this poem during my visit to the 1996 taos poetry circus in new mexico. the main part of taos, the touristy part, left a real bad taste in the back of my throat. it was like this vast disneyland of native art, only it was the kind of native art white people like to buy and display in their homes, artificially- weathered brass sculptures of kokopelli the flute player, couch-sized paintings of earth-toned rocks sculpted by wind, drums made of stretched deer hide and rainsticks filled with thorns and pebbles. you couldn’t swing a dead chupacabra without knocking a dreamcatcher out of some tourist’s hand. i hated it. the smaller part of taos was called taos pueblo, and that was where actual people lived, real people, native people. i met a girl from the pueblo named shell, and she showed me the part where she lived, and she told me the story about her cousin finding a stray dog and feeding him with beer fat from a plastic bag. the juxtaposition between the pueblo part of town and the tourist part really affected me, especially how the native people both hated the disneyfication of their culture and depended on it for their survival. i don’t think i’ve ever performed this poem, which was lost for a long time. i found it one day amongst some papers. ode to poet x Ornery little self-absorbed poets! the funniest thing about this poem is how many people have heard it for the first time and assumed it was directed at them. i have actually been verbally attacked and physically threatened for performing this piece by people who mistakenly thought it was either about them or a friend of theirs. i will end the mystery now. i wrote this piece during the taos poetry circus in the summer of ’96 about this guy from los angeles who performed as roland poet x. his stuff was really tight compared to most everyone else’s work, but he was acting so arrogant and so disrespectful to all the other poets, like really making this display that he had better things to do than listen to everybody else’s shit since his shit was so much better. i was really pissed off about it, so i wrote the poem. since then, so many people have been all too willing to step up and play the role of poet x. every time someone accuses me of writing this as a personal diss for them, i just laugh and laugh. i have lost track of the times i’ve caught myself being poet x. ma’amed Sliding to the end of my relationship with sonia was hard, so i spent the summer of 1996 at an internship for a newspaper in tiny red bluff, california, population 13,000. one of the first people i met was nancy, who worked in the library. she

S . . wore black, had a black bob like uma thurman in pulp fiction, and was olive oyl tall and slender. the second time we hung out, she basically said, “look, i don’t want a boyfriend, but it would be nice to get fucked on a regular basis.” and i was like, uhm, okay! and we did, too, boy, wooo, we boned like bunnies all summer long. when i moved back to my college town of chico, she moved there too, because she hated red bluff, so we kept right on fucking. it was some damned good fuckin’, too. damn good. toward the end, nancy was reconsidering the whole i don’t want a boyfriend thing, but by that time, i had met kimberly, this cute entertainment writer at the university newspaper, so nancy and i stopped hanging out. she was so pissed. i don’t blame her. anyway, this poem is about something she told me that summer, that some asshole of a bag stuffer at the supermarket had called her ma’am. this cracked me up, so i wrote a poem about it, about being shocked when some stranger takes you for some adult who needs to be called sir or ma’am, like you are too old to be considered a peer anymore, you are just some random adult who needs to be treated with some kind of distant professional respect or something. i thought of this poem when i went to portland in the summer of 2011. i was standing in line at this hip bakery called voodoo donuts, and the counter girl was this painfully cute alternative chick with tattoos and cool hair, and she was all flirting with the dude in front of me, some skinny jeans wearin’ hipster with a thrift store where’s the beef t-shirt and a fake trucker hat and an ironic tom selleck mustache. when dude walked away with his bag of donuts, she paused a moment and watched as he galumphed out the door, then she turned to me, utterly blanked her face, and said curtly, “can i help you?” that instant feeling of not being in the same world as the hipster girl behind the counter sucked: you’re not a peer, you’re just some customer, some random dude. of course she’s not gonna flirt with the likes of me! i’m unhip and uncool and old and short and have stupid clothes. and it’s not like i wanted her to flirt with me, because she was, like, 22, but still... it’s nice to be invited to the party even if you don’t wanna go. girls like her used to cross the room to talk with me, and now here i am just another customer. but that’s cool, whatever, that’s the natural order of things. i need to find myself a cool former generation x’er who’s been around the block a coupla times and is ready to settle down. i need to date pre-scientology janeane garofalo. so bad. or the mom from the gilmore girls. death to romance Summer of ’96 is when i wrote this. i was interning at a newspaper in red bluff, california. it was a dreadfully boring time for the most part. i had just broken up with sonia, so i was a little bitter about relationships. all those ideas they stick in your head, all those fucking songs and movies and shit, i tell you, it’s poison. they fill your head with all kinds of unattainable dreams that make you feel like a failure for not having the kind of life the characters in those movies and songs have. if religion is the opiate of the masses, then romantic comedies are the heroin. having said that, anyone with a clear eye can read through the poems in this book and see that i still yearn for that lovely connection we see flickering on the silver screen, an indie rock gabfest with witty conversation and a great soundtrack from all my

E . favourite bands. i’d be the shy kid with a hoodie working behind the counter at the alternative record store, and she would walk in wearing a fake fur hoodie and a hello kitty backpack covered in feminist buttons, someone cute and quirky in blood red chuck taylors, a little bit broken, a little bit fixed. i keep hoping. i am sure glad i have cats. if my life were made into a romantic comedy, there would be no romance and very little comedy, it would just be me lying on some couch and staring at the midnight ceiling and sighing a lot. the music would be brilliant, though. the soundtrack would break your heart and make you want to start a band, a really good band, a band that makes people have babies. jesus moshpit My newspaper internship in red bluff ended after the summer of ’96, so i returned to my college town. i was in the newsroom writing something for the entertainment section of the university newspaper, and a new girl sat at the computer terminal next to mine. she was cute, short, had lovely blue eyes, short spiky hair, bomber pilot jacket, wallet chain, nose ring. she seemed neat. i joked with her as we sat there typing our stories, shamelessly flirting, and i made her laugh. and that was that. i told her my name. she told me hers. and i left. a few days later, she called me on my home phone, and she was all, “i hope you don’t mind, but i got your number from the staff contact list. you wanna go see a punk band with me tonight? i have to cover it for the paper, and i don’t want to go alone.” and i was like... how often does that happen? like, the cute new girl calls you and asks you to hang out. i was delighted! she spent her time writing notes and taking photos, so i spent most of my time watching the snarl of the moshpit from afar. i found myself imagining what it would be like to be the biggest punk in the moshpit, to be so big and mean god wouldn’t even fuck with you. this poem started coming to me, based in part on a news story i had written on the whole moshpit phenomenon for my hometown newspaper in the early ’90s, and i ran to the bar to get some napkins so i could scribble this piece down. it ended up becoming my next greatest hit. suddenly, i was no longer the guy with the poem about flossing his teeth (see floss), no, i was the guy with the moshpit poem. the new girl in the newsroom was kimberly, and we dated for a good two years, then we were off-and-on for another two years after that. i wrote a lot of poems in the time that i dated kimberly, some of my best early performance pieces. i was hitting the san francisco scene a lot, so i was writing new work to perform all the time. it was a productive period, and this poem was the start of a real streak. this is one of the oldest poems i still do on something of a regular basis. it’s a great opening piece, and it’s sort of the first poem that had a definite big poppa e swagger to it, even though it was written four years before the stage name came up. this poem owes a debt to r. lee ermy. ever see full metal jacket? remember the bad ass company commander in the boot camp scenes? that’s r. lee ermy. he played the same character for a movie a few years earlier called the boys in company c, and there’s a great scene where he’s having the soon-to-be soldiers chant that they are the baddest motherfuckers in all the valley. i am positive that scene was in my head when i wrote this, and you should check it out sometime. that boot camp scenes are awesome.

X . . just take another drink Yeah, so, this was written right before henry rollins came to chico state university in late ’96. i decided i wanted to open up for him. i figured all i needed was a kick ass poem to impress him enough to invite me to start the show, so i wrote this in pretty much one sitting. it was heavily influenced by quentin tarantino, since his pulp fiction had been released a year or so before. i never pursued the whole opening up for rollins idea, but i debuted the poem at the very first chico poetry slam. i have a recording of that very first reading that was made on a cheap radio shack tape recorder, and you can totally hear my brand new girlfriend kimberly and her distinctive giggles throughout the poem (she held the recorder from the audience as i performed.) i came in second at that first chico poetry slam to a local poet named annie la ganga, and i never once beat her the entire time i was in chico. bitch! she and i would reconnect years later in austin, and she and her partner bill cotter remain dear friends of mine. i would end up running the chico poetry slam and hosting shows called wordcore featuring crews of bay area poets i met while hitting the san francisco poetry slam. i would later use that name for the quartet of poets i formed with buddy wakefield, eitan kadosh, and gregory hischak. we performed as wordcore back in fall of 2001 and spring of 2002. real live über grrrl By the way, über is pronounced like oober. it’s german for super. i think this was the first poem i ever wrote about my college girlfriend kimberly. our relationship was flawed, to be sure, but i really really liked her a lot. she was so flattered when i gave her this poem and told her it was inspired by her, but now that so much time has gone by, i kinda wonder about that, wonder if it was really about her or just my idea of the perfect girl. i dig the image of 10,000 fireflies caught in a woman- shaped bottle. i think that’s one of the loveliest things i’ve ever written. kimberly would just glow when i wrote poetry about her, especially about how beautiful i thought she was, and i would come to abuse that effect on her. i quoted this very poem when i wrote poetry widow as a means of atoning for the poems i had written that were meant to calm her when i had fucked up. i am still looking for my real live über grrrl. i know she’s out there somewhere. the spelling of girl as grrrl comes from the riot grrrl movement in indie rock in the early ’90s. potty is pee Amusing regionalisms fascinate me. this was inspired by an actual conversation with my college girlfriend kimberly, and upon further enquiry, i discovered that northern californians tend to use the term potty to mean specifically pee, while rest of the country uses potty to mean either pee or poo, as in go to the potty. in my family, however, potty has always and only meant poo. so, you know... i just had to write a poem about it. my best friend zara jokes that i can’t go through a single phone conversation without at least once mentioning the topic of poo. and it’s pretty much true. i kept an online blog during my summer 2011 tour across america on greyhound buses, and believe me, the whole idea of poo and pee was a constant source of consternation. ever poo in a bus toilet? wretched.

Y . . . silly shower song Can’t get much sillier than this, just some silly song i started singing in the shower after seeing a poor soggy spider in my soapdish. not much more to say about it. i found this scrawled in an old notebook stored in some box of notebooks at my parent’s place in wichita. i totally can still sing it, too, but don’t ask. i’m shy. map of your body Kimberly and i totally digging each other with no body issue nonsense. it happened pretty much exactly as it reads in the poem, just me and my college girlfriend in the shower smiling at each other. things ended poorly between us, mostly, i think, because we took so long to ﬁnally break up, but during the time when this poem was written, it was a really sweet relationship. i like the intimacy of this piece, that image of her catching me checking her out and smiling because it totally turns her on that i am checking her out and getting turned on, and she’s checking me out, too, and there’s no shame. there’s just love, acceptance, desire.

1,000 secret things AN awful lot of demure. that was my college girlfriend kimberly. she was sweet and shy, but that girl had a mischievous streak. she was really bright and had a lovely laugh. when she smiled, she showed all of her teeth, and she had wonderfully full lips. i could always tell when she was upset because those pillowy lips would press themselves thin. she was prone to urinary tract infections, and i could always tell when she was starting to get one because her pee smelled like freshly-mown grass. i could tell when she wasn’t really in the mood for sex because her labia would be sort of puckery and tight instead of full and loose like an open mouth. she used to say the taste of my cum changed depending on what i had eaten that day. this kind of secret physical intimacy has always been a sweet part of a close relationship, how you can know each other so well you can detect their mental and emotional state just by looking them, by smelling them, by tasting them. i wrote this during the tail end of our official relationship, just before we broke up for good and entered the booty call phase of our time together. here is wisdom: if you’re still having break-up sex two years after you broke up, you haven’t really broken up. catching the bus Dumb old navy time ended for me on july 16, 1991, and all i wanted to do was go to college and be an english teacher. so my first semester of university classes aimed in that direction, but i met a cute girl on the very first day of the very first class i took that changed my direction. she was on the staff of the student newspaper, and she was so smart and so cute, i could hardly take it. so i switched majors and began studying journalism, and i became the arts and entertainment editor so i could get the chance to know her better. that’s a long story right there. a long one i’ll put into a collection of essays after i finish this one. what i’m trying to say is that i had been writing newspaper columns for quite some time, and when i transferred to chico state university, i continued writing columns for the opinion section. numerous performance pieces i’ve done over the years started out as

A . newspaper columns, including this one about the realization that my relationship with my college girlfriend kimberly was edging toward an end. this piece sort of disappeared for a while, but i rediscovered it while putting together my greatest misses collection. it’s not really poetry, but i think it’s poetic. i hate that time when you know you’ve got two weeks, maybe three, before you’re gonna get dumped, and you feel the growing distance, but you don’t know what to do about it. painfully white Barely remembered poem found hiding on my hard drive. this was one of the first times i tried to write about race stuff, and i am not sure it was successful at all. i kinda feel what it’s trying to say, even though it’s flawed. growing up white and seeing all the kids with discernible culture bond through shared experiences makes you wish you had some of that, you know? i don’t walk into a room full of white people and think to myself, ahh, my people. i grew up in an area of central california that had a lot of racism, and i heard these things from my family all the time, and yet i loved richard pryor and the comedic depiction of black culture on the television, shows like sanford and son, the jeffersons, and what’s happenin’? one of my best friends growing up was the only black kid in our white bread neighbourhood, a kid named walter stuckey who i used to call butch. he would end up introducing me to the first girl i ever had sex with, so i owe him a lot. poetry widow I often caught myself writing sappy love poems for my college girlfriend kimberly when i did something lame and hurtful. it was cheaper than flowers, you know? toward the end of our relationship, she would eye me suspiciously when i gave her a poem, waiting to hear my latest excuse for messing up. i performed this piece for the first time at the ’98 finals for the san francisco poetry slam, just a few days after i wrote it. everyone told me not to debut an untested piece at a finals that would pick the official slam team, but i did it anyway. i cried during the performance because kimberly was in the audience, and she cried, too. afterwards, i waded through the crowd and hugged her as everyone cheered. i got the highest score of the night. it was like a scene from fame. this piece is inspired by the etheridge knight poem feeling fucked up. it’s sort of my version of it, replacing the drugs in his poem with poetry. it also riffs a bit on ginsberg’s howl with the nothing is holy parts. i quoted my own poem real live über grrrl in the middle of the poem as an example of the shit the poet has written to impress his girlfriend. ode to a plaster casting The college girlfriend i dated for about three years shared a best friend with me named vandy, this really cool artsy poet chick who loved julie london and drove a classic car from the early ’60s and had a tuxedo cat named big daddy who may have been the inspiration for my stage name. for a surprise birthday gift one year, vandy made a plaster casting of a nude kimberly, then she hung it on my wall while i was away. it was the most beautiful thing i had ever seen, and kimberly had actually smiled the whole time the plaster was setting so the sculpture would smile

U . at me from the wall. and then we broke up, and i had to have this plaster casting of my naked ex-girlfriend on my wall staring down at me all the time reminding me of how she wasn’t there anymore. i took it down and gave it back to vandy. wilson road Exact memory, this poem, a snapshot that makes me smile. i can still hear the spoon on the side of the pot as my mom made oatmeal. she was only 18 when she had me, so we kinda grew up at the same time. when my mom was the same age i am as i write this, i was already 26. holy crap! just a little number from a creative writing class around the fall of ’98, i believe. i like it. lydia and the duck My updated version of a famous william butler yeats poem called leda and the swan about the greek god zeus disguising himself as a great white bird and raping some chick named leda. apparently, it’s an ancient story, and poor leda bore several of zeus’s human offspring from all the feathered fucking. the yeats poem is rather horrifying because it describes in detail how this swan literally rapes this woman. i wrote a new version of it with a barstool floozy named lydia replacing the victimized leda, and since lydia not all that bright, she figures zeus is actually a duck instead of a swan. either way, she gets her revenge on the quacky bastard. i half-remembered this poem in the back of my head, but i was never really game on including it here, but then i found it again, and i found myself giggling in spite of how stupid it is, so what the hell, i typed that shit up and stuck it in. dreams At this point, i can only hope you have no idea who michael bolton is/was. it all started with the very first line about dreaming of a fishing trip with miles davis. that’s all it was for a long time, just this line in my head. it made no sense, and it hinted at no rest of the story, yet it was funny to me for some reason. it had some kind of resonance, so it kept spinning around in my head. finally, after carrying it around with me for about a year, the whole thing just came spilling out sometime around ’98. i wonder if people still understand about kenny g and michael bolton. it still gets a laugh when i do it, but i would imagine i’d have to freshen up those references after a while. miles and coltrane and monk? those cats will be eternal. michael bolton? kenny g? maybe not so much. immortalized in celluloid Real people never really measure up to the characters in movies, who are just so much more interesting and beautiful and dramatic and funny. a really good way of knowing i am really depressed is by noticing how many movies i am seeing at any given time. the more movies and dvds, the more time i am spending alone, the more i am trying to escape something or get through some unhappy phase. like right now. as i write this, i am holed up at my sister’s place in wichita, kansas, and i don’t have a penny to my name, like, literally, i am completely broke, and i’m depressed as fuck about it, and i am withdrawing from the people i know, and

T . . i am watching the hell out of some movies, man, just downloading them five and six at a time and watching them until three in the morning. fuck me. while i was crashed for eight months in seattle in 2001, i was a movie-watching motherfucker, man, renting dvds by the fistfuls and catching movies in theatres nearly every friday night, mostly all by myself. it’s easy to yearn for escape into that world where everything always works out, we all fall in love, everything is awesome, and the drama we experience along the way only makes the happy ending more worthwhile. i think i first wrote this in ’98 or so, then i dusted it off in seattle in spring of 2001 and cleaned it up a bit, and just this year, 2011, i added some lines to it as i was putting this book together. i rarely perform this poem for some reason, but it’s not because i don’t like it. there are just others that i like better i guess. maybe i’ll perform it more now that i have added to it. holiest of holies Kids do silly shit like flipping through dictionaries when they’re bored, at least i did, and still do, and i find all kinds of interesting words and concepts. one was the idea of the sanctum sanctorum, which is defined by wikipedia as the holiest place of the tabernacle of ancient israel and later the temples in jerusalem. i’m not exactly sure what that means, but i take it to mean the holiest of holy places for judaism. the phrase can also be used to describe a very private and personal place of contemplation, sort of like superman’s fortress of solitude. i have always felt my head and my notebooks were my holiest of holy places, so i started using sanctum sanctorum to label the creative things i distributed, whether they be mixtapes or zines or books of poetry. so, yeah, this poem is about losing interest in writing, about looking at the mountain of notebooks in your closet and feeling like you will never write again. this was the very very last last poem added at the last minute to this collection because i don’t really like it that much. it was written for a creative writing class and quickly forgotten until now. eh... it filled a page. i don’ tend to write original poetry in my notebooks, i just use them to read from at shows. chain record store blues Sometimes i yell myself hoarse on this one. i declawed and defanged this piece so it could be included in my greatest hits collection, and i’ve regretted it ever since. that book was specifically meant for high school and college speech students, so i took out all the cuss words and references to sex, stuff that could get a kid or a teacher in trouble. but i discovered that my rewritten version totally missed the point of this piece, which is to be over the top and ripe with profanity. it’s supposed to offer images so outrageous that you just shake your head and laugh at how audacious it is. the obscenity is the point, is what makes it funny, is what the speaker is using to express his utter discomfort at being made to feel like a cog in a soulless machine and an over-the-hill has-been too old and too lame to be cool in the eyes of his co-workers. you can never be cool enough, because there’s always someone who won’t allow you to be one of the cool kids. erasing the obscenity from this piece makes the piece pointless and lame. i’ve returned it to the version i use when performing it, cuss words and all. and yeah, i used to work in a chain

O . record store, and i used to hate the christmas season. dear god, i want to get every member of mannheim steamroller and beat them senseless. youtube the video for joy to the world, and you can hate them, too! so fucking awful! wormboy I will never know why exactly i wrote this piece. it’s all about making an audience laugh and groan at the same time. it started as wormgirl and was meant to be a funny variation of the i will love you no matter what poems that everyone writes, like, i would still love you if your face got burned in a car accident, but i just took it way too far. it became so ugly and offensive i couldn’t do it on stage anymore without people thinking i was a misogynist pig. when i switched it to wormboy, however, it suddenly became hilarious, especially when targeting someone in the audience. i have officially retired this poem, and i will never perform it again. there’s an audio and video floating around of it, so go look it up if you like. fuckety fuck-fuck Well, christ, i can’t believe i am including this, my most notorious performance poem of all time. my book will probably get banned because of its inclusion. i was delighted at the outraged hoopla surrounding my wormboy poem, so i decided to one-up it with this rant brimming with nazis, cub scouts, dead babies, the pope, and princess diana performing heinous acts of bestiality, necrophilia, and coprophagy. the first time i busted out this wretched piece of filth, i was cut off halfway through by the host and banned from the venue. people hissed at me as i left. the second time i tried to read it, some dude from the audience stormed the stage and threatened to kick my ass for the dead soldier line, and the audience was cheering him on. some girl in the back of the audience was crying hysterically because her brother had died in iraq. the last time i performed it, and this was years ago, i pulled down my cargo shorts and literally took a shit on the stage at the end of it, which had been the plan all along. people were howling! i got in so much trouble! i’ve never seen a poem tweak raw nerves as much this spew of obscenity. the incredibly foul language is merely one delicious level, but it goes deeper than curses and tweaks every taboo subject and gives them a nipple pinch. it’s meant to offend everybody. i’ve always freestyled this poem, adding shocking lines as they occurred to me, so this is the first time i’ve typed these words. i haven’t performed it in years, and no video of it exists, so i had to type it from memory. i think it’s funny to say such gloriously offensive things because it mocks the sensitivities of americans, who watch bloodshed in movies without blinking an eye. this poem is an easy target for those who need a scapegoat for everything, and i was eager to provide it. this poem is a masterpiece of yuck, and i’ll never perform it again. hungry poet, will write for food About welfare i knew nothing until i took a journalism class at chico state university and wrote a story about it. i decided i would apply for food stamps just to see what it was like. the funny thing was that every time i went to the welfare office, i saw someone i knew, and they were all poets from the local community. i qualified

B . . for food stamps, so hell yeah i got on the dole! i visited a soup kitchen, too, and would eat there every now and then because it was just so interesting to be there. plus, shoot, there were a few times where it was the only way i could eat that day. money was freaking tight, yo. ain’t no shame. shoot, this one time i was so hurting for cash and was out of food completely, so i went to the austin poetry slam with the idea that i could win and use the prize money to buy food, but i fell short of making the final round. oh, it sucked, but then they had this random raffle thing where the winner got a whole case of top ramen, and i freakin’ won! i ate freakin’ ramen noodles that whole week until i got paid again. thank you, poetry! poetry has pretty much been feeding me since 1997. that and my parents. :( steeple stabbed and hell bound Noooo! so goth! so whatever, dude! but knucklebones is such a cool word. this poem is supposed to be this metaphor depicting the raging depression that comes after a huge fight with your girlfriend that’s so bad you think you surely must be getting ready to break up, and that mean old dementor behind the wheel starts screeching toward you to make everything suck. the only thing i like about this crap is the line about his headlights cut the night like a knife through a black velvet dress, which is, come on, that’s some good-ass writin’. that line is all that’s left of a discarded poem i once wrote about a roaming serial killer. it was so yucky and misogynistic, i got loads of complaints when i published it in my thrust magazine. it was gross, sure, but i wasn’t freakin’ advocating killing people or torturing women, i was merely exploring the mindset of some psycho freak who would do that kinda stuff. i was fascinated by serial killers at the time, and i actually had a complete collection of serial killer trading cards with stats on the back. they were quickly banned all over the country, but i bought a complete set and made a serial killer calendar out of them one year. i thought briefly about including that poem in this collection, but it’s so vile! i should find it and just add it here as a special bonus feature, huh? let me go see if i can find it, because it really is that bad. i have a box of shit in my mom’s house next door to my sister’s house, which is where i am as i type this. i will be right back. (long pause). okay, i’m back. it’s twenty minutes later, and i found every single issue of thrust magazine except for the one with that awful serial killer poem. it’s probably for the better, because really, it was bloody awful. in fact, that poem got the first issue of thrust magazine banned from one of only two coffeehouses in my hometown. the good news is that i just found two more things i didn’t have on my hard drive, a decent short story named p.o.v. and a god-awful poem named cut-up poem (bactrim is a sulfa drug) that i will spare us both. i like p.o.v., though, so i am going to take a break from these liner notes and type it in! woo-hoo! (longer pause) it’s a couple months later, and i am pleased to say i finally found that awful serial killer poem! it was lurking on my hard drive in some kind of ancient unreadable document format, and i had to use openoffice to sort of translate it. here it is in all its wretched glory! as i said, it’s awful and it’s a persona piece, so don’t be all thinking it’s about me! 95 on the freeway 3 a.m. no traffic just me and my headlights cutting the night like a knife through a black velvet dress one gloved hand on the steering wheel the other on

I . . my stick shift i’m looking for someone who’s looking for a ride i’m looking for a hitchhiker with a knapsack and a tight crack perched upon two longer-than-thou legs spray-painted with rip-kneed blue jeans i’m looking for that sweet yellow smell a woman excretes when she’s afraid i want her to scream to scream as loud as she likes with her hands tied over her head and her bare legs wrapped around my waste i’m gonna go grave-diggin’ in the fresh flesh of her loins and for ten-fifteen minutes i’m not gonna want anymore i’m gonna have i’m gonna take i’m gonna feel then as I dump her steaming remains into a ditch at the side of the road somewhere outside some shit-kicker little town i’m gonna think about jacking off as i drive to the nearest motel and take a blistering hot shower and a 15-hour nap before hitting that blacktop and doing it all over again. yuck! her smile, like knives Those poor english lit. majors and their terribly dry survey classes, you know, with the thick norton anthology made of bible-thin pages? i was zoning out during one at chico state and looking at this cute girl across the room, and i couldn’t help noticing her lips were so thin, like little razor blades. out came the pen, and by the time class was over, i had a new poem. she was a really nice girl, though, so i never showed her this evil little poem based on her smile. god, can you imagine? i once tried to turn this piece into an indie rock song, but it didn’t work out. i am just not a singer. singing in front of people drives me crazy with stage fright, but i still try now and again. i have this one song called i love jew about how much i dig jewish girls, and i have this other one called hey, han solo! that is sung to the tune of the banana boat song. neither of them will be appearing in this book, which might be a shame, but... yeah... i just shouldn’t write songs, and i definitely shouldn’t sing them. go on youtube, and you can see them both, and i’ll give you a dollar if you make a video of yourself singing them. a whole dollar! incantation 1: the odyssey ✮❁◆▲❅❁▼❉■❇ ❁■❄ ❅❍❂❁❒❒❁▲▲❉■❇✎ ❉ ❈❁▼❅ ▼❈❉▲ ❐❏❅❍✎ ❉▼ ❍❁❋❅▲ ❍❅ ❃❒❉■❇❅✎ ❉▼ ❉▲ ❁ ❆❁❉●❅❄ ❐❏❅❍ ◗❒❉▼▼❅■ ❆❏❒ ▲❏❍❅ ❃❒❅❁▼❉❖❅ ◗❒❉▼❉■❇ ❃●❁▲▲ ❁▼ ❃❈❉❃❏ ▲▼❁▼❅ ◆■❉❖❅❒▲❉▼❙✎ ❉▼ ◗❁▲ ❍❙ ❆❉❒▲▼ ❁▼▼❅❍❐▼ ❁▼ ◗❒❉▼❉■❇ ❁❂❏◆▼ ❍❙ ❒❅❄■❅❃❋ ❈❅❒❉▼❁❇❅✌ ❁■❄ ▼❈❁▼ ●❅❁❄ ▼❏ ▼❈❅ ■❅❘▼ ▼◗❏ ❐❏❅❍▲✌ ❂❏▼❈ ❏❆ ◗❈❉❃❈ ❉ ●❉❋❅✎ incantation 2: the home front Even though it never scores well at poetry slams, i still like performing this piece, mostly for it’s rhythmic style. i like the images, too, like the bit about bo’s body arcing through the air like a dying gull. my family always lived at the outskirts of bakersfield, right on the edge of vast dirt fields where new housing tracts were being built, so there were always wooden frames erected that would soon be houses and deep ditches for water pipes and stuff. i used to go out there with my german shepherd chinook and pretend we were the only survivors of a nuclear

O . . holocaust. the only difference between this poem and my real life is the presence of kids to play with, which i rarely had. i just hung out in the trenches with my dog and pretended. it was more fun alone, anyway, since kids are freakin’ mean. huge snowdrifts of tumbleweeds would pile up as big as houses against these brick walls built in the middle of some empty field, and i made little forts inside them, like, there would be a secret tumbleweed that revealed a path through the stickers leading to a dug-out area with a lawn chair and a piece of plywood for a roof. i would hide in there and read comic books. some mean kids riding bmx bikes saw me get inside the fort once, and they surrounded it and threatened to burn it unless i came out and let them take it over. if you’ve ever seen a tumbleweed on fire, you know it takes about, oh, two seconds to explode into flame, so i got the hell out of there. fuckers. for years after, the sight of a bmx bike scared me. incantation 3: the sweet mysteries of hot peach cobbler I never thought this one would cause such controversy! both my grandmas told me at gunpoint to stress that this poem is about neither of them, not even the slightest bit. sure, one has blue eyes like the character in the poem, but that’s it. the rest is all made up. there, grandmas, i told them. this poem came to me as i was falling asleep one night in late ’99. i was going to blow it off and write it down in the morning, but huge chunks started disappearing as i faded, so i rolled over and wrote it down on a scrap of paper in the dark next to my bed. by the morning, i had completely forgotten it. had i not seen the scrap several days later, it would’ve been another poem that got away. the funny thing is, i had to make up the ingredients for the peach cobbler off the top of my head as i wrote it, and some older lady in my creative writing class told me i needed to use ice water instead of boiling water for the crust. i asked my mom’s mom how she made peach cobbler, and she was all, “you just pour a can of del monte peaches into a frozen pie crust! takes two minutes!” i was all... ugh... so i invented a more appetizing, and poetic, recipe for the peach cobbler in the poem. even though the character is made up, i tried to capture some of the redneck essence of my grandparents. leaving las vegas Getting zines and publishing zines used to be my favourite thing. i did an internship at the reno gazette-journal during the summer of ’99 and worked as the assistant entertainment editor. the editor was a zine publisher i knew who put out happy not stupid, one of my favourite personal zines of all time, and he was a fan of my zines, too. the two of us put together a 28-page tabloid insert every week. it was just the two of us, writing stories and headlines and cutlines and assigning stories to freelancers and arranging photo shoots. a month and a half into the internship, the editor took a week’s vacation, leaving me to put the whole section together myself, which is hella unusual for a summer intern still in college. i did such a good job, they offered me the position full time. however, toward the end of the summer, i performed at the national poetry slam in chicago as part of the san francisco poetry slam team, and we were the only undefeated team out of 48 and took the top spot. after performing my work in front of 3,000 people at the finals, it

G . . was very difficult to go back to cubicle life, so i turned down the job, dropped out of journalism school, and became a touring poet. this piece was originally called leaving reno, but i changed it because i thought las vegas was a better metaphor as a city. i stole lines from a newspaper column i wrote about a trip to vegas i took in the early ’90s with a cute girl i was dating named robin, and i finished it all up in a skanky little apartment i rented for the summer of ’99. when i look at this poem, i think of my kitty thelonious, who would allow me to put him into the tub when i took a bath. isn’t that weird for a cat? he would just stand there in the warm water up to his neck, and we would chill there for a while. i also think of jennifer lynn o’hare, the girl i was dating over that summer who lived in my college town of chico, which was about three hours away. i would visit her on weekends, and we’d go on poetry roadtrips to the bay area. all that stuff is in between the lines. poem for a friend Having a dear and trusted friend means getting an ass-whuppin’ now and then. early in ’99, i was going to kick some poetry at a venue that was primarily black, and i tried to write a new poem that would appeal specifically to that audience, or, at least, to what i thought that audience would like. my friend, who was black, looked at the poem i was about to deliver, and he tore me a new ass for trying to pander to the audience. he told me to stop trying to impress people with how down i was and just deliver my truth, which is all any audience ever wants. i ended up doing ¡the wussyboy manifesto!, which is about as true to me as i can get, and it went over great. lesson learned. this poem used to contain the name of that friend. when i was invited to perform for the 5th season of def poetry, this is the poem i was asked to perform, but the subject of the poem asked me to remove his name. i had already submitted it with the original title, but i asked the producers to change the name. they didn’t. when the poem aired using my friend’s name, he was so pissed he ended our friendship. he hated this poem, saying none of it had anything to do with him, that it was all made up, that it presented him as some noble black man stereotype, that it made me look like a clown. i continued to perform it, and i’ve quite often gotten amazing responses with it from both black and white audiences, but i have now retired it. i just don’t trust it anymore. fratboy Back in college, i would take creative writing classes to counteract my lack of motivation. this one came during one such class at chico state university when we were studying different types of poetry, maybe fall of ’99. we had just read this list poem called fast talking woman by anne waldman. i wrote this piece the next day, cannibalizing the best lines from a previously discarded poem i’d written on napkins in a bar once. chico state is rife with the most blunt frat boys imaginable, so i conjured this image of some frat boy with his thesaurus trying to write a poem for his sorority girlfriend. he tries to be sweet at first, but then his true piggishness is revealed. frat boys are genetically incapable of not beating my ass, or at least trying to. my very existence seems to offend them. that’s why i carry mace, and i mean the medieval sort. fucking frat boy douchebag assholes. such tools. when

R . i was on tour in the summer of 2010 with my road partner lennon simpson, we would spy some asshole businessman frat boy lookin’ dude coming our way, and as he passed, we would mention the name of some tool, like, “say, you still got my screwdriver?” it always cracked us up.

¡the wussyboy manifesto! Oh yeah, here’s the big one, the one that made a name for this short little fat kid named big poppa e, the one that put him on the map, the one that inspired him to turn his back on his dream job as an assistant entertainment editor at a big newspaper, the one that drove him to drop out of journalism school, the one that gave him the final push toward living the rest of his life on the spoken word highway as a vagabond poet. this is my stairway to heaven, my hotel california, my smells like teen spirit, my greatest of all hits. if my tombstone will say anything at all, it will say he wrote ¡the wussyboy manifesto! i had come up with the idea of using wussyboy as an empowering term a few years before in an opinion column i wrote for the student newspaper at chico state university. the meat of the poem started as notes in the margins of a notebook i used for a communications class. it was simply a chance to write a comical ode to effeminate men, a championing of the underdog on par with that famous comic of a mouse flipping its middle finger at a diving eagle about to snatch him up with outstretched claws, a defiant fuck you before being eaten alive. this joint was an instant hit and became something far bigger than i ever expected. i busted out this poem on the finals stage at the 1999 national poetry slam as part of the winning team from san francisco, and it was the first funny poem of the night. it came after three depressing political pieces in a row, so the audience was ready for release, and this poem gave it to them. the response was uproarious. a video of that very performance can be found on my youtube page if you want to see it for yourself. three thousand people went apeshit. it was amazing, definitely one of the top five best moments of my life. since this was the tenth anniversary of the national poetry slam, reporters from major newspapers all over the country were covering the event, and numerous reporters used this poem in their lead paragraphs. it was quoted in the new york times, the washington post, the chicago sun-times, the utne reader, the sydney morning herald, the ottawa citizen, the london daily news... shit, i got calls from freakin’ 20/20 and the bbc. i will never forget getting a call from the los angeles times. the reporter wanted to do a story on me, and he seemed hell-bent on making this poem seem like a nationwide revolution. i was in austin, texas, at the south by southwest music festival with a bunch of poets from around the country, and i was surrounded by a number of them when i took the call. right off the bat, the guy is like, “so, as the leader of this new men’s movement... blah blah blah.” so i gave him what he wanted. i told him all about the poem, and how i came up with it, and my theories on masculinity in america. when he asked if he could speak with other members of the movement, i looked over at my friend mike henry, winked at him, and gave the reporter his number. thirty seconds after i hung up, mikey’s cell phone rang, and there was mikey telling the reporter that his life had no meaning until he discovered the wussyboy way. then mike gave him our friend

A . . eitan kadosh’s number as the los angeles representative, and eitan’s phone rang thirty seconds later. he told the reporter he had given up a teaching position to become a wussyboy full time. oh, it was rich, and the reporter even talked with kimberly, my ex-girlfriend at the time, who had allowed me to forward my mail to her while i was on tour. when the article came out, it said she ran my mailroom. brilliant! here is an actual sentence from that article: visualize a match tossed on the dry tender of american masculinity, with big poppa e as the match, his win at last year’s national poetry slam the toss, and hundreds of men resonating to his words the tinder. in the freakin’ los angeles times! go to my website if you don’t believe me! the article is posted under press quotes, and you can read the whole thing! i even got a call from scholastic, inc., which you may know as the american publisher of freakin’ harry potter. they asked me to do a series of books with a wussyboy theme. youth literature for girls covered a widely-varied range of topics, they said, but the books for adolescent boys and younger were just about stupid shit like sports. i pitched them the idea of writing a diary in the first person of a kid in school dealing with the bullies who picked on him because of his wussiness, and i suggested that i also include little drawings in the style of my little guy that i had been using as a logo for years. you can see a copy of the little guy over my bio in the back of this very book. i was so excited, i could puke, but then... man... i don’t know what happened... i blew it off. i got depressed and lost my way and blew it off. i got distracted by my mess of a life, and i never did anything grand with the whole wussyboy thing. i had been given a huge boost by all the initial publicity, but then... i just walked away. fast-forward a number of years later, and i see a book in a mall bookstore, and guess what it’s called? diary of a wimpy kid. guess what the art looks like? my little guy. guess who publishes it? scholastic, inc. i just about had a fit. but then... you know... shit... i didn’t do anything with it. who am i to blame the guy who ran with it? i have often thought about suing them, but what good would that do? like i have any money to do that anyway. fuck it, i had my chance, and i let it slip through my fingers. what else can you do but move on? and then an interesting thing started happening. this poem got picked up by the community of high school and college students who perform at speech competitions, and they breathed new life into my little poem all on their own. i get emails all the time from kids who have read the poem and performed it in competition, and that really makes me feel great. so many young people have done this piece and still do that i have pretty much retired the poem. i don’t perform it anymore. i am 44 years old, and i wrote that poem twelve years ago. it now belongs to the teenagers who are empowered by it, not me, so that’s where it stays. this poem changed everything, and i will be forever grateful for it. deathwish Represent silver kitty patronus! if my broom closet were infested with a boggart, and if i were to open the broom closet and the boggart were to leap at me disguised as my greatest fear, i would see the grim reaper reaching a skeletal claw toward me. and then i would point my wand at it and shout riddikulus and turn it into a nekkid george w. bush with a carrot in his butt. if you have no idea what i’m

P . talking about, then you are not down with dumbledore’s army. the thought of my mortality is the most horrifying thing i can possibly conjure. perhaps it’s because i didn’t grow up with any religious belief in an afterlife or a patient and loving god, but death scares the shit out of me. not the pain part, the actual non-existence part, the idea that one day i will just... be... gone... and there won’t be any thinking or feeling or seeing or hearing, there will be nothing. i will just cease to exist. even writing this right now, this very second, i feel faint. the only way i can handle the idea of death is by driving it from my mind and replacing it with something else, like a glowing silver cat patronus driving off a soul-sucking dementor. the process of dying is going to suck. it’s going to be so scary. i just hope i’m not alone. i want to be in a loving relationship and have her there holding my hand and telling me it’s okay to let go. i don’t want to die alone. i don’t want the first indication that i’ve died to be an awful smell noticed by neighbours. how many years do i have? i’m 44. will i make it to 80? my dad’s dad died at 58, and my mom’s dad died at 61, and my dad’s kid brother died at 52. expecto patronum! crushworthy Such an easy write. i penned this poem for a girl named jennifer lynn o’hare. she just showed up one day at the door to the creative writing class i was attending at chico state university. she waited for me to come out and then introduced herself, asked me if i was the guy who hosted the poetry slams, asked if i could get her in since it was a bar and she was 19. she was so cute i could hardly breathe. kimberly had broken up with me again so she could see what dating other people was like, again, so i was single. jen showed up at the slam, and i snuck her in, and i couldn’t stop looking at her from the stage as i hosted, trying in vain to keep focused on introducing the next poet and keeping the energy levels of the room up. at the end of the show, she gave me her phone number, said she was having a party for her 20th birthday in a few days, and she asked me to come. i said i would love to. i wrote this very poem that night, contemplating how much i wanted her to dig me. i went to the party, and it was awesome, and at the end of the night it was just the two of us. we kissed on her futon, and it was amazing, just perfect, like making love with our mouths. i told her i had written a poem about how i wanted her to like me, and she ran into her room and brought out a poem she had written about how much she had wanted me to like her. and that was it. we dated from that moment until the end of the summer. she was my constant companion at poetry events, both in chico and in the bay area, and we took lots of roadtrips in our time together. we listened to a lot of the dave matthews band during out trips. she was way cool. at the end of the summer, we decided to call it quits and become friends. it was meant to be a summer fling, and it was, and it was lovely. i went back to kimberly, she went back to her ex. jen was lovely. when i perform this piece, i always do it as a group with the other two poems i wrote about jen, which are moonlight through mini-blinds and there’s a hole in my heart in the shape of her smile that will never be filled. i tell the whole story about our relationship from the beginning to the tragic end. if you go to my youtube page, you can hear all about it with these three poems. it’s a great story, but oh how i hate the ending.

H . moonlight through mini-blinds This is the second of only three poems i was able to write about jennifer lynn o’hare. she died in a very tragic and wholly unexpected car crash on september 10, 1999. this poem had been written before her death while we were having an intimate moment in march or april of 1999. and the moon was shining through the blinds and casting stripes across her naked form, and the sight of her lithesome body stretched out before me was so beautiful, i almost ached. right in the middle of this, uhm, intimate moment, the words of this poem came to me, so i wrote the poem on the small of jen’s back with a black felt-tip marker from her bedside table. probably the sexiest thing i’ve ever done. my god, she was beautiful. there’s a hole in my heart in the shape of her smile that will never be filled Oh god, i never expected to write this one. i can’t believe it’s been more than a decade since jen died. once we started dating, she was always asking me, “when are you going to write another poem about me?” i would hem and haw and say something about poetry not being fast food you could just order up hot and fresh at the drive-thru, but i always told her that more poetry would come in its own sweet time. i never in a million years would’ve guessed the next poem i would write about jen would be this one. i spent the months following jen’s death in a fit of writer’s block, not being able to write anything, but then, just a week before my first national tour in the summer of 2000, i was finally able to write this poem. and i was finally able to cry. i once saw the spitting image of jen dancing to a band in austin, texas, during the intermission of a roller derby match. same hair. same lithesome figure. looked just like her, only instead of 20, like the last time i had seen her, she looked 30, which was just about what she would’ve been had she been allowed to live. it was haunting to see a glimpse of this life she never had. jen’s mother has heard this poem, and so has her sister, and they both like it very much. it makes me feel good to say her name out loud, and it makes me feel even better when i hear about a student somewhere performing this piece in a speech competition. i would like to think jen would be delighted. she was such a cool chick. the day after she died, we all held a vigil at her apartment, and i remember collapsing onto her bed and breathing in her essence from her pillow. so sad. wired Connecting people through technology is pretty freakin’ cool. the internet is amazing, but i think it can also be a very lonely, impersonal, alienating force in someone’s life as well. social media can’t replace real social interaction, the eye contact, the pauses in conversation, the walks in the park, the smell, the feel, the taste of an actual flesh and blood relationship. having access to all these forms of long-distance communication only serves to highlight the loneliness one feels when there is still no one to talk to, even with all this fucking technology. i wrote this in a creative writing class at chico state university around ’98 or so, then i dusted it off and spruced it up while in seattle in the summer of 2001. i further updated the references for this book in 2011. i wonder when something else will come along and replace facebook. i wonder what it will look like.

I . presque vu Aching for inspiration? hit the national poetry slam. this one came to me as i was watching a canadian poet named shane koyczan take the individual championship at the 2000 national poetry slam in providence, rhode island. he was so fucking amazing and passionate and poetic and real, so very fucking real, that tears streamed down my face. oh my goodness, i was so moved, and i wrote this poem in my notebook shortly thereafter. the title comes from that tip of your tongue sensation when you know you know something, but you just can’t seem to remember it, you just remember remembering it, it’s there somewhere but you can’t seem to find it. i feel like that a lot, like i am so close to something amazing. rats in the ivy Love affairs in college never seem to last. even though the relationship with my college girlfriend kimberly started out so strong, it ended up being so on-again off- again. had we called it quits after the first two years, which were really awesome, we might still be friends now, but instead we did the whole break-up sex thing for another two years. she wanted to date other people, but when there were no people around to date, she would rely on me for comfort and warmth. when new people finally did come into the picture, it was hard. kimberly would get jealous when i saw someone else, and she would utterly blow off our friendship when she was seeing someone. it all came to a head one day, and we had a screaming row over the phone that officially ended our connection completely. i haven’t spoken to her since. this poem is about trying the kick the habit of a flawed relationship that you know is bad for you yet is still hard to move past. the title comes from something kimberly’s mom used to tell her as a child in order to keep her from playing in the ivy in their front yard. she would tell her there were rats in the ivy, and i always thought it sounded like a lunatic: rats in the ivy! rats in the ivy! pushing buttons Lowering myself, yes, but i kinda like it. this poet i knew named kenny mostern in san francisco was slamming against me one night in ’99 or ’00 at the berkeley poetry slam, and he bet me a dollar that he would outscore me. i told him not only could i outscore him, but i could write a piece off the top of my head right then and there and score a perfect 30. he stifled a laugh and bet me a dollar. when he scored a 29.6, which is pretty damned close to perfect, he was sure he had me beat. nope, sad to say, this poem scored a 30 it’s first time out and garnered mad applause. the smile i gave kenny as he reluctantly gave me a rumpled dollar bill was probably the shit-eatin’-est grin ever grinned, and kenny called me a fucking whore. this poem is such a shameless display of button pushing, and i often serve it up as a mocking example of how easy it is to write a crowd-pleasing slam piece full of nothing more than applause lines. the phrase crowd-pleasing is such a slight in the poetry slam community, as if a poet who can read the energy of a crowd — the make-up of the audience, the sensibilities of the judges, what has scored well already — and deliver the perfect poem to rouse the spirits of the room is somehow aiming for the lowest common denominator, and i think that’s bullshit.

C . even though this poem is shameless button pushing, i believe every line of it, and i would never read it if i didn’t. if i find something to say that causes a massive positive response from the audience, who’s to dismiss it as crowd-pleasing, as if that’s a slight, as if you have to horrify an audience or obscure the meaning of your poem through verbal acrobatics in order for it to merit the label of art. i think finding a universal language that can move masses of disparate people is a truly amazing talent. say what you will about james cameron’s avatar, but he was able to craft a movie that moved people from all over the world regardless of their language or culture or ethnicity, and that is really something. anyway, this piece is not the most challenging poem in the world, and yes, it’s shameless, but i don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. i have faith in people. i believe in the wisdom of crowds. if an audience suspects you are pandering to them, they will reject you, but sometimes you wanna see a movie with lots of explosions. i hope this poem is more die hard than transformers, but who knows? who really fucking cares? boojiboy This poem sucks. i kinda hate it. it’s just like... it’s a slam poem about slam poets who write knee-jerk political poems full of half-assed bullet points, but really, when you look at it, that’s exactly what this piece is, just a bunch of half-assed bullet points, only it pretends to be more righteous than that. it’s everything it rails against. i guess what i’m trying to say in the poem is that it takes more than a bumper sticker to change the world, that buying a bumper sticker tricks us into thinking we’ve actually made a difference, that we are aligning ourselves with activists around the world, but it’s just a piece of sticky vinyl unless you actually do something to bring the slogan on that sticker to life. this poem is nothing more than a bumper sticker that says bumper stickers are stupid. i never perform this piece anymore because i think it’s lame. at least i try to call myself out in the end. the name should be spelled bougie, as in bourgeois, but i spell it the way i do — booji — as a nod to one my favourite bands of all time, devo, who had a character in their videos called booji boy. however, they said it like boogie boy, as in the movie boogie nights or the classic hip-hop act boogie down productions. receipt found in the parking lot of the super walmart Had many tour partners, but never as cool as matthew john conley. he told me a joke once. a guy walked up to a supermarket cashier and began placing items on the little conveyor belt for the cashier to scan. there was a 6-inch frozen pizza, a six pack of beer, a small container of ice cream, and a magazine. the cashier looked up from the products and said, “you’re single, aren’t you?” the guy smiled and said, “yeah, how could you tell?” and the cashier said, “because you’re so fuckin’ ugly.” i think that joke is so funny, and it illustrates something about the nature of humour. you build up this expectation, then you twist it, and the surprise is what makes it funny. i think about this joke when i buy food at the grocery store and wonder what cashiers can tell about me from the products i buy. am i single? am i married? am i gay? do i have kids? am i getting ready for a party? a date? a study session? am i a vegetarian? am i preparing a specific meal or buying for the week?

A . those kinds of thoughts led to this piece, and it was a real challenge to craft a story using only nouns and adjectives. the action had to be implied by the products themselves, and their juxtaposition with others formed the story. like, you could say, “i swing the bat to hit the ball that crashes through the window,” or you could simply say, “bat ball window.” the three words tell the same story since the verbs are encoded into the nouns and the story is told through the order of the items. this poem was a real challenge, and i love the way it turned out, even though it’s quite creepy when you start to understand what’s going on. my favourite part is the cat food at the end. there’s this list of items that becomes more and more sinister and reveals more and more about the dark plans of the purchaser, then the killer gets all the way to the end and goes, “oh yeah, cat food.” that cracks me up. untitled Embarrassing that i can’t remember the inspiration for this poem. i have no idea where this poem came from or when i wrote it. i found it on a scrap of paper and typed it into my computer for safekeeping. i dimly remember it being about some girl, but i can’t remember who or where. i just guessed on the date. i wasn’t going to include it, but i thought the mystery of it was kinda intriguing, so what the hell. actually, now that i think of it, i remember who inspired it. it was a lovely red-haired poet girl named kelly mcnally. i was so smitten with her, but our time together was limited. she met someone else, and that was that. she had the cutest smile. i imagine she still does. i love calling this poem untitled because that’s the actual title, because the two people in the poem don’t need a label for what they are doing. they are untitled. i really liked kelly. she was so cute. but she fell for some martial arts instructor dude, and that was that. his kung fu was stronger. the endless pursuit of happiness, parts one, two, and three Crappy day jobs have allowed me to write numerous poem while dilly-dallying. the first one in this series is from seattle in mid-2001, just before i left and returned to my college town for a few months before hitting the road again. the second and third were written the next year after i relocated to austin, texas. i am always sad, so the idea of finding happiness as easily as ordering a trinket on some shopping channel or clicking a download now button appeals to me. i am often drunk with sadness. it makes everything so much more difficult. i really need to get sober. wallflower Often i comb through my blog to find possible poems lying in wait. this one started as a few sentences describing this college house party some immature college roomies took me to once when i was going to chico state university. i felt so stupid and clumsy being there, but i ended up fascinated by the way all the girls moved. it was amazing. we used to call that dry humping, but now people just call it dancing. i could never get this poem right, though, so i put it aside and let it stew awhile. then it hit me, right as i was standing in line for the fellowship of the ring, the whole poem just fell into my lap, and i spent the majority of the movie writing notes in the dark on my arms, my hand, random napkins, anything that would take

L . ink. after the movie, i raced home and wrote down all my notes, and boom! this poem was done. i did a shortened version of this poem for a black entertainment television series called the way we do it. it was a low-budget production that did not pay a dime, but they did feed us... popeye’s fried chicken. the irony was not lost on me or my poet friend ratpack slim, a white poet who also taped the same session as i did, but we kept that shit to ourselves because we felt guilty even raising an eyebrow. i remember we filled our pockets with anything in a plastic wrapper or can, and we walked out of there bulging with snacks from the green room. if you check out the recording of this piece on my youtube channel, you can catch me doing a very unfortunate booty dance at the very end that is totes magotes embarrassing. i should never booty dance unless i am alone. and i do. i booty dance all the freakin’ time, and i’m damned good at it, too. only not. krakatoa Preparing some kick-ass steak is one of my dad’s best talents. he grills that shit up until it tastes like god just came in your mouth, and he uses his secret bbq sauce, too, which, actually, is now just kc masterpiece. but still, it’s like he’s a magician of meat, a sorcerer of beef, a wizard of animal flesh. he and i have had our challenges over the years, especially when i was in high school. oh, how we used to bump heads! and he actually did hand-build this ugly monstrosity of a bbq in the backyard out of cement bricks, and he had bricks left over, so he built the ugliest mailbox on our entire street. you could’ve run a tank at either of them, and the tank would’ve been all, “oh hell no!” me and my dad didn’t have too many bonding moments when i was in high school, but i do remember tending the bbq with him in the backyard. even when i was convinced i hated my pops, i still had to grudgingly give him proper respect for his skill at barbecuing steaks. we get along way better now that we’re all old and shit, but he can still fuck up a steak real nice. we just had some the other day, and they were amazing. ribeye. mmmm, good. the lonesome ballad of josephus moshpit See, i had always wanted to write a proper cowboy poem and perform it at a cowboy poetry festival, so i was all excited when i wrote this during the summer of ’99 while i was interning at the newspaper in reno, nevada. i have only ever performed it twice, and neither time was at a cowboy poetry festival. maybe someday. the few times i’ve performed this poem, i’ve used this really gravelly voice, like a pirate, and that shit hurts. it’s hard to do it the whole way through drought I don’t think there’s much to say about this poem. it pretty much speaks for itself. i don’t really think most people would read one of my poems and wonder what the heck i was talking about. my shit is pretty simple and straight-forward. i don’t use a lot of verbal acrobatics to impress the poets in our community, and i don’t tinker with layers of meaning you have to peel away after several readings before you finally get it. i just kinda want you to get it right away. the weight of depression, of sadness, weighs me the fuck down like a backpack full of bricks. if i could only

H . . discard it, i’d be swimming like michael phelps, but as it is, i can barely keep my head above water sometimes. i’m on zoloft right now and something called hydroxyzine, but before that i tried celexa, welbutrin, remeron, and effexor, and none of them really seemed to work. effexor was a motherfucker. that shit is poison. it was nothing but bad side effects for six months, everything from massive sweats to diarrhea, and then weaning yourself off it makes these, like, brain shivers pulse through your head for a couple of weeks until it’s out of your system. fuck effexor. zoloft seems to be doing okay for me. it gives me the shits, but i haven’t cried once since i started taking it, and that’s an improvement. now i just need to work on getting some exercise and eating healthier food. sometimes, you get so deeply lonely that you can no longer bear the presence of others, and once you get sucked into that spiral, it’s hard to pull out. you just want real bad for someone to come get you. don’t forget to breathe, love For a while, this poem wasn’t included because i kinda don’t like it, but the only other poems i have in this collection that were inspired by my relationship with hilary are so negative, so i thought i’d clean this one up a bit and include it to show where we started before things started to suck. i really liked her a whole big bunch at ﬁrst, we both dug each other, we must have since we stayed together for a year and a half, but it’s kinda hard to remember why. well, this poem shows why. you are a strange fruit Falmq qont nt kmalq cylnq. krqlkzzg, nq’t kmalq bg qode-jnyzcyndef onzkyg, pynqqde qapkyf qod def pode nq pkt k ydkz tqyljjzd qa tqkg qajdqody. pd qaqkzzg toalzf okud myahde li zaej mdcayd pd fnf, mlq pd hdiq roktnej qod jaaf qnbdt pd okf dwidynderdf ne qod mdjneenej, tkryncnrnej k jaaf gdky qygnej ne ukne qa ydrkiqlyd qod bkjnr ac qod cnytq qoydd baeqot. iabdjykekqdt kyd aed ac qod batq mdklqnclz cylnqt, znhd znqqzd jdafdt clzz ac ylmndt. n zaud hnpn cylnq, qaa. us I wrote this one about my then-poet-girlfriend hilary and me sometime toward the end of our relationship, right before we went on tour together and spent three months breaking up in a mini-van, so it must’ve been the spring of 2003. that relationship was marked with clenched ﬁsts and teeth pressed so tightly together shop windows would crack as we passed them. in the end, we were both so glad to be done with it, to have the chance to be happy again. the train station After 45 days of a three-month tour in a van across america, hilary and i broke up. it was a very tense tour full of insecurities rubbing up against each other, of awkard silences, and miscommunication. it sucked, and we tried so hard to make things work, but they just wouldn’t. she just wanted to go home, so she made the decision to leave right before our gig in kalamazoo, michigan, and i went with her to the train station to say goodbye. we cried and held each other. it sucked.

A . fists Lovely poet girls will be the death of me. i arrived in austin during my 2002 tour, and i met a girl, a lovely poet girl named hilary, and she and i instantly hit it off. we spent a lot of time together during my visit, and i decided to move to austin to be with her after my tour was over. and it was awesome... until it wasn’t. one month later, she freaked out about our instant relationship and broke up with me, and i ended up sleeping at a friend’s house on his futon while i figured out what to do next. this poem was written while i was on that futon. i am not sure if it was based on actual flowers i had purchased for hilary or what, but yeah, the poem is about the magic and beauty fading from a relationship until finally you just fucking throw it out. we kept hanging out, though, hilary and me, and one night when she was over at my friend’s house on the futon watching leon the professional, we totally humped right there in the living room on the futon. yup, we decided to give it another try. i moved back in with her, and we dated for about a year and a half. it was a very tumultuous relationship. i shoulda stayed on the futon.

13 metaphors for why we should’ve never dated Often, great mistakes can lead to great poetry. this used to be why we should never date, as in future tense, but i changed it to past tense after i broke up with my poet-girlfriend hilary. we had a really tough time of it, even though it started with passionate fireworks. we kinda dove into the relationship without really knowing each other well enough to justify it, to be honest, and after the initial few months of glowing connection, we ran into problems based on how different we were. had we only gotten the chance to know each other before we had sex, we probably would’ve realized we were incompatible, but we tried to build a relationship around the fact that we had been intimate so quickly. we wanted to believe we were meant to be together, so it was okay to jump-start the relationship, but it was a mistake. once things got difficult and communication became a constant challenge, we kept thinking we could return to the good times we had at the beginning if we just worked hard enough to get there, as if the seeds of that connection were simply hidden somewhere and all we had to do was find them again. we stayed together way too long trying to get back what had been so fleeting and spent most of that last six months angry and upset. we were just so different in the way we communicated. we tried really hard to figure things out, but we destroyed any chance of being friends in the process because we just couldn’t let go soon enough. the faster you realize a relationship is not a failure simply because it’s time to move on, the better. when you accept that you are simply moving from one phase of the relationship to another, it doesn’t hurt as bad. scars, part one Going by my blog, i arrived in austin, texas, on march 7, 2002. it was just after 7 p.m. on a wednesday. i know this because the austin poetry slam was every wednesday night in ego’s bar back then, and i rolled up in my van just as the sign-up list was being distributed. on march 13, 2002, i was in slam master mike henry’s living room when a cute poet girl named hilary walked in. it was just after

I . noon. right then and there, i decided to turn my visit to austin into a relocation. i was smitten, and the feeling was mutual, and that was that. i was hooked. this particular poem is the last i ever wrote about hilary. i scribbled it in my journal just before the very last gig of our ill-fated summer ’93 tour, in minneapolis. the three-month roadtrip was in shambles, as was our broken relationship, and the van’s transmission took a $2,000 shit all over our meager finances. i read this poem at our very last gig of the tour, and she fucking hated it, but by that time, i could’ve shit gold bricks and she would’ve hated it. we were in pretty bad shape by the time we limped home after the tour, and we soon stopped talking, and we haven’t exchanged anything by uncomfortable glances from across crowded rooms since then. i love scars. i got my last one when i burned my arm on a candle lantern i was using to read a harry potter book while lounging in a sleeping bag in a tent at the western regional poetry slam at the henry miller library in big sur, california. i seem to have only included poems about my relationship with hilary that are really negative, but i did write sweet ones when we first dated. i have not included them because they are neither good enough to warrant inclusion nor bad enough to be funny; they are just kinda meh. they are pretty boring. love makes poetry boring. maybe that’s why i’ve dated so few people. maybe i need to be miserable to be creative. i’d gladly give up writing to be happy. i’d be a ditch digger if it made me happy. i’d crawl through an alley full of broken glass if it would make me happy. thank god for zoloft is all i gotta say. emo love song in the key of 9 3/4 Can’t always say i was a big fan of the harry potter phenomenon. back in 2001, my poetry friend and then-roomie morris stegosaurus practically demanded i read the books, but i resisted, seeing the crazed look of an addict in his eyes. like i needed another obsession. i finally gave in during a tour across the u.s. in the summer of 2003. i spent three months in a van with my then-poet-girlfriend hilary, a brilliant writer and performer in her own right, and we listened to all the audiobooks while putting more than 21,000 miles on my ford windstar mini-van. sometimes we’d be so into it that we’d arrive at our destination early and park the van, roll down all the windows, and lie in the bed in the back listening to a couple more chapters. i’ve been a fan ever since. this song is a simple ode to adolescent yearning, the story of a teenaged boy crushing on his best friend and not knowing quite what to do about it. we’ve all been there. i crushed on everyone when i was 13 and lived and died at the merest sneeze in my direction. i still do. i wrote this while on that summer tour at a point where hilary had decided to quit and go home, decided we were officially breaking up and i was finishing the tour alone. there is a lot of the yearning i felt at that time in this silly love song. had she just stayed home, we might still be friends now, but dear god, she came back after two weeks and finished the tour. that was such a bad decision! being in a van for weeks at a time with your girlfriend is hard enough, but with your ex-girlfriend? just say no. we fought about everything, and when we weren’t fighting, we erected this painful silence that could not be breached. we tried to be friends after the tour, but neither of us felt it. i hope she’s happy and warm and has forgiven me.

K . someone Although it’s tough to admit, this was written in response to the question what are you looking for in a mate? on one of those online personal ad websites. i think it was okcupid. admitting this makes me feel really lame. i can picture someone scoffing at me and saying, “are you serious? you perform in front of audiences all over the country, and you can’t find a freakin’ date?” well, yes, actually. i’m kinda shy, number one, and number two the girls in the audience at poetry slams all over the country tend to be, oh, fifteen or twenty years younger than me, and i’m so not gonna go there. believe me, i know the outcome already, so what’s the point? question: how many big poppa e’s does it take to screw in a lightbulb? answer: zero, because he’d rather sit in the dark in his room all alone and cry. anyway, i wrote this for an online personal ad, and then i read it at the austin poetry slam. i told the audience i would report back about my experiences in the weeks to come. i didn’t though. most of the people i met had nothing in common with me except a desire to not be alone, and that just wasn’t enough. it made me sad. it also made me feel like i was auditioning for a role. i have had some good experiences that began by meeting someone on personal ads since then, and while some were fun, most were lame and never went anywhere. i have added stuff to this poem since that original version written specifically for okstupid, and i like it very much. it’s totally accurate, too. in fact, if you know someone who sounds just like the person i am describing, please give her my email address! as long as she’s at least 30! penance (albuquerque, austin, sushi, wendy’s, war, etc.) Now and then, i get lazy. so, in 1993, i challenged myself, matthew john conley (a tour partner) and hilary thomas (my then-poet-girlfriend) to write a haiku every day for a year. the rule was you could write as many as you wanted on any given day, but once the next day came, you had to write a new haiku for that day. you couldn’t write seven haiku in one go, then not write a new one for a week, because that would be cheating. on the rare days we flaked, we would have to do penance the next day to make up for our sin. our chosen form of penance was to write seven thematically-linked haiku. it was sort of like a new form of poetry, at least to us, and we ended up writing some really decent ones. my favourite was the sushi penance. i love sushi. when i lived with hilary, we were just down the street from a really good sushi place called kyoto 2, and we would hit that joint several times a month. we sort of bonded initially through our shared love of sushi and six feet under. the chef we liked best was this japanese dude named ted with thickly- accented broken english, and he would always greet us with shouts and smiles when we entered the room. he was so funny, and we had him make a special roll just for us out of our favourite ingredients, and he named it after us. i loved that place. the restaurant closed, which sucked. several years later, my then-girlfriend zara and i used to hit the sister restaurant kyoto in downtown austin, and it was our favourite, but it got closed down, too. lame. my favourite kind of sushi is eel, but i really like yellow tail, too. sea urchin is gnarsty. it’s like eating the ocean floor. oh, and i really did work at a spenser gifts in the mall once, for about three weeks just before i was going on tout to earn some extra cash. it sucked a sack of dicks.

U . . disillusion curry The girl really did exist, and she was so cute, and she really did have a pepsi logo tattooed on her arm, and she really showed it to me, and she really said that she no longer drank pepsi. the restaurant was called chada thai in my lovely little college town of chico, california. thai was the first sort of exotic food that drove me crazy with delight, followed by sushi, vietnamese, and ethiopian. i don’t remember her name. she has no idea i wrote a poem about her. that’s probably a good thing. i think it’s crazy how young people so willingly allow their bodies to be used as advertising space for corporate logos they actually pay for. fuck that! if i’m gonna be a walking billboard for nike, they gotta pay me. having said that, i could see getting a uniball vision-elite gel pen with blue-black ink tattooed on the inside of my forearm. i love those pens. those pens rule. i buy them by the box. passersby Boy, i hate flying. i fly lots of places for gigs, and i absolutely despise it, but i do like looking out the window as we descend over a city. i love looking at all the houses and building and trees, love how it looks like you can run your hands over the top of them like they’re toys, and i often find myself staring at the traffic. every single one of those people in every single one of those cars is a living breathing thinking feeling human being who loves and hates and lives and dies and has an entire life i will never know anything about, and isn’t that odd? standing in line for a latte, i look around and wonder who are all these people? what are their lives like? so many stories. i love the word passersby. it’s kinda like attorneys general. sorrow, part two Even though i don’t know from whence this one came, but i do know i was walking through a grassy field in athens, texas, near the house of my then-poet-girlfriend hilary’s grandma when it came to me. i think it started with the concept of the chord of ultimate sadness, and i just kept working it around in my brain. by the time my walk was through, so was the poem, and after a few last-minute edits, it was done. i don’t suppose there is any such thing as complete silence, especially in a city. there’s always the sound of a far-off dog barking, the shush of distant traffic, a car horn, a door slam, voices, the wind, the rain, the buzz of street lamps, the constant ringing in my fucking ears that sounds like the electric hum some old teevees make when you first turn them on. i did a gig once at this rich guy’s house in tesuque, new mexico, which is nestled in the hills outside santa fe, and i stood at night in his backyard and listened to the utter absence of city noises, the kind of brilliant silence filled with buzzing insects and wind through cactus thorns and the smell of sage brush and sand. and so many stars! the double glass doors of your heart Andy buck inspired this nonsense. he was my teammate on the ’02 austin poetry slam team, and he posted the beginnings of a poem on his blog that said something about if you had a full body tattoo of the globe, i would circumnavigate your tummy. i don’t know, some crap like that, and it cracked me up and made me roll

I . my eyes, so i immediately posted this ode in my journal the next day as a means of ribbing him. i performed it at the next slam with andy in the room. i suppose i could say it has a deeper meaning than is apparent, but no, it doesn’t, it’s just me messing around at andy’s expense. i hardly ever perform this piece anymore because it’s kinda stupid. no, it’s not kinda stupid. just stupid. cellophane So don’t know what to think about this piece. in fact, it probably shouldn’t even be in this book. it’s a purely performance piece that makes little sense on the page. i usually start the poem while sitting in the middle of the room. i wait until the host has introduced me and the random clapping has died down, and then i just keep sitting. eventually, the silence will ripple with mumbled whispers of what the fuck? as the room full of people wonders out loud why the mic is just standing there on the stage with no poet behind it. and then i’ll start it right from my seat, just lift my head to the ceiling and shout the first lines. i’ll leap from the chair and move around the room and reach out and grab people as i talk, place my open palms on either side of their heads and give them a shake, press my forehead into theirs, kiss them, sit on their laps, flirt with them, toy with them, do anything and everything other than stick myself at a mic on a stage behind a piece of paper. i wanted to do a transparent poem where i narrated exactly what i was doing as i was doing it, hence the name, and i wanted to show how much freedom an audience gives a performer, how much power they willingly relinquish. i could never in a million years get away with the things i sometimes do on stage if you were to take away the mic, the stage, the lights, the audience. if i just walked up to some random girl in a cafe and tried to kiss her forehead, oh my, she would freak out! put a mic in my hand and surround her by people watching my every move, and she’ll let me do anything because it’s part of the show. that’s dangerous. this poem started out trying to illustrate the potential for performers to abuse their power over an audience, but it strayed from that idea and became something else. it tried to become something empowering, something about community, about doing something positive with the power an audience gives us. i am not sure it is a successful piece, and i rarely do it anymore. it’s kinda cheesy. but sometimes? sometimes, it’s amazing. people aren’t used to becoming a part of the performance. it breaks down all the walls. i originally wrote this piece to make fun of the people who start their poems from the middle of the audience for no reason that’s intrinsic to the piece; they just wanna be the first one to do it. i hate that.

26 new rules for poetry slamming So-so piece, but i have rarely performed it, and not because i don’t think it’s funny or effective in front of the right audience, but mostly because every freakin’ poetry slammer has written a piece exactly like it, so what’s the point? i try not to write poems i’ve seen a thousand times before, and believe me, i have seen a thousand versions of this piece. poetry slams were initially meant to offer a lively forum for poetry in front of an audience that might know nothing about poetry, but the scoring and judging aspects of the show have greatly inﬂuenced the kind of work

L . . that gets written. this has certainly not been for the better, in large part, since so many slam poems are written using the same tried and true formulas. the poems all sound the same after a while: they sound slammy, mine included. there are numerous clichés in the poetry slam community, and one of the biggest ones is slam poet slams slam poetry. as i was putting this collection together, i found myself tweaking the lines, and now i would actually love to perform this piece again. clichéd, yes, but sometimes cliché is tremendously effective communication. ode to george w. bush Masama pulitiko ay pakikipag-usap tulad katarantaduhan. Hindi ko maintindihan ang karamihan ng kung ano ang sinasabi nila sa kanilang mga speeches.Tingin ko ang kanilang layunin ay puno ng tae. Pulitiko gawin hindi gusto sa amin upang maunawaan kung ano ang sinasabi nila. Mga pulitiko ay gusto ng kanilang mga batas at mga singil at badyet na kaya mahirap maunawaan na ang mga ordinaryong tao ay mananatili sa isang estado ng pagkalito. Ang pagkalito ay kung paano ang mga tao ay kontrolado at ginulo mula sa kanilang mga mainip buhay sa pang- aalipin.Pagkalito ay kung paano ang pinakapuno class upang mapanatili ang kanilang kontrol sa masa. bpe rap Even though i have a hip-hop-sounding stage name, i cannot rap, nor can i freestyle, but this does not prevent people from asking me ad nauseum to drop some beatbox action and deliver sick knowledge straight off my dome. it got to the point where i ﬁnally just wrote something so i could bust it out to prove i should not be allowed to freestyle, like, ever. i had fun rhyming things with the names of russian novelists and playwrights and saying ridiculous shit, especially the line about if my wienie was a rabbit maybe i would let you pet it. that shit is funny. i have done this so-called freestyle for nearly ten years, and my friends who have heard me pass it off as improv expose me as a fake by rapping along with me. silver Ask yourself: when was the last time you hugged a homeless guy? this poem reminds me of this one time when i was in a cafe in austin, texas, and spied a pretty girl in a corner with a massage chair. she was giving out free body work as a means of advertising her ﬂedgling business as a masseuse, and my shoulders were in knots, so i took her up on the offer. and it was awesome. and then the weirdest thing happened. i was sitting there with my face pressed into a cushioned donut thing that allowed me to breathe, and the girl shoved the tip of her thumb into a knot beneath my left shoulder blade, then she opened her hands wide and pressed her warm palms against my back and just held them there for a while, allowing the warmth to reach deep into my muscles, and all of a sudden, i started to cry. i think it was because i realized how wonderful it felt to be touched by a girl like that, how much i missed physical intimacy, how lonely i was, but i have also heard your body can store bad memories in the knots of your muscles, and sometimes deep-tissue massages can release the body’s hold on those emotions. either way,

O . . it fucked me up, and i bawled silently. She must have known, because she stood there behind me with her hands on me for a few minutes until i got through it, then she continued. it was overwhelming, and i felt embarrassed to look her in the eyes afterwards, so i left the cafe and felt like shit all day. but my back felt great! tigerlily This girl i met in austin, texas, circa fall of 2004, was a fragile drama girl addicted to meth and anorexia who was trying very hard to leave both behind and failing. she was trouble, i knew it the moment i laid eyes on her, but that didn’t stop us from spending time together for a few months. we had the same birthday, how could i resist? one time, she wanted to do a performance art piece where the audience would sit in darkness while i raped her on stage. she said she would fight with all her might, but i was to force her down and rape her right there on stage then leave her to weep in the dark. i told her it was the worst idea i had ever heard in my entire life. i wrote this poem just a few weeks after we’d met, and she cried when i showed her. she said i was the only person who had ever gotten it right. propers Years ago, about halfway through my so-called career, i became aware of speech competition kids covering work from poetry slammers, and when school’s in session, i get requests from students each week asking permission to perform my stuff at regional and national speech competitions. they all seem to need confirmation that i was born after 1960. (i was born may 11, 1967.) i wrote this piece at the request of a high school kid from west texas with red dreadlocks at a big conference at west texas a&m during my spring 2004 tour. she asked me to write a poem for them, the high school kids in attendance, and 20 minutes later, i performed a rough version of this piece in front of 300+ students. i rocked the final version for the sixth season of hbo’s def poetry in 2006, and i dedicated it to the girl from west texas with red dreadlocks. i’ve been told this poem is a simplified version of shake the dust by one of my favourite slam poets of all time, anis mojgani, but i wrote it before i’d ever seen his piece. they cover similar ground, but his poem is far more poetic and brilliant. mission statement Ask a poet a philosophical question, and you’re likely to inspire a poem. who are you? what do you believe in? what is your purpose in life? what the hell are you doing? all poems. this one seeks to answer those questions. when i read this poem out loud, i am reminded of the sheryl crow song that says if it makes you happy, then why the hell are you so sad? writing and performing poetry has affected my worldview immensely, and that changing worldview has in turn guided my poetry. the whole process has forced me to be more open and accepting, less judgmental, more compassionate, even toward the assholes of the world, because the assholes are mean because they are in pain, and we can all understand pain, we all hurt, we are all wounded in some deep way, at least the interesting people are. i don’t think i could spend significant time with someone who had never known darkness, who

V . had never been burdened by sadness, who had never been fucked over in some way. i think the perfect companion for me would be someone who had every right to be bitter and angry and cold, but who consciously chose to be gentle with this fragile world, who understood those difficult times gave her the vision to appreciate true beauty, which can only be known once you have experienced the ugly. this poem is weird, because it never seems to score well at poetry slams no matter how much passion i put into the performance. people always come to me after a show and tell me they liked it, though, and that makes me feel good. it takes a lot to inspire a person to cross a crowded room just to honour a gut feeling. cats Say i love my kitties aretha and thelonious a little too much, and i’ll tell you i love them, but i don’t make love to them, which is what i get accused of whenever i do this piece, which has almost universally become known as the cat blowjob poem. grrrreeaat. what i like about this piece is how the speaker in the poem is such an unreliable narrator. he’s acting like the girlfriend in question is the one with the problems, but he’s a total douche nozzle. some of the complaints of the girlfriend in the poem have been lifted from actual conversations i’ve had with past lovers, i am sure, but mostly it’s all made up, except for the part about calling the vatican. i actually did that once, since the number is listed in the first pages of the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy. my mom was so pissed off when she got the long distance phone bill. she was all, “who the hell called the vatican?” i got in so much trouble! as i write this, theo is asleep on a spare office chair i’ve placed near my own chair, mostly so i can kick my feet back on it while i watch movies on my computer. theo is making like it’s his personal kitty chair now, which is all good by me. i love that kitty. he and his sister aretha are 13 years old now. i love them so much i could just kick ronald mcdonald right in the nuts. i don’t know what i would do without those little muggles sometimes. i get so fucking lonely, but having them around makes it easier to keep on living. sometimes i just lie on the couch and hold them for hours, stick my nose deep into their tummy fur and breathe their warmth, put my ear to their chests and listen to their heartbeats. birth control Awesome poet matthew john conley, a former tour partner of mine, gave me the name of this piece in the fall of 2004. he said if i continued to read this poem in public, i would never again get laid. it’s not necessarily about me, but i sure did borrow a lot from my experiences. i’ve done the whole re-gifting of mixtapes thing, and i’ve even done the making out with your sister thing. not proud of either of those. and i am nearly as clingy and needy as the speaker in this piece. i’d like to think that aspect has been amplified for comedic purposes, but no, it’s a pretty accurate portrayal. shit, i wouldn’t date me. no way! thoughts on gay marriage Really, is marriage equality such a perplexing idea? perplexed is what the whole dialogue on gay marriage leaves me. it’s so ridiculous and stupid that i wrote

E . a piece as over-the-top stupid as the whole stupid debate. i wish people would mind they own bidness and let each other live the lives that fit best without feeling the need to meddle and pass judgement. i will be so glad when the terms gay marriage and interracial marriage are replaced by the simple term marriage. this is a pretty lame piece. i have only performed it twice. i want to hold you Once in a while, i challenge myself to write a haiku every day for a year. i have yet to actually complete the challenge despite three attempts, but i have gotten some mad decent haiku out of the exercise. i went through this period in late 2004 of writing these kinda sensual haiku, most about this crazy meth actor girl i was kinda sorta dating, who also happened to be the inspiration for my poem tigerlily. i strung a bunch of haiku together to make something new. that’s how this poem started, and you can tell where the haiku are in the meat of the poem. i can’t stand most so-called erotic poetry — see my what it means (when i say i love you) for more on that subject — so i tried to do something that was actually sensual and sexy and not pornographic. i kinda like it okay. it’s kinda sexy. it’s more than just body parts and bullshit, which is what most erotica is. shit, i’d fuck me. way! oh! canadian fedex lady! Unless you have seen the viral video, you won’t know how this poem caused me mad problems! it pretty much happened the way it’s implied in the video. i was working the phones at apple computer and was completely taken with the cute voice of the canadian fedex lady who was helping me track an order, and i actually did leave my customer on hold long enough to get the basic idea of this piece in my journal so i could finish it later. we didn’t really flirt — i was dating zara at the time, and she woulda cutta bitch! — but what cracks me up is the idea of flirting with a cute voice... it’s just so silly! plus i love the stilted references to canada, as if the speaker really doesn’t know all that much about canada except what he could find on wikipedia, yet he’s still trying his best to impress this canadian crush with his canuck knowledge. i performed this piece for the annual apple computer employee talent show, and i was fired two days later because it was deemed unprofessional. whatevs. the video i made about the situation — why i got fired from apple computer — ended up getting over a million hits on youtube and google video, and about a bzillion websites linked to it. it was really bizarre to be famous on the internet for about, oh, a week or so, at least until the next video of someone lighting his farts came along. speaking of apple computer, just today it was announced that steve jobs has died of the pancreatic cancer he had been fighting for years. he was 56, just two years younger than my dad’s dad when he died of lung cancer. i have been bummed out all day. i am typing on a 24-inch imac right now, listening to le mystère des voix bulgares on itunes. i have always been a mac man, from the first mac i used in a computer store to design the cover of my high school literary magazine to the quadra 630 i had after i got out of the navy and the old school egg-shaped imac dv i got after that to the 14” ibook and 4th-gen ipod i still use while on tour. this font? it’s the apple font. godspeed, mister jobs.

C . . closer to the heart Silly, but i never loved a band as much as i loved rush. the first 45s i ever got my hands on were loaned to me by david pletcher, my best friend in my freshman year of high school, and one of them was the single for rush’s tom sawyer with witch hunt as the b-side. i can’t honestly say listening to that 45 changed my life, but it sure did make me a huge fan of the band. they were, in fact, my very first favourite band, followed in rapid succession by pink floyd, led zeppelin, the police, u2, and foetus. i bought everything rush ever did, and i still have everything they did up to exit... stage left. after that, they started to suck, and i didn’t have the heart to watch something so dear die such a drawn-out death. it will never be the same as when i was 14 and miserable and alone and rush gave me escape. maybe the fact that i find myself miserable and alone more often than not lately is why i’ve returned to them for solace, endlessly listening to rush albums on repeat. i know every word to every song they did from 1974-1981, every drum fill, every guitar lick, every bass line. i know those songs like i know my own name. if you haven’t seen the documentary about rush called beyond the lighted stage, you should totally see it right now! it’s perfect! but don’t illegally download it... like i did... bad poppa! muscleman I get asked where poems come from all the time, and i have no idea: i’m just glad when they come. i greeted this one with open arms while pedaling my peewee’s big adventure cruiser bike down the long slow slope of a street called lamar in austin, texas, and by the time i got to the end of the hill and parked in front of the flagship whole foods, the opening lines were done and the outline for the rest had been laid out in my head. that night, i put the first version on my livejournal. it’s been a crowd-pleaser for all the bad puns, especially the one about pumping irony, which, really, is deliciously bad. i think this was one of the last poems i wrote before i met zara, the girl i dated for three years who then became my best friend once we broke up. this is a good opening piece to do at a high school gig. there are no cuss words, and it’s easy to understand, plus it’s a good establishing piece. speaking of puns, i’ve performed at the annual o. henry pun-off in austin for several years, and i’ve garnered two trophies. i was going to include all the pun pieces i’ve done, but then i changed my mind. you can see them on youtube. one of them contains all the porn names for the harry potter books i made up, which are: hairy bottom and the sorcerer’s bone; hairy bottom and the chamberpot of sexcreeps; hairy bottom and the prisoner of ass-grabbin’; hairy bottom and the gobbler of fur; hairy bottom and the hoarder of the penis; hairy bottom and the half-bloody prince albert; and hairy bottom and the salty swallows. napoleon Now and then, poems work right out of the box. you get an idea, you’re excited by the concept, you write some lines, they kick ass, you get more excited, you polish it up, then you perform it and it’s your new hit. i love it when that happens. sometimes, though, you get all excited about a new piece, and you can just hear the applause in advance, but when you finally get up on the stage to bust it out...

U . dude... it’s like you took a big fat shit on the stage — which i have literally done (see fuckety fuck-fuck). and you can’t figure out why it doesn’t work, like, you were so sure this was your next chart topper. this piece sprang out of a bit of between-poem banter about how much short people rock, and i developed that improvisation into the first version of this championing of wee folk. when i performed it the first time, it was... well... it was okay. some of the lines worked, but the energy was not right, and there were dead points that dragged, and some of the lines i just knew would be killer lines kinda fell flat. i was perplexed, but i kept performing it, thinking maybe it was just the audience. time after time, all i got was meh, so i crumpled that shit up and threw it into a box and forgot about it. about a year later, i happened upon it while looking for something new to read at the san antonio poetry slam, and right away i saw the parts that weren’t working. i kept everything that worked and cut the rest, then i wrote new stuff to connect everything. this time, it went over like gangbusters, and i got the highest score of the show. i did it again the next night at the austin poetry slam, and i practically got a standing ovation. it’s been a greatest hit ever since. so weird... i had given up on this poem, but it wouldn’t go away. i’m glad i gave it another try. dead horses Grand cliché. another slam poem deriding slam poets for caring more about scores than integrity, which is a tried and true way of getting good scores at a poetry slam. but i gotta tell ya, if i have to sit through one more so-called poet spitting another so-called poem that’s nothing more than torture porn posing as poetry, i’m gonna cut somebody. it’s like those anti-abortion protesters and their signs featuring full-colour blow-ups of chopped up babies; i don’t need that shit shoved in my face to get your point, no more than i need graphic details about every aspect of your molestation in your freakin’ high-scoring daddy rape poem. there surely must be a better way of writing these types of poems without simply listing purposely horrific images one right after another and calling the resulting litany poetry and daring the judges to score your pain less than a 10. i rarely do this poem unless it’s at some big event with a lot of poetry slammers in attendance, but then some poets get all up in my face about it, too, like who am i to tell someone who has been molested how they should write their poem? who am i to say such graphic details shouldn’t be shared to drive the point home? and maybe those are really good points. however, after the seventh poem of the night detailing someone’s rape or abuse or neglect, god, i wanna scratch my fucking eyes out. if i were an alien visiting this planet for the first time, and the only input i had about humanity was a poetry slam, oh my god, i would turn right around and light- speed my ass out of this cheerless rock full of such savagery! surely there must be something that makes all the horrors worth surviving, but there aren’t many slam poets spitting joy and redemption. nope, just poet after poet cataloguing how fucked up life is. such a dismal worldview gets old after a while. i feel like... if my poetry is going to make the stomach of every person in the audience hurt, i want it to be from laughing, not crying. so fucking sue me. and if you do cry, i want you to cry for release, for joy, for glory, for love, for breathing.

N . not drowning, but waving Boom, suddenly and unexpectedly, you’re at the end of a relationship. yeah, that’s what this one is all about. i wrote it about my then-girlfriend zara, about a trip we took to the beach in corpus christi, texas. it’s about that time in a relationship where you find yourself considering your options. you’re sitting there in the warm sand beneath a beautiful blue sky, and out of nowhere you begin to suspect you’re on the cusp of breaking up. and it’s a struggle between holding on with all your might or allowing your relationship to move from one of lovers to one of friends. sometimes you have to let go and allow the romance to end if you really want the connection to last forever. hold on too tight, and it could kill it. the title is a twisting of not waving, but drowning by stevie smith. scars, part two Oh so many so-called adults tell you that real life comes after graduation, and that can be such a wonderfully painful and bewildering time for both the person going through it and their parents who are witnessing it. it’s a constant wrestling match between fighting for your sense of self and against the idea your parents had in mind when conceiving the baby who would eventually become an individual beyond their complete control. it’s a struggle, and this transition period tests and defines the relationship between parent and child from that time on. i wrote this poem for two precious people going through that time together, one having just finished college and the other fresh out of high school: my best friend zara and her kid sister aimy. i love them both very much, and i hope their scars always enhance their intense beauty. my favourite scar is on the back of my head. it’s a dog bite scar. from your mom. she’s a savage bitch, your mom. real biter. ode to dwarf planet 134340 Up to me to represent the underdog, even if it’s a heavenly body at the far reaches of our solar system. pluto knows nothing of our obsessive need to define it, and i don’t suppose it would care much even if it did. pluto is what it is, and that never changes, no matter what label you attach to it. a lot of my very favourite people are like pluto. i’m like pluto. maybe you’re like pluto, too. this is not really a poem at all, just a list of applause lines, but it always seems to stir up emotions. you wouldn’t think defending a planet would rouse such passion. without pluto, my very excellent mother cannot send us nine pizzas. fuck that. i love pizza. incantation 4: redneck Totally get so tired of white poetry slammers complaining about how they are not allowed to pull the race card. idiots. but i also get tired of people thinking that just because my skin is white that my family has never had to struggle with prejudice in this country, as if being white insulates us from persecution. it’s simply not true. ask the irish in new york city in the 1890s. ask gay people or women or anybody in a wheelchair. discrimination isn’t confined to race because it has no boundaries, it’s just about ignorance and hate, and you can hate anybody for any reason, even when you have to invent that reason. my family migrated to

N . . the fields of central california during the dust bowl, and okies were treated like lowlife scum. everything in this poem actually happened to my family. in fact, my mother’s mother lived in one of the work camps featured in steinbeck’s the grapes of wrath. this is a tough poem to sell, though, because my family was poor, but they were white, which means they could clean themselves up, put on a nice shirt, polish their shoes, and pass as the very people who oppressed them, and they were eventually able to move out of the dirt-floored tent cities and get better jobs, buy houses, raise families, go to school, all that. i’m not trying to compare my pain with anyone else’s, i am simply trying to illustrate that prejudice isn’t limited by ethnicity or skin colour. i feel like this poem still needs a massive rewrite though. i don’t consider it finished. it’s a tough poem to pull off, and i’m not sure it works, but i am so tired of trying to make it work. i really need to fix it. falling in like Obviously, nervous crushes are my lifeblood. i love the idea of liking someone so much you just lose all your cool, leaving you feeling completely awkward and awed by the intensity of it all. this was written as a collabouration with zara, who is my very best friend in the world, and who i used to date. we were instant messaging back and forth with these lines about what we would’ve been like as kids with crushes on each other. i wrote down the best ones and made it into this little ode to puppy love. zara came up with the ideas about quizzing each other with dueling dictionaries, trading the jelly sandwich, the green crayon, the chicken pox, and making the valentine’s day card with sparkles and glue, then i rewrote them and added my own stuff. i just love this piece, and it remains one of my most popular performance pieces amongst speech kids. in fact, it has been used in a number of weddings, too, including one where the groom had me hide in the bushes during the ceremony until the right moment when i walked behind the bride and began to read it. she started to cry the moment she heard my voice. i didn’t even know the couple, but they had somehow found my work online, and i got all choked up as i read it. i kept thinking about how lovely it would be to read this poem at my own wedding someday. oh bother. by the way, ish kabibble was a comedian and cornet player in the ’40s and ’50s, and i’ve always thought it was the funniest name in the history of the world. i first heard it on a teevee show called make me laugh where comedians would have one minute to cause a contestant to crack up. this one guy stared in silence at the woman sitting there with her mouth pressed shut for nearly the whole minute, and then he asked, wanna know the funniest word of all time? he paused, then he said, ishkabibble. the lady lost it, and so did i, and i’ve always remembered it. it’s good to finally find a place for it in my work. i hope people everywhere start saying it on a regular basis from now on. to the barista at the cafe down the street For real, this didn’t happen, but i did throw a cordless telephone at the face of a male barista once. i had been in a full-scale war with my roommate at the time, and i needed to call the cops, and the cafe was the closest phone, but the fucking dude unplugged the phone in the middle of the call since it took more than a minute.

I . . neurotika Far too excessive, this one. i don’t rock it often. it’s just too over-the-top and outrageously bitter, which is part of the fun of performing it, but i tend to yell the entire time, plus it’s just so negative. i’d have to be in a rowdy bar crowd full of people talking over all the poets before i kicked it. bitterness is a natural defense mechanism when you’re all butt-hurt about love. it’s easy to get into so many intensely dramatic relationships that you ﬁnally mistake drama for love. then when you actually meet a nice person, you get bored because you’ve replaced danger for passion. i’ve had relationships where it’s a rollercoaster, just awesome maniacal highs that are exhilarating followed by crashing lows where you fucking hate each other. the best thing about those relationships is usually the skin-ripping sex, but mostly everything else about dating crazy people sucks, especially if you happen to be the crazy one. the line about the horror is taken from apocalypse now. they are the last words marlon brando speaks as he dies at the hands of martin sheen. that movie is so bad ass. i love the slo-mo explosions to the end by the doors. mixtape genius Unfortunately, every time i read this poem, i feel like it’s another failed poem, so i rarely read it. i wanted to write something about the joy of music, about the art of compiling the perfect mixtape, the craft of conducting a symphony of emotions, the arcing rise and fall, the tension and release, the afterglow, but it ended up being this pseudo hip-hop braggadocio thing with silly wordplay. i punked out, and now i kinda hate it. every once in a great while when i get an assful of swagger and there’s a hot bar crowd drinking and talking shit, i might bust this one out, but i have to really be feeling sassy, otherwise it falls ﬂat and i feel foolish. fuck this piece. having said that, i really am a mixtape genius. my mixes will impregnate you bam! just like that, a baby will just pop out of you the moment you press play. that’s how good they are. they are so good, thay will impregnate you with 10,000 poet babies! 10,000! check out the link on my website to 8tracks.com. mementos Could i be so good at performing that i could read from a phone book and make it interesting? i actually did that once at a reading in costa mesa, california. i presented all the z’s in the orange county phone book. and it was hilarious. and then i thought... hmmm... wouldn’t it be an interesting experiment to write a performance piece made up of just nouns and adjectives, like a shopping list, so i did it, i wrote a shopping list poem called receipt found in the parking lot of the super walmart, and it was actually kinda awesome. so, i gave the format another try with this list of things that no longer exist or are rapidly disappearing. i wanted to evoke a playful sense of nostalgia, see people nod their heads and smile as i listed each thing, then suddenly reveal, in the end, what it is really missed. the trick to a piece like this is the clustering of the individual items and the transitions between one group to another. i like it. it’s full of saudade. look up that word on wikipedia. it’s my favourite word of all time and i try to infuse my work with a sense of saudade, even the funny stuff, especially the funny stuff.

N . . the crush Killer what you can find if you scour your old notebooks. This poem began as a simple line: that cute girl you have a crush on is afraid of you. it was part of a series of about 160 sayings i called aphorisms that i printed on bright pink paper and posted on all the bulletin boards at my college campus in chico, california. they were meant to be seen all over the place and offer no explanation as to their meaning. i wanted them to instill a rising paranoia in the people experiencing them. i would eventually print these aphorisms at the bottom of each page in my greatest hits collection. anyway, i had these sayings around for 12 years or so, and one day i finally turned that one line into this poem. i didn’t really put much thought into it. the poem kinda wrote itself. i like it, although it is quite menacing. i tried to write it in such a way that you could either think the man is a creepy stalker dude or the barista is over-reacting to someone who is just awkward and means no harm. speaking of those aphorisms, i found out years later about a visual artist named jenny holzer who had done something similar called truisms, only she had done it years and years before me. she is now one of my favourite artists. she did it with fliers on telephone poles, then graduated to huge electronic signs and projections on the sides of buildings. fantastic stuff. she never really loved you In the beginning, this was another one from that series of aphorisms, just like the crush, and just like the crush, it was pretty much written off the top of my head in one sitting. i think young men in relationships are some of the most willfully ignorant people on the planet, at least young american men. you spend a whole year telling them what you need from him in the relationship and how you are unhappy, then, finally, when you break up with them, they claim to be surprised. beardo Need to respect the beard! if you look at photos of me over the past ten years, you will see an ever-changing array of facial hair styles. since i can’t have me no afro puffs or pigtails, i rock the fu manchu and the mutton chops. near the end of 2008, i grew a massive beard, just massive, this huge living thing that grew untrimmed for eight long bushy months. it was meant as a giving up, as a throwing up of the hands, as a surrender to the fact that i wasn’t getting any girl action anyway, so fuck it, i might as well make myself as unattractive as possible. young white dudes were hella impressed. i lost count of the indie rock white guys who gave me props when spying my beard while walking through the market or chilling in a cafe. this was the first poem i had written after a long dry spell. as you can see from the timeline of poems in this book, there are only five poems from 2007-2008, and they are most certainly not up there with my best work. by the time i got to mid-2009, i hadn’t written anything in a year. i was all dried up and felt like i had run out of ideas, as though i had written every poem in me. thankfully, i wrote this piece, and it was the start of a fertile period that birthed some of my very favourite slam pieces ever. i debuted it at the 2009 finals of the austin poetry slam, and i made the team with a second place finish. it was the first time i’d been on a team since 2004.

G . how to make love Goodness, this poem has gone through so many different incarnations! it was originally written for my best friend (and former girlfriend) zara to give to her then-boyfriend, who was, how shall we say, a knucklehead in the bedroom action department? i gathered all the info about her relationship, added a bunch of stuff i had learned about communication and conscious loving, and i made this list. but oh the scandal! oh the uproar! what i thought was a fun poem using comedy to address a sticky but important subject turned into this shitstorm of people accusing me of trying to write a one-size-fits-all manual for all women, like a list of buttons to push to turn any woman on, and that was not at all what the poem was about, not even close, in fact the exact opposite. i rewrote it and rewrote it, tested it out and tried it in front of audiences all over the country, then went back to the drawing board again and again. the last edit happened while i was sitting in a hotel jacuzzi at the 2009 national poetry slam, and some random dude just kinda slid over next to me and without invitation started offering his critique of the poem. he had seen me do it earlier in the day, and he just let me have it for this one line he didn’t like and demanded that i change it. i was not open to getting input from anybody else at that point because i was fucking tired of people having problems with it, so i just freestyled a replacement line off the top of my head to shut him up, and he stood up in the middle of the jacuzzi and applauded me, saying it was perfect. and i had to give it to him... it actually was, and it was way better than the original line. fucker. the new line in question is #3. what you see now is the final version of this rant, and i have now stopped getting complaints. it has been road tested across the country, and it regularly garners the loudest and most sustained response of any poem i perform. i get people coming up to me after i perform it asking for copies to give to their teenagers (and boyfriends and husbands!) oh, and remember the boyfriend of my best friend for whom i wrote the poem originally? i asked zara to bring him to the first poetry slam where i would be debuting this piece, and the whole audience went insane for it, but the boyfriend? he played scrabble on his iphone the whole time. she dumped him a few weeks later. what i mean (when i say i love you) Though i aspire to living this poem, i often fall short of the ideas expressed in it. i think had i been able to live up to this poem before i wrote it down, maybe some of my best relationships would have lasted longer. i don’t know. maybe i was retroactively trying to be a much better boyfriend through writing this poem. maybe it was written as a reminder for the future, something to which i could refer when i finally do enter into another relationship. the original version of this piece had way more stuff about never letting go, about always loving you, about how your name will be the last words across my dying lips, that kind of happy horseshit, but i thankfully cut all that nonsense out and let it be sweet and positive with a touch of loss, let it be about keeping your chin up despite the sadness of losing someone. i like this poem a lot. i like the ideas expressed in it very much. funny thing is... i think the most powerful line is the one about you’ll always have someone to pick you up from the airport. no one else seems to feel it as much

L . . as i do, but i refuse to change it. having that special someone pick you up after a long flight, seeing their smiling face as you descend the escalator to the baggage claim area, holding each other while surrounded by other travelers, walking hand in hand to short-term parking... that’s the real deal, man, like the opening scene in love actually. i fucking hate flying, and i have to do it a lot, and one of the things i hate most about being single for so long is not having someone to pick me up from the airport. now i have to take the shuttle. pretty girls make me sad Hate to say it, but most everything i say in this poem is absolutely true. i find myself hoping someone will feel my words so deeply they will just know... i am the one... and they will seek me out and find me and hold me and never let me go. sometimes it gets so bad, just looking at a pretty girl makes me feel horrible. what’s the point of even trying? why bother talking with her? i am lame and ugly and weird and intense and only mildly possessing of anything resembling talent, and she would never like me in a million years. sometimes it feels that way. at least, the character in the poem feels that way. this is my favourite of my recent poems. i think it’s poetic and has lovely images. i’m really proud of it. the last line i put in was i used to wear my heart on my sleeve, but it made my wrists too bloody. that line came to me several months after i had finished the poem, but i managed to slip it in. of all the lines in the poem, that one gets the most response. oh, and the no, said the steam shovel, i am not your true love part is a reference to a ubiquitous children’s book called are you my mommy? the steam shovel in question was actually called a snort in the book. the folly of young men is wasting too much time looking for the one rather than learning how to be the one. my undying love Even though i am wary to admit it, i was inspired to write this by the walking dead television series on amc. i was trying to find the perfect metaphor for holding onto feelings for a lost love way longer than is healthy, so long it starts to hurt, so long that it starts to kill you and prevent you from ever meeting someone else or moving on. and then there it was, the perfect metaphor: the zombie apocalypse. this poem fucked me up for a few weeks after i wrote it. the deep-felt knowledge that i still had unresolved feelings for a past love that were not unlike a freakin’ zombie apocalypse really weighed on me. i went on anti-depressants after i pulled myself out of the resulting funk inspired by this poem, and i’m still on them. this poem is a difficult sell, because it’s got to be equal parts sincere and silly, like it’s supposed to be a little funny because it’s about zombies, which are ridiculous, but it’s supposed to be heartfelt at the same time because if that shit were real, this is exactly what you would do, you would make finding your lover the entire point of your existence. i want the audience to giggle at the zombie references, but at the end i want them to go aww. i want them to laugh and cry a little at the same time. it’s tough to pull off. i think i’ve only pulled it off once, and, i got it on video, so check out the recording of it from fronterafest that’s on my youtube channel. it’s a pretty decent performance, and the audience seemed to get it.

I . confessions Now, i gotta tell you, i met the kid during my summer 2011 tour. i still don’t know if he’s my kid, but i met him. i returned to my hometown at the invitation of his mother, the person who rid me of my virginity, and she brought me to her home to meet him. he refused to speak to me. i was supposedly there with his blessing, but when i walked into the room, he refused to even look me in the eye. after about five minutes, he left the house without explanation. i have no idea what the deal was, why he would allow me to come over and meet him if he was going to treat me like i wasn’t there. what a mindfuck, though, to be told the man who raised you might not actually be your biological father, that some faggoty poet guy you’ve never met was the one who knocked up your 17-year-old mother, and now here he is with a dna test in his hand. i just told him i was here if he wanted to get in touch with me, if he wanted to find out the answer, but he has not contacted me since. i turned this debacle into a story that was aired on npr’s snap judgment program. the word I slam therefore i am! poetry readings, both open mics and slams, have been my church of choice since the early ’90s, the places i go to release my soul from the chains that bind it, to confess my sins, to beg forgiveness, to speak boldly with righteous indignation, to share my experiences as a fragile and fucked and beautifoolishly flawed human being. i tried to honour that idea with this poem, and, well, maybe it’s a little cheesy and obvious. the whole slam as church poem has been written to death, but know what? slam really is my church, so fuck it, i’ma say it, and if you don’t like it, well, then, you can just shut up about it. dear white people! Wonderful! another cliché for you! oh look, it’s a poem by a white poet trying to prove to a black audience that he is down with the struggle by mocking white poets who try to prove to black audiences they are down with the struggle. how meta! having said that, i think someone needs to speak out about this brand of stealth racism that even the most informed white people do without even realizing it, including myself. i debuted this poem while touring the southern united states in the summer of 2010. i visited lots of venues where i was the only white dude in the entire venue and the only white poet ever featured there, and i found that i had to earn the right to do this poem. if i busted it out as the very first piece of my featured reading, people would suck their teeth at me, not knowing where i was coming from. was this just another white poet doing a poem he thinks will endear him to a black audience? however, if i whipped out a whole set of kick ass poems that had nothing to do with racial issues, then i said something like, “well, i have this new poem, but i’m not sure i should read it... it’s called dear white people.” at that point, there would be cheers of encouragement to read it, and then every single line would kill. i am telling you, this is a very difficult poem to write and an even more difficult poem to pull off. when i write poems like this, my slam poet friend phil west clucks his tongue at me and calls me pander bear. fucker. fuck that short little motherfucker anyway. pander this, bitch.

N . . the burning bush Oh, don’t you think i’m not serious about this. i really do think easy access to online pornography has altered the way women, especially young women, look at pubic hair. or, more accurately, how young male fantasies inspired by readily- available online porn have created expectations about what their girlfriend’s junk should look like, hence the mass shaving of girl bits to mimic those images. you know, in the end, whatever floats your boat is cool by me, but i just think it’s lame to feel you have to measure up to such a blatantly male-driven fantasy. i had to work a lot on this piece for about a year off and on before i got it where it is now. for too long, it was just a lot of vagina jokes with no real purpose other than to shock, i guess, and i wanted more out of it, to use comedy and maybe a little sass to talk about something important... female pubic hair self-esteem? when i finish the bit about eager beavers frolicking wild and free and looking like my face, i open my mouth really big and stand there as the crowd screams in horror. realize i usually have a full beard when i do this poem. yeah. you can’t unsee that. caffeine Uhm... fuck this poem. and i feel that way because the damned thing didn’t work! there is this logic that only works in movies, you know, where the hero holds a boombox over his head in the rain outside the girl’s window? and she is so impressed by this romantic display of emotion that she runs into the rain and leaps into his arms? well, in real life? standing outside some chick’s window doesn’t get you the girl, it gets you a restraining order. movie logic stalker shit doesn’t fucking work in real life unless you’re a beautiful ingénue like amelié, but for the rest of us muggles, well, that shit most likely backfires. just ask anyone stupid enough to shove an engagement ring into the hand of a girlfriend while on national television. so yeah, this poem was written for some random cute girl who was all, oh, i have these walls, i have these trust issues, i push people away, blah blah blah, and i decided i could be rid of all that nonsense in the space of one poem... performed in front of a packed audience... as she sat there listening... okay, right now, i just sighed loudly and shook my head, like, in real life, like right now as i just typed that. had i been lloyd dobler and had this been say anything, she would’ve waded through the crowd up to the stage and yelled, i love you! but in real life? not so much. it kinda backfired. it kinda freaked her out. duh. we never got past flirting with the notion of getting together, and whatever potential spark had existed before this poem pretty much died after this poem. i almost didn’t include this piece so i wouldn’t have to be reminded of it, but then again, it might be a good idea for me to never forget it. oh, and the it’s gonna be a bumpy ride part was stolen from the shrunken head aboard the knight bus in the movie version of harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban. damn good movie. embouchure Lots of times, people ask me what i was like when i was a kid, especially students, and they always seem to be surprised when i tell them i was the shy kid, the quiet kid, the nerdy kid, that i didn’t have many friends, that i often felt isolated and

G . . lonely. i think a lot of shy people end up on stages, whether they become musicians or poets or actors, and i am not sure why that is. for me, i was able to sort of create a character who could do my speaking for me. it feels good to reach out to young people and say, “if i can do it, you can do it.” it’s one of the reasons i often read my poems from my little black moleskine notebook rather than from memory. it’s just so easy to see someone on a stage doing a perfectly-memorized piece and think i could never do that, but seeing me up there reading from my notebook is less intimidating. everything in this poem is true, although people from high school i’ve reconnected with on facebook have told me i was a funny little fucker and was always cracking jokes, so maybe it wasn’t all miserable. i remember it as a lonely time. thank god i discovered girls, or, more accurately, thank god i grew a pair and started talking with them. about this poem... when i read it for audiences that are primarily black, i change the poster in the speaker’s bedroom to a michael jackson thriller poster, and it gets a lot of laughter. i don’t think mentioning rush would work. is that pandering or knowing your audience? i can’t tell. you Don’t be gettin’ all righteous up in my face. realize this is a fable, a what if, a tale of yearning and loss, a different way of looking at a story we all think we know. not meant to offend. not meant to replace. not meant to mock. just something to wonder about. it’s fascinating how very little is known about the husband of mary, the carpenter named joseph. he is only mentioned in the very first part of the new testament when jesus was a baby, and then he is never mentioned again. in medieval art, mary is always depicted as this glowing young virginal teenager- lookin’ girl, but joseph is always this old white beard holding a baby jesus. makes me wonder about the whole story, about the rest of the story. jara Randomly clicking around wikipedia by using the random article button over and over lead me to an article on victor jara. i had never heard of him, but i read the details of his life and death with my eyes pried wide open. it’s just so fucked, especially when you consider the united states’ role in the chilean coup that lead to jara’s death. and it happened on sept. 11, which is like, wow. i just had to write something about him since i had never heard of him and his story was so powerful, but man... it’s been tough going. i have been working on this piece from time to time for two years or so at this point, and it’s still more of a passionate essay than a poem. i have only performed it twice, and i got some good feedback from people. it’s not like the stuff i usually write. i have a lot of work to do, but i wanted to include it just in case i never get ‘er done. it’s flawed and unfinished, but maybe people will learn about this lovely man. bread and butter Anytime i find myself thinking about something on a regular basis for years, i start thinking about how i can turn it into a poem. i came up with the idea for this one during the 2011 national poetry slam in boston where i was volunteering as a host,

U . bout manager, and member of the scoring committee. i have been doing the bread and butter thing ever since i saw that popeye cartoon all those years ago. my best friend zara makes fun of me that i still do this, and she purposely fucks with me by angling toward telephone poles and mailboxes and shit as we walk down the street, and i always have to double-back and dance loops around garbage cans and stop signs. i love having a superstition, though, even if it’s a token one, and i love that it’s an old school one most people don’t even know about. you’d have to be old enough to remember world war two and the great depression to know about bread and butter. that pleases me. you can find the exact cartoon on youtube. oh, and the stuff about memorizing the books of the old testament? true story. we also listened to songs backwards to check for satanic messages. another one bites the dust says start to smoke marijuana when played backwards! who knew? fear of satan did not keep my friends and me away from this music, no sir, it provided a buyer’s guide for the best music ever. i still struggle with god and my fear of death. if you look at my poems from the beginning to the end, it’s a constant theme. i still haven’t figured it all out. it still scares me. molly This kind of thing pops into my head all the time. it’s still so surreal to me that words i’ve written in my notebook alone in the middle of the night can somehow end up in someone else’s head, in someone else’s mouth. it is tremendously gratifying, but also so weird to me. it’s all a bit of a mystery, where these words come from, where they will end up, where they go after everyone who ever experiences them dies. the title comes from the first name of an austin playwright who served as inspiration for this piece. i saw a lovely mini-play at fronterafest in austin that covered similar ground, and it totally made me think of turning the idea into this piece. it took me six years. i have been thinking about it this whole time. it needs to be condensed, but i like it. i like that it’s the last poem in this book. i hope very much that it’s not the last poem in my life. i hope to write lots more. we’ll see.

04.05.94 Huge surprise to see this novella again! it used to be called endgame after the lovely r.e.m. song from out of time. the first zine i ever did was fencepost. i was the arts and entertainment editor for the student newspaper at california state university, bakersfield, and i got together with my assistant editor david and my then-girlfriend aronne to put together a rag covering local music in my shitty hometown. when said girlfriend and said assistant editor started fucking each other, well, i kind of had a hissy fit and quit the mag and started my own, called thrust magazine, as in the thrust of an idea, not like pelvic thrust. i printed one chapter of endgame in every issue as a serial, and i’ve separated the episodes here with asterisks so you can peep the cliffhanger action. the story begins on tuesday, april 5, 1994, the day kurt cobain shot himself while listening to automatic for the people. radio and teevee news announced the body being found on the morning of friday, april 8, and the newspapers ran headlines about it the next day. the narrator is totally me, and the life it describes — minus the drugs and money

I .

— was totally mine in the early ’90s. the initials of the owner of the watch, who was later revealed to have been killed, were the same as that cuckolding assistant entertainment editor, and the names of the cops are borrowed from musicians in industrial bands i like. the ex-girlfriend dara in the story is based on aronne, the girl from fencepost. she and i became friends again eventually, and i showed up on her doorstep in tears more than once. i think this story would make an excellent movie. it reads like a love letter to the ’90s. if i had put more of me in the story, though, there would’ve been no isaac. it would’ve just been me and whatever girl i happened to be shagging at the time. well, shagging implies more than one-night stands, and those were all i really had back then, lots of one-night stands. the sad thing is that i never finished endgame in my zine. when i left my hometown and moved north to chico, i reprinted each chapter week-by-week in the local alternative rag, the synthesis, figuring the deadline would force me to finally finish endgame, but when the time came to deliver the last chapter, i flaked. the editors were so pissed. what you read now is the half-assed wrap-up i slapped on it years later to get it done and out of my head. i kinda hate the ending, but i really love reading the rest. it’s like reading diary entries. that was totally my life back then. by the way, the rhythm in the beginning when isaac is playing drums — dooma- duh-doom-doom duh-doom-doom-doom — is based on a spoken rhythm from the song island groove from mickey hart’s planet drum album. i loved world music in the early ’90s, and i had a vast collection of music from all over the globe. it’s funny to read the description of the airport, as this was pre-9/11, pre-smoking ban, pre- homeland security. i got the happy foot/sad foot thing from an interview with beck in either rolling stone or spin sometime in the early ’90s. he used to live behind a foot doctor with a rotating sign like the one i describe, and he said he would look up at the sign upon first leaving his apartment and take what he saw as an omen for that day. i thought that was a really cool little tidbit, so i stole that shit right up. i also stole bits and pieces from my poems and scattered them throughout the story. notice that the narrator is never named until dara greets him. that’s because he feels like a nobody when he’s not in a relationship. he only feels real when a girl’s around. gee, i know how that feels. i feel like that all the time. p.o.v. Eh... point of view, get it? i just now discovered this forgotten short story while looking through old copies of the zine i published in the early ’90s. i had been looking for a different poem that was deliciously awful, but i found this short story instead. not a bad trade off, actually, since the other poem was perfectly wretched. this piece is all about perception, hence the title, and it illustrates pretty accurately how much i hated working in call centers as cubicle veal. the funny thing is that i don’t think i had actually worked in a call center yet, since i had been working as a desktop publishing expert ever since i had been fired from a chain record store for stealing. the cube farms wouldn’t come until later, when i worked for xbox and apple computer in austin. i am not sure where this came from. it’s supposed to be a bit of brazil, i guess. p.o.v. is also the name of a danish film i was in briefly, along with a number of bay area spoken word poets. they credited me as big popeye.

S . doug, cale, and the closet king Really lame how close this story comes to describing my actual life. this was one of the first short stories i had ever written that i really liked. it was for a creative writing class at chico state university during my first semester there. the characters are based on myself and a guy i knew from my hometown who moved to chico with me, a drummer named cale wiggins. the character of doug is made up, but the rest is a pretty accurate portrait of the first few months we spent in chico, just sitting on the couch, watching jeopardy with the sound turned off, eating bad food, and laughing big fat belly laughs. cale and i invented the game camper van on the trip north from bakersfield to chico, and it has become a crucial part of every roadtrip i’ve taken ever since. what i love about this story is how the two knuckleheads make fun of the doug character for his eccentricities, anti-social behavior, and freakish obsession with porn, but all they do all day is sit around and talk shit. at least doug has a girlfriend. who’s the loser? the 1-800 numbers still work. the girl on the bus Just another creative writing class endeavor, this one from late ’94 when i first moved to chico, california. i like this it, even though it’s verse, i think it’s very poetic, and i read it at my first featured reading in los angeles. there actually was a girl on the bus who was the inspiration for this poem, a very beautiful red-haired girl named samantha who caught my attention on the way to campus on the bus. when the story was finished, i gave her a copy. i can’t remember what, if anything, she said in response to it. she was probably creeped out. i would later find out my writer friend annie la ganga not only knew the girl on the bus but had also been in a play with her back in chico. weird. all the stuff about working in a diner is made up. i’ve never worked as a short order cook, but i worked as a dishwasher once at a vegan restaurant for four hours. sucked. sorrow, part one Another creative writing class piece, this one written in the same class as the girl on the bus in ’94. it’s just me thinking about the best dog in the whole wide world, my german shepherd best friend chinook who protected me from loneliness from ’77 until my dad put him down in ’85. that’s a tragic story, too. ask me about it sometime. i had a friend once named melinda who taught creative writing in a prison for a time, and she told me of an inmate who had started a story with the words harold had been rising through the clouds now for several hours. something like that. i liked it so much, i stole it. thanks inmate guy! my mom really likes this one. we have always been a german shepherd family. here are the names of all the german shepherds we have had since i was born that i can remember: sugar, duke, sasquatch, chinook, brandi, teddy bear, chinook #2, nicki, cody, sasha, and thor. my dad’s dad had a german shepherd named duchess who was really sweet, too. the latest dog to join the family is thor, who is a little puppy as i write this, and he is such a sweetheart. my dad had to put cody down after only four years due to a long-term infection that wouldn’t quit, and it was really rough for him, so about a month later, he and my mom went to the puppy farm and got thor. the dark cloud

T . . following my dad has been magically lifted through his interaction with this little black and tan dog. it’s really sweet to watch them play. i love the smell of puppy breath, the sharp points of their little teeth when they playfully bite you, and the way the older dog sasha scraps with little thor so gently, lying on her back with her long mouth open and her legs flailing as tiny thor acts like a little bad ass and wrestles with the loose skin of her neck. so cute! my kitties are 13 years old, and i don’t wanna even think about their eventual demise. i love them to pieces, and i hope they break 20 and keep going! i will keep them alive until they are just skinny bags of bones lying on a heating pad all day. mah bebes! i love them so much i want to eat them up! nom nom nom! my very first real live nekkid lady Culled from a collection of work stories i put together for a zine series i was planning called 33 job and several nekkid ladies. i was going to write a story for every job i had ever had, and it was weird, because there seemed to be a nekkid lady in almost every story. the first issue covered my first eight jobs, but then i never returned to the project for some reason. i have had a lot more than 33 jobs at this point, but luckily no jobby jobs since about 2007. it’s just been poetry since then, poetry and the occasion freelance writing gig. i like this story. my favourite part is when the dudes in the van were declared not a fag if they got a lot of peepholes in a given night. young boys becoming young men via homophobia. how i escaped my shitty little town (a true story) Kinda inspired by a true story, but thank goodness not my own. i read something in my hometown newspaper about these local kids who tried to rob a bank using the drive-thru window while one of their cohorts was working inside. of course, they got caught, the dumb asses, but the whole thing seemed like such a desperate act, such a cry for escape to me. this piece came out of it. i have only ever read this poem out loud a handful of times since it’s so long. for a while, i was trying to read it at the austin poetry slam in three chunks, one per round of the slam, and i would tell the audience they couldn’t hear the next part unless i made the final round. i thought it was a sure thing, but each and every time i would do it, i’d miss the third round by a tiny bit and never get to finish the poem. i tried, like, four times in the ten years i was in austin, and i never once made the final round with it. the character of grape ape reminds me of my sister’s loser ex-husband. garanimals Oh garanimals... i don’t think my mom ever bought them for my sister and me because they were too expensive. i thought the tags were so cool. i wrote this as a column for the opinion section of the university newspaper in chico, but i have read it numerous times at poetry events i’ve done over the years. i have a ton of those columns and journal entries i’ll be putting into a collection once i am done with this one, and garanimals should probably be in that one rather than this one, but it’s sweet and nice and sincere and sad, so what the hell, it stays in this book. i’m still looking for my orange-striped duck-billed platypus.

I . everyday magic Found this one again when i scoured my hard drive for long lost bits and pieces i had forgotten. i like it a lot, actually. people always talk about which superpower would they have, flight or invisibility? but what if your superpower was some kind of mundane thing, like being able to conjure a cup o’ noodles once a day? what if that was the only magic you could do? at first, that shit would be amazing! you’d be the only person in the whole wide world who could actually conjure something from thin air. you would show off your talents on all the talk shows. but then... you know... how many times can you do that trick if it’s the only trick you have? how could you make a living with it? how long would people give a shit? if you could create thousands of cup o’ noodles at once, you could feed the hungry, but just one at a time? i think we all have hidden talents that are kinda useless. for instance, i can whistle and hum at the same time. it sounds like a detuned radio. i have known people who can make their tongues get all twisty and back-and-forthy on the tip, like it’s a piece of ribbon. i knew a girl with a third nipple once. it was on her rib. an actual nipple. her last name was tickle, and people called her third nipple tickle. she wouldn’t let me touch it, though. i wonder if my poetry is like this story. have i been conjuring the same shit over and over and calling it new? god, i hope that’s not what i am doing. i suspect it might be, sometimes. the butt triplets Four square was my jam back in the day, but i wasn’t nearly as good as the kid in this story. i borrowed heavily from my own life for this story. we moved from place to place as my dad was transferred from one navy base to another. i went to three different schools in two different states just to finish 4th grade. we moved a lot, and the first thing i would do at any new school was check out my favourite book from the school library, my side of the mountain, by jean george. i love that book and reread it every few years. i remember being disgruntled when i found out the book had been written by a woman. a woman! as for this story, the names came first. i used to joke that i had known these triplets from school named bertha, buelah, and bathsheba butt just because those are such hilarious names, so i kinda built the story around them. i got the name for the schlebotnick from charlie brown’s favourite baseball player, joe schlebotnick. this is my best-loved thing i’ve ever written, and i’ve never tried to get it published. what would be the point of begging someone else to publish my shit when i sell every copy of every chapbook i print myself? who cares if they get it on the shelf at barnes and noble? have you seen how tiny the poetry section looks in a bookstore? that’s because no one buys poetry off bookstore shelves. me? i sell out of books nearly every show, and i sell hella books through my website. fuck the system! mosaic I forgot about this short story until i started putting this collection together. i found it while searching through my hard drive for lost pieces, and i sighed and smiled when i discovered it. i wrote it after the death of jen, the girl i dated in college who was so lovely and who died so tragically. i am basically the character

C . of ethan, and when i came up with the idea for this piece, i actually took polaroids of people to accompany it, all these little instant snapshots of people looking sad. i would include them with this collection, but i can’t find good scans of them, and i seem to have lost the originals. (found them!) i chose the name ethan for the name of the main character because a friend i used to have named melinda once wrote a short story inspired by me called ethan in his orbit. it skewered my dalliances with the ladies in the early ’90s, and it was a real tough love move, chastising me for tearing through the loins of so many coffeehouse girls. it was brutally accurate. temp hell No way do i like looking for jobs, and i’ve never had a harder time looking for a job than in austin, texas, where the job market is crammed with out-of-work techies who can type faster than me, know more software than me, have better graphic design chops than me, and have way better references than me. i took this evil test at a temp agency, and it was very nearly as bad as what i’ve depicted here. in fact, the first few questions are taken verbatim from the actual test i took. i was really laughing out loud at it, but i knew i had to pass it, so i was all trying to second-guess it and shit. it sucked. some of the questions simply had no right answer, so i couldn’t figure out what they wanted, which was probably the point. i passed it, though, and was put to work stuffing envelopes in a warehouse with no air-conditioning for eight hours a day. i had to pass a test to get so many paper cuts my fingers looked like venetian blinds? fucking hell! this started as an entry on my livejournal, but then it got all magically-realistic on my punk ass. i hate jobs. i hate realizing you are working to line someone else’s pockets while you struggle. the lord of the breakfast club, parts one and two Stupid shit like this will never change the world, but they still crack me up. i just googled the screenplay for the breakfast club and altered the dialog to fit the lord of the rings. you should’ve seen my harry potter picture show riff with voldemort as dr. frank n. furter. it had a song that went let’s do the avada kadavra again! microwave I came up with this while cuddling my then-girlfriend zara in my tiny bed in my tiny apartment on fruth street in austin, texas. we were so enamored with each other then, still deep in the throes of that magical time when you first start seeing someone and already know you are head-over-hills crazy about them. i started joking that if she were my tumor, i would comb her hair and brush her teeth for her, and we just riffed back and forth from there, trading funny lines. zara is kinda quiet and shy from the outside, but once you get to know her, she is very quick- witted, so the conversation was hilarious. i wrote it all down the next day, and this is what came out of it. we performed it once, too, at an open mic play event called no shame theatre with two mutual friends of ours, and everyone really liked it. i think we both were kinda intoxicated at having made something creative together. i wrote some of my best stuff while we were dating, and she is still my very best friend to this day. i hope she will be my best friend forever.

S . . seesaw Dookie. this came out of my head just about the same time as microwave, but it wasn’t nearly as good. i wrote it for me and a guy i knew at the time to perform at an open mic no shame theatre show. you’d just put your name on a list, and you’d get five minutes to do whatever you wanted. some of it was shit, but some of it was brilliant. this little playlet was inspired by the saw series of torture porn movies. it’s okay, i guess. my favourite part is when the wannabe serial killer says maybe he should go back to grad school and finish his thesis. that cracks me up for some reason. i never finished my bachelor’s degree in journalism because i dropped out of school to become a full-time touring poet, and i’ve often considered going back to finish it. i might. i just might, although the newspaper industry has collapsed. michael6 Eccentric and crazy and almost assuredly a closet pedophile, but that wierd brother’s music kicked ass. there was this guy named gabe in my creative writing class back at chico state university, a cool kinda quiet little dude enamored with all things computer related. he had this piece that contained exactly one sentence, but each word had a footnote, which in turn had more footnotes, and it was the footnotes that told the whole story. i printed it in an issue of one of my zines in the ’90s, and i thought it was such a good idea that i stole it and made my own version of it. so, thanks gabe! michael jackson had been alive when i originally wrote it, but he passed on between then and now, so i had to make some tweaks. it was such a shame that he died on the cusp of a solid comeback. i was cheering him on and was shocked by how much his passing affected me. everything from off the wall, thriller, and bad is such good music.

MY NOTEBOOK

! addendum

turns out, there was more. since i put this book on the shelf and considered it finished, i have written a precious few new things — mostly unpolished snippets from my journal — found some other things, and discovered two old notebooks from junior high school. if this collection is truly to include everything i’ve ever written, then it must include these pieces, most of which are dreadful, to be perfectly honest. i offer them up solely for you to mock and to serve as an example of how bad a person can write at the beginning and still manage to somehow create work that reaches beyond themselves and touches the lives of others in a meaningful way. that is not to say that my shit is “the shit,” but it has found its way into the heads of more people than i have met despite its shortcomings, and that is an amazing and humbling thing. being a lazy bastard, there is no freakin’ way i am completely redesigning this whole book just to add this dreck, so i am taking the easy way out and sticking it right here in the back with no commentary whatsoever. do what thou wilt. aretha, my dear sweet kitty, passed in april of 2013. i held her as the last moment came. i stroked her face and looked right into her eyes and told her i loved her over and over until it was done, then i gave her a place of rest amongst the trees in my sister's backyard. she was in the middle of her 14th year. she was a kind and gentle soul. theo is still kicking at 15, and now he has two new roomies in the form of ella and etta, twin tabbies who are 7 months old as i write this. november 3, 2013 i ii pets (1980)

dogs are so cool, even when they drool. cats are neat, with their little feet. fish are nice, all peppered with spice. i really like pets, they take away my threats.

iii warmth (1980)

warmth is blue smells like wool feels like a puppy tastes like buttered toast sounds like a sea breeze

iv perfect day (1980)

a perfect day for me is when i ever see a tall and beautiful tree. then i would climb its trunk just like a long-tailed monk and jump and fall kerplunk. then i would be a spy way up in the bright sky. getting shot, for a sec, i’d die. this is the perfect day, you see, because i’d like to be a spy up in a tree.

v clouds (1980)

white cotton floating and swirling knight of the air clouds

vi girls (1980)

girls are chic so unique they got class laying in the grass

vii disco (1980)

lights fluffy smoke dancing and boogying john travolta studio 54 disco

viii headaches (1980)

headaches make people crummy, makes you feel like a big dummy. they really make you wanna cuss, squirm like a worm and fight and fuss. whenever you really want to play, everything turns so dark and grey. to wrap this up, i want to say that i have a headache today.

ix matt (1980)

once a cat named matt found an old brown hat and so then without a din there he contentedly sat

x earth (1980)

universe blue marble spinning orbiting will it ever stop? earth

xi pizza (1980)

triangle tasty toppings baking and eating i love porking out on pizza

xii comb (1980)

long black teeth parting and straightening in one hand you have a comb

xiii love (1981)

love is light blue. it smells like a rose and tastes like sugar. love feels like a crackling fire on a cold day and sounds like singing birds.

xiv me epitaph (1981)

under this stone lies malcom mckate. he got killed while out on a date. he tried to kiss his lady dear, and that’s the reason he is here.

xv r.i.p. (1981)

here i lay all shriveled and dead, fell on the ground and cracked me ‘ead. before they gave me stitches seven, i arrived up above in heaven.

xvi fred (1981)

my dog fred has a lot of fleas in his hair. he scratches all day and night. sometimes he’ll knock the fleas off into his food dish

xvii waves (1981)

glass shiny foam moving undulating a big salty wall waves

xviii haiku (1981)

ever-moving wind always swirling and swift picking up the dust

xix my eraser (1981)

my eraser is pink. it is soft yet firm. it erases fast and easily. missing chunks tell of mistakes gone past. it spends cold nights in my locker. pen marks make it look like a car. pencil stains make it misty and grey. gathers lint in my pocket.

xx dogs (1981)

dogs are friends. they romp and play throughout the day. dogs get the newspaper on those cold mornings. they are loving and understand you best.

xxi my lover (1981)

my lover is a goddess among goddesses. her eyes are like limpid pools of sparkling champagne. the body of this immortal venus makes farrah, bo, and cheryl look like mud. she make my heart thumpity-thump with all the force of explosive waves, and i’ll love her until my body rots.

xxii wish #1 (1981)

i wish... i had a cabin in the woods by a babbling brook. i wish... i could breathe underwater and swim with the whales and the fishes.

xxiii ted (1981)

there once was a guy named ted who was sick in his hospital bed. the doc came in and turned with a grin and said, “that poor kid’s dead.”

xxiv wish #2 (1981)

i wish... i had a dollar for each time sid told a dumb joke. i wish... i could live on mars and be a martian.

xxv hate (1981)

hate is dark red. it sounds like screams and tastes like motor oil. it smells like blood and feels like a sharp knife.

xxvi school (1981)

School is like Cactus thorns, Hard and Ominous. John Ogle doesn’t Like the Dirty rooms And Yucky teachers at School.

xxvii sun (1981)

a disappearing sun setting behind the ocean boils the clear blue water

xxviii the drumma (1981)

once there was a drumma who thought life wuz a dumma. so every day when he’d play he’d practice being glumma.

xxix mountains (1981)

nature’s big structures towering and rolling they are filled with indestructible power mountains

xxx the stream (1981)

stream dancing swiftly winding and twisting through the forest POLLUTION taking away the beauty

xxxi spinach (1981)

spinach greasy slimy stinking smelling sliding it’s going down my throat, help!

xxxii elephant (1981)

Elephants Like to Eat Pink petunias but Hate dogs who Annoy their Noses Too long.

xxxiii goodbye cruel world (1986)

then he took the gun from the shelf against the wall put the barrel to his head prepared to end it all

“there’s no light within my life,” he whispered ‘neath his breath. “the only way of true escape is in my quiet death.”

“if i live just one more day Alone and Disillusioned, i’ll lose my mind, if not my soul, and reach the same conclusion.”

“this is the end of Cat and Mouse; you don’t need this bad mood guy.” he closed his eyes and sadly smiled, and bid this great cruel world...

xxxiv endless highway (1986)

i was travelling down my chosen path of life or should i say the path that life had chosen for me it all had lapsed into a quite predictable state and might i add my horizons held no futures no security and then one day i turned to find a ray of hope some peace of mind and strength enough to put it all behind you were right here at my side

xxxv not enough (1986)

it’s not enough just to live it’s not enough just to live within laws it’s not enough just to die it’s not enough just to die for a cause there’s more to Black than White there’s more to Love than Pain there’s more to Home that brings you back than you can e’er explain there’s more to hate than fear and loathing there’s more to wolves than sheeps’ clothing there’s more to laughter than a smile there’s more to time than spinning dials i keep telling myself with each and every breath there’s more to life than death there’s more to life than death there’s more to life than death

xxxvi 3:17 a.m. (1986)

is your Is your Wish It Were and is your If your Hope It Won’t and was your When your Should’ve Been and is your Know your No You Can’t wipe the I’s from your tears for the years you’ve left behind are yours to keep and none but yours to weep

xxxvii the door (1987)

garden not Garden Green shriveled up blown away door not Door just wall disguised book supposed to be More just another book empty cup they said would Overflow when Opened door to garden with book in hand but did nothing slip from hands break into a thousand chapters and verses that blew away with rest of garden

Cut from cup

xxxviii bleeds and bleeds deepwoundneverheal soul not Soul crushed by weight of void fills with Nothing nothingmore

xxxix spiv (1988)

you cancerous cyst of a man with a copy of DER STUEMER in one clenched fist and VOLKISCHER BEOBACHTER in the other pretzel-lipped right-winger in Doc Martens and braces threaten me with a steel comb at an Arsenal match and i’ll beat your skinned head with a cricket bat you fascist cue ball colour hater i hope you drive your LAMBY into a brick wall pork pie and all FUCK your narrow mind and FUCK your pseudo working class ethic because it’s all BULLSHIT it’s not a way of life it’s a way of DEATH it’s BULLSHIT man and although i ain’t no fan of the queen or her prime minister of their occupation of northern ireland i ain’t going around beating on the heads

xl of passing innocents just because i’m pissed so grow some fucking hair on that fucking head and learn to live pal or you’re going to DIE

xli vertigo (1989)

cold grey mould funguss creeping forehead stain inventive and precise the dialect of death drips from the dead man’s lips

xlii viscera (1990)

i wisp through life making and unbreaking connections getting involved in and dissolving disposable relationships bags of garbage in wake of a freighter i pass through crowds like a piece of undifferentiated nothingness through holes in the peoplemass that open and close and open again only big enough for one and i dive in not touching anyone those travel fastest that travel alone but it gets oh so very lonely at times and soon you find that you can no longer deal with another person’s presence movies alone and tables for one and music and books and computers can only go so far before they just don’t do it anymore i want to touch someone i want to be near someone i want to talk to someone but the thin cellophane that covers the quivering black rot inside me is easily torn no matter how colourful it may seem from without and once a person gets though the gurgling reality that is me wants to engulf the person and hold them so tightly that the person cries and screams and flees and more often than not hurls harsh words like rocks like bricks i can’t i don’t know how i need help but don’t know where to go where is GOD in all this the thought that fill my head scare me how can i think that why would i think that is that GOD laughing or is that me going politely insane i don’t need a gun i’ve got you i don’t need a noose i’ve got you i don’t a deep breath filled with saltwater i’ve got you i’ve got nothing nothing but you

xliii passport (1990)

my stomach hurts in fact it’s not really my stomach it’s in there somewhere in the same general area it’s like my intestines or something in there somewhere it’s a pressure like gas only it’s not gas although i do fart a lot but then that’s all i ever do i can never take a decent crap i’m all stopped up inside so much so that i can’t eat very often and when i do it’s in very small portions that leave my stomach feeling bloated no matter what it is i eat it’s upset in there sometimes i can’t have a decent bowel movement for a week or so and it must all be inside there somewhere yet it won’t come out and when i does it comes out in spurts like a busted water main but if it’s so watery why is it all stopped up in there that’s what i can’t understand and why is it that blood comes out too and i don’t even have to force it when it comes it just comes all by itself and yet there’s all this blood with it and it’s dark muddy blood that comes out in lumpy chunks that stink to high heaven boy do they stink and all i can think is that i might have the one unmentionable thing that my minds keeps going back to like the years of growing up on fast food and junk food and boxed food and the bagged processed preserved sprayed i want it hot i want it now pop it in the microwave on high for thirty seconds instant gratification mental masturbation ruined generation that i’ve grown up a part of has been the unknowing uncaring corrosion that’s caked on the insides of my old red flaked pipes and drags me closer and closer to jesus i can’t even bring myself to say it my own personal death of my very own not a statistic not an obituary in the town paper but the puff that snuffs the candle flame i’m holding ever so loosely in my very own pale white hand and i can’t even say that i didn’t know because i guess i did i just didn’t think about it you are what you eat and i’ve been chewing on coffin nails and spitting out teeth and i’ve lost so much weight even auschwitz wouldn’t want me and i can barely keep my eyes open i’m so tired all the time it’s not fair this society is killing me and it’s spoonfed me this shit in an intravenous rush of colourful carcinagenic compounds wrapped in

xliv smiling styrofoam containers that last longer than most civilizations well if they didn’t make it i wouldn’t eat it and if we don’t eat it they wouldn’t make it and can you pass me another nail on rye and tell my mother i’ll be coming home late tonight?

xlv cut-up poem (Bactrim - a sulfa drug) (1993)

empty as a pane of glass bus stop people argue with themselves in hopes of being overheard (she didn’t just rebound, she ric- ochetted) twist and turn and burn the past cast away the casings covering the soul of the answers of the issues a facade counterpoint and point your fingers to the malingering mirror image blank-eyed on your white-washed walls prison walls gathering dust of non-use it’s no use turn away closer your eyes and walk away

xlvi the ballad of michael (1995)

The click-clack and scrape of dishes and silverware on formica countertops. The rocking hinge swish-swash of the bathroom door as it opens and closes again. The smack of some old toothless cat snacking on scrambled eggs and cheese while his frumpy wife dink- dinka-dinks her spoon on the edge of her coffeecup. Michael bobs his head to the rhythm he hears, no emasculated Muzak piped over coffeshop loudspeakers, but the rhythm of life surrounding him. Even the menu’s stains and tears have their own beat, and his fingers keep time on the counter’s edge. Puh-puh-puh-pizza pie. Ham-buh-burger with cheeeeeese. Home fries, diggety-home fries. “Do you mind?” The three-piecer sharing the lunch counter to Michael’s left is not amused in the slightest; his swollen jugular pulses off-time. He ain’t diggin’ in to Michael’s shindig. “Sorry, Bruddah,” Michael sighs in lilting white boy pattois. “De riddem’s in I, and she gwan come out.” Suit Boy’s not buying the patented lopsided grin of Michael. He hurrumphs and butts a stubby Lucky Strike into his plate of corned beef and hash... exit Suit Boy. Michael just smiles, listening to the rhythms inside his head. “What’ll ya have?” says the waitress who’s tag anounces My Name is Jane. She’s ready for an order, pencil erect. “Oh, I don’t know,” says Michael, flipping his cowlick from his left eye with his right hand. “I’m kinda feeling like a fruit cocktail. How’s about a fruit cocktail, but without the marischinos... You know, red dye #5. Cancer.” The waitress hesitates a moment, her eyes pierced by Michael’s baby blues, then scratches her notepad with her pencil. “Oh yeah, and can I also get a Coke? With vanilla, if you’ve got it.” Michael’s head tilts downwards, eyebrows arched, his eyes looking up into the face of Jane. “You do have vanilla?”

xlvii “Yeah,” she sighs. “We got vanilla. You want vanilla?” “I needs me some vanilla something awful, sister, and you gots what I needs.” She stares at Michael, the ghost of a smile haunting her face, scratches again on her notepad, then turns away as Michael adds, “You know, this place never changes, does it?” She doesn’t respond, as if she hadn’t heard, but her slight hesitation before she hands Michael’s order to the cook tells him.. She did.

xlviii apologies to allen or my inevitable “fuck slam” poem (2013)

poetry slam, i’ve given you all, and now i’m nothing. national poetry slam, 112.7, august 14, 1999. i can’t stand my own words. poetry slam, when will we end this competition? go fuck yourself with your 10-point scale. i don’t need it. don’t score me. i won’t write new poems until i have something worth carving into the side of a mountain with my tongue. this is not a metaphor. i am done. poetry slam, when will you be poetic? when will you strip off your pretense? when will you stop staring into stopwatches? when will you be worthy of your million youtube views? poetry slam, why are your chapbooks full of soundbites? why did you stop shouting protest poetry at the white house gates the moment you were invited inside? i’m sick of your self-righteous indignation. when can i go into the supermarket and buy what i need with haiku? poetry slam, i am not polished enough for your world. your narcissism is too much for me. you made me want to be a rock star. there must be some higher purpose than making poetry def, than dyeing our writing the same shade of bloody. marc smith is still in chicago, but he’s left us, and i don’t think he’ll come back. it’s sinful. are you turning holy poets into sinners? have you become some form of practical joke? if points are the only point, there is no point. i am not ready to give up my obsession with creative expression, but poetry slams are pointless. poetry slam, stop dragging me back to the stage. my interest in you as an art form is falling. my delirium tremens are so bad i can’t paste a broadside on a barn. i haven’t read vanity presses for years, every day somebody prints another press release and pretends it’s a poem.

xlix poetry slam, i feel sentimental about open mics. i used to go to open mics all the time when i was a wide-eyed poet boy, and i’m not sorry. i did lines of poetry every chance i got. i sat in my apartment for days on end and planted roses in my darkest notebooks. i’d worship at coffeehouses every week, drunk on the words of others, and wake up in bushes with sonnets bruising my neck, pen spent, notebook down around my ankles, mind made up to make more trouble the next week and the next. you should have seen me reading bukowski like a street preacher passing tip jars, smoking cloves and shooting old crows, flinging epithets as prayer requests. my therapist thinks i have an oedipus complex, but i’m simply entertaining my matricidal tendencies. i refuse to read the emcee spiel again, to convert my mystical visions and cosmic vibrations into 3rd round 30’s and 1st place pocket change. slam poets whip out their scars for judgement and validation, and those with none or not enough drape themselves in the sorrows of others stolen from headlines. they shove weeping wounds both real and imagined into the faces of audiences and demand a score. this isn’t poetry for points; it’s therapy at gunpoint. poetry slams are no longer about poetry: they are the pornography of victimhood. poetry slam, i’m addressing you. why are you allowing our creative community to be run by sun-tsu quoting starfuckers pontificating into mirrors and drama queen character assassins quicker to light torches and launch social media campaigns than engage in conversation? i’m obsessed by my reflection. it sneaks peeks at me when i slink past bookstore windows, when i pass through sliding glass doors at the public library. it’s always cocking fingers at me, daring me to take responsibility. slam poets are so serious about their sincerity. everyone’s seriously sincere but me. it occurs to me that i am poetry slam, and i’ve been talking to myself again.

l my inner demons are rising against me. i haven’t got a chance in hell. i’d better take stock. my inventory consists of an ancient resume with faded references, 117 vaginas, 10 exes (only one of which still speaks to me), 14 self-published collections of mating calls and damnations, and 44 states with my steel-toed bootprints across their backs. i say nothing about the thousands of greyhound buses that ferried me between couches across america so i could slice my wrists nightly beneath houselights for alms and promises and the fleeting hope for heartfelt connection. how i told you how much you made me hate my own name? i’ve been banished from cafes, black boxes, museums, in the mission, deep ellum, the pearl district and soho for no damn and damn good reasons, and i think my adopted hometown of austin is the next to go. my ambition was to be universally loved and respected, but now i’d settle for being accepted. poetry slam, how can i do penance when you won’t even hear my confessions? why should i write anything holy when you offer me no chance at redemption? i’ll keep twisting notebook pages into crowns of thorns and letting the spatters coagulate into prayer, but i’m not so eager to compare scars with you anymore. they all look the same after a while, and everyone’s are so much deeper than everyone else’s. poetry slam, i’ll give you back my trophies and laminates, my t-shirts and poet bags, the headline tragedies twisted into strategies, the 2,500 haiku and counting, the silent miming against alley walls while muffled poet voices fall on deaf ears, the sidewalk cyphers outside just-closed coffeehouses spitting rehearsed freestyle rhymes to half-ass beatbox beats, mean-mugging poetic opponents instead of cheering poets who own it, demons disguised as dreamcatchers trading my visions for nightmares, dented bullhorns gifted by god and abused to rally troops who wound those with whom you feud,

li talk shit hit send, facebook, newsgroup, website forum, myspace, building bridges with chapbooks so matches catch faster, the judges fucked me tonight, the score creep fucked me tonight, the draw fucked me tonight, i was robbed, i’m bailing before the first round ends, bailing when i can’t get my name on the list, bailing because they won’t let me sacrifice, fuck the cool kids, fuck the cliques, fuck the EC, fuck NPS, fuck WOWPS, fuck IWPS, fuck NUPIC, fuck CUPSI, fuck BNV, fuck HBO, fuck everything, fuck me, fuck me over. i am not your fucking poem. i am not your rallying cry. i am not your bogeyman. i’m not your poster child. i am just a writer. i write. and i perform what i write. and that’s all that i do. and that’s all that i’ve done. and what i have done has nothing to do with why i can’t sleep soundly at night and more to do with mirtazapine, effexor, celexa, welbutrin, sertraline. poetry slam, i am done washing your feet for sins you’ve assumed and now i wash my hands of you. you’ve shit in my bed and forced me to lie in it. just leave me alone to lick my self-inflicted wounds you’ve infected and i’ve let fester with blame for every misguided thing i’ve never done. i no longer know the difference between you and me, so i’m leaving both behind. my sociopathy blinds me to any good i’ve done in spite of you. poetry slam, i’m putting my offensive shoulders to the wheel, and grinding my poems to powder milk. mix them with crocodile tears and drink, then wipe them from your upper lip and be done with me as i am done with you.

lii open letter to white people in horror movies (2013)

1. Do not go camping in the creepy woods. Avoid camping in the creepy woods at all costs.

2. If you do go camping in the creepy woods, do not under any circumstances do so in a creepy abandoned cabin.

3. If you make the inexplicably short-sighted decision to go camping in the creepy woods in a creepy abandoned cabin, and if that creepy cabin smells like death the moment you open the creaky front door, just turn around and go home.

4. If you don’t go home and instead decide to actually spend the night in said creepy death-smelling cabin in the creepy woods, and if you should find a large blood stain leading to a trap door in the floor secured with an ancient looking lock, do not break open the lock and open the trap door.

5. You just broke the lock and opened the trap door, didn’t you? Stop. Now. Go home. Do not under any circumstances climb through the trap door and traipse down that rickety staircase into the dank basement from which issues forth that putrid stench you noticed upon ignoring me and entering the…

6. What the fuck are you doing in the basement? Are you insane? Well, now, I hope you are happy. See all of those dead animals hanging from hooks? Hear the swarms of flies? Smell the decay? Oh, I have an idea, why don’t you take a look around? I mean, fuck it, why not, you’re already here, right? In fact, look for something like, oh, I don’t know, a creepy book bound in what looks to be human skin and wrapped with rusty barbed wire. And you should read it… out loud… especially if it’s in Latin.

liii 7. What the fuck are you doing???!! I was being sarcastic, dumb ass! Put the book… Don’t open it! What are you… Are you actually reading Latin phrases from the book bound in human skin? Really? What do think it’s gonna…

8. I fucking told you. But did you listen? Oh, no, who the fuck am I? Just some sad voice of reason trying to ruin your good time. I will tell you exactly who I am, Hula-Hoop Hips: I’m someone who ain’t having their soul torn apart by some evil black magic bullshit I was foolish enough to summon, that’s who I am, Sunshine, I am sitting here surfing the Interwebs while you get your extremities ground into hamburger by cackling demons.

9. You fucking moron. Tell Hitler and Ronald Reagan I said hey. I hope an eagle eats your spleen every day for eternity.

10. No, actually, you know what, my bad, do all that stuff. YOLO. It’s probably all gonna be just… fine… If you don’t, it’s just gonna be a small group of insanely sexy young white people — and maybe one vaguely ethnic hot chick who could be Indian, Mexican, or kinda sorta maybe Black because she has little dreadlocks, but it doesn’t matter since she’s gonna die first anyway — staring at a creepy shack in the creepy woods for about two seconds before saying, “Oh, hell no,” before turning the car around and driving back home. How boring would that be?

liv how to make love, part two (2013)

if i had a daughter, and she came to me as a young woman and asked me for advice about sex, this is probably what i would say.

1] can’t you ask your mom about this stuff? fine.

1] you are never allowed to have sex under any circumstances ever ever for your entire life especially not with boys. period. end. this poem is over. just kidding.

1] buy condoms. buy them and keep them with you at all times, and make sure he uses one every time. this does not make you a slut. this does not make you a whore. this makes you prepared to make a decision that could change your life forever.

(footnote: if he tries or even suggests having sex without condoms, kick him out of bed and never let him back.)

(second footnote: there is no such thing as safe sex, only safer sex. before making a decision about your body, do your research.)

2] foreplay is for more than initiating sex. everything is making love. kissing. touching. caressing. holding. laughing. listening. it’s all making love, and very little of it has anything to do with being naked. most boys need to be taught this lesson. for the benefit of every girl they will ever meet after you, be prepared to teach them.

3] intercourse is not the only valid form of sex. there is outercourse, dry humping, heavy petting, using your hands, using your mouth,

lv using items that were specifically built for the purpose of pleasuring one another. none of these will get you pregnant, although some might expose you to STI’s. before making a decision about your body, do your research.

4] masturbate. a lot. if you learn how to pleasure yourself, you won’t need to rely on anyone else, and if you choose to share your body with someone, you’ll have the vocabulary to gently guide a clumsy lover down the right path.

5] your body is beautiful exactly the way it is, and you do not need to change it in any way to make yourself worthy of love and respect. anyone who would demand you change your body to please themselves is not worthy of your love and respect. love yourself first and everything else will follow.

6] kiss a girl just to see what it’s like. if you like it, do it again. if you like it a lot, do it some more. if you like it way more than kissing boys, then keep on kissing girls for the rest of your life.

7] consent is one of the most important things you can give a person, and no one has the right to take that away. anything other than “yes” means “no.” silence is not consent. being too drunk or drugged to say “no” is not consent. dressing or acting a certain way is not consent. surround yourself with people who understand this and report those who don’t.

(footnote: it’s perfectly ok for “yes” to become “i’m not sure” or “no,” and your partner must follow your lead. if they don’t, claw their fucking eyes out.)

8] talk about all this stuff with your best friends, both male and female. there is nothing taboo in learning about your body and how it works and how you want it to be treated, but so many people grow up having no idea they have the right to dictate what happens with their own bodies. be an advocate and an ally and do not hesitate to help someone in need of this information.

lvi 9] if you should become pregnant, don’t freak out. okay, freak out, but then come to me and we can figure it out together. i will never be ashamed of you or judge you harshly for coming to me with your truth, so know that i am here for you. if you don’t feel comfortable coming to me, please go to someone else you trust. you don’t need to deal with this alone.

10] do not compare your body or your attractiveness with advertising, pop culture images, or internet porn. very little of that is an accurate depiction of sex, sexuality, gender, or love. most of it is a male-centered fantasy full of unhealthy ideas about desirability, body image, and self-worth meant to make you weak so someone can sell you something that tricks you into feeling confident. don’t buy into the misogynist culture that surrounds you. fight it.

11] gender and sexuality are not binary. you can be male, female, gay, straight, cis, trans, butch, dyke, femme, top, bottom, tomboy, poly, asex, intersex, genderqueer, drag king, faux queen, lipstick lesbian, or anything else you can imagine or invent. gotta try ‘em all!

lvii survivor (2013)

you are right here right now reading this, which means you have survived it all, everything, all the pain, the suffering, the insecurities, the break-ups, the fuck-ups, the diagnoses, the depression, the failures, the embarrassments, the mortifications, the crying jags, the drunk dials, the crimes, the punishments, the lying, the cheating, the stealing, the blame, the blame, the blame… you survived it, all of it, you picked yourself up and you shook yourself off and you kept going. now you’ve made it here, and that means something. and even though you might still be stuck in the middle of something bad — and there will most assuredly be more hard times ahead along with more good times and everything else in between — right here and now you are chilling with me inside this book and none of that other crap matters. you’ve weathered every storm, and that takes courage and strength, so be proud, homie, and keep on keeping on. survive. thrive. be at peace.

lviii bitter men (2013)

no one in the whole wide world hates the internet more than sydney mossman, the last door-to-door encyclopedia salesman in america. as door after door is shut politely in his face, he can hear the laughter, the snorts of derision, the mockery, and his gravely voice trails behind him as he trundles down the street with his thick, leather bound samples, whispering, “goddamned internet... goddamned internet...” sydney’s hatred for computers and the world wide web is matched only by that of his dear friend simon goldfarb, the last travel agent in the entire state of florida. together, these two are the bitterest men in all of america.

lix come at me (2013)

go ahead and shoot, girl, this bulletproof heart has been torn apart and stitched back together again with so many songs, books, poetry, snapshots, rock shows, art galleries, black box theatres, and greyhound bus depots that there’s far more beat than meat beneath this breastbone. it’s a wonder it still works, but work it does, so take your best shot and aim for the notebook tattooed on my chest. if your lipstick leaves anything less than a scar, i’ll hardly notice, so kiss me like you mean it, hold on tight, and don’t you let go no matter how hard i plead. with you.

lx the tender trap (2013)

i want to kidnap someone, a really cute someone who is soft and willowy and smell-goody only not like actually kidnap them but like cuddle-nap them like snatch them up and make them wear soft flannel pajamas and fluffy monkey slippers and take them to a secret location with a room filled with billowy pillows and down comforters and soft lighting and nick drake music and then be all, “muah-ha-ha! i have you now!” and then give them a really good full body massage that wasn’t gross and sexual at all but just like really warm and deep and relaxing and they would be my snuggle slave only i wouldn’t restrain them in any way and they could leave any time they wanted and i wouldn’t even really force them to come to the secret location in the first place because they would want to come and actually i don’t want to kidnap anyone at all what i really want more than anything is to be boo-boo’ed up with someone lovely again.

lxi the dash (2013)

the surface of your headstone will be carved with your full name. this name represents you. beneath it will be two dates separated by a dash. the first date is the year you were born. the second is the year you ceased to exist. these dates represent your entire lifespan. the dash between the two dates represents everything you did with your life from the moment your tiny lungs powered your first wail at the spank of a doctor until the instant you exhaled your last rattling breath. your name was given to you, and you have no control over the dates, but the dash is on you.

lxii willfully ignorant (2103)

conservative republicans have done an amazing job of separating fact from faith. facts are meaningless in the face of faith. facts can be disputed. proof can be challenged. studies can be called into question. evidence can be impugned. facts prompt discourse and hold the possibility of minds changing, viewpoints altering, opinions evolving, and all of this is anathema to the grand old party’s base who want very much to stay exactly where they are without budging because they have something more important than fact, and that’s faith in their unassailable truth. faith doesn’t have to be proven. a feeling in your gut can’t be refuted. reality is trivial compared to faith, and facts are easily replaced by self-serving ideals that support whatever fears and prejudices are currently motivating the faithful to vote. true dialogue can never truly exist because communication needs a common framework within which to explore ideas, but all opposing viewpoints are squelched by screaming pundits and party hardliners who simply repeat talking points until all who disagree finally throw their hands over their heads and walk away shaking their heads. they’ll manufacture facts where there are none to justify doing whatever the hell they want and dismiss or ignore provable evidence that doesn’t support what they believe. nazi propaganda chief joseph goebbels said it best: “If you tell a lie big enough and repeat it long enough, people will eventually come to believe it.”

lxiii weeping and moaning and gnashing their teeth (2013)

i don’t really grok people who struggle their whole lives trying to figure out existence, to tear away the mortal veil and glean the truth hidden behind it. reality is exactly what it is or isn’t and nothing more and nothing less, and your understanding is not required for the universe to work exactly the way it is or isn’t designed. humans have been pondering the mysteries of consciousness for eons, and they are no closer to answering any of their biggest navel-gazing questions. scientists still can’t explain what caused the big bang or into which empty space the expanding universe is expanding. release hold on your need to know the secret of every magic trick and simply allow yourself to be filled with awe. who or what made that big-ass oak tree? who cares? it’s right there in front of you waiting to take you into its outstretched arms so you can sing with its leaves in the wind. what happens after you die? who knows? who cares? it’s going to happen whether you accept it or not, like it or not, understand it or not, so let go of it and let it be. if you receive a brilliant present on your birthday, you’re not going to waste time weeping and moaning and gnashing your teeth about how sad you will be when it’s gone, no, you’re gonna rip it open and play with it until it breaks. life is like that, the very best birthday gift ever, so stop trying to figure it out and just enjoy it while you can. you can live your entire life being completely confused about mostly everything and still be happy. in fact, it might be the only way.

lxiv my drug of choice (2013)

nothing reaches past all my bullshit and claws straight into my soul like music. i get absorbed completely and exist in the spaces between the beats, utterly surrendering my emotions to dance on the marionette strings of rhythm, melody and harmony. i vanish. the guitar is my wail, the drums are my fists, the bass is my heartbeat, the electronics are the lightning strikes between synapses in my cortex. effexor, remeron, celexa and welbutrin have got nothing on excision and skrillex and boys noize and deadmau5. seratonin bathes my brain when i plug in my eargoggles and strap on my big fat padded dj headphones. not even rain can touch me. the whole wide world moves in slow-mo outside the armor of my music when i’m gone ghostly and waft like incense smoke between shoulders in crowds and gatherings. i am nothing but a shimmer in bus depots and airports and train stations, a pale shadow, a waterstain.

lxv every poem is a mating call (2013)

my poems are roadmaps to my embrace scattered by the wind and hoping to find purchase in your heartbeat and guide you finally to my empty aching arms

lxvi dream logic (2013)

i had this weird dream where every person with whom i’d ever had sex was in the same room, and it was packed with women, shoulder to shoulder, and they were all really mad at me, and their voices filled the air with accusations and incriminations and aspersions upon my character, and the consensus was loud and negative and full of pain and hurt and regret, and it was all aimed at me like a quivering swarm of red laser dots on my forehead emanating from 117 pointed fingers, and it was all completely justified, and i couldn’t defend my actions in any way, and the only thing i could think the entire time they were all venting at me was, “i have seen everybody in this room naked.”

lxvii the first rule about talk club (2013)

you know what would be cool? instead of strip clubs, you could go to conversation clubs where you watch people on three stages telling stories. if you really wanted to get some juicy tale from your favourite speaker. you could pay for a one-on-one table talk. the spoken word artists would flaunt their educationally-enhanced vocabularies and acrobatic use of metaphor, stripping away all unnecessary words to reveal the naked core of truth and exposing their most private thoughts. the talkers would mostly be college students working for tips: good books to read; amazing foreign films to watch; museums with new exhibits. the clubs would be byob — bring your own ballpoint — and when the talkers offered to give you multiples, they would mean multisyllabic wordplay. there would, of course, be a v.i.p. lounge for very intimate parley with your favourite talker or a spirited match of scrabble where each round you could make it rain with letter tiles. patrons could order up a poll dance where talkers quiz the audience about their beliefs to further encourage open debate, and customers who fancied steamy intercourse could ask their talker for aural sex in a private booth. there would even be glass-walled peep shows where shy viewers could watch two talkers discuss any subject they suggest while pressing pencil to paper.

lxviii the one (2013)

i have spent so much time trying to find the one, that mystical artsy intelligent sweetheart with a warm sense of humour and compassion for this weary world and all its lonely inhabitants, someone achingly lovely in a way the mirror rarely recognizes, a fierce lover with strong opinions and consuming passions who is caring and giving without being gullible or foolish or feckless, a wise partner in crime who calls me on my bullshit but does so gently and without attack, someone who will love me forever and never leave me and will always be loyal. i may have met this person already, we may have met a thousand times, but i wouldn’t have known it because i’ve wasted so much time trying to find the one instead of learning how to be the one.

lxix swmcam (2013)

i am a straight white middle-class american male. straight, but not narrow in my interpretation or acceptance of the myriad ways humans express their love for one another. white, but not monochromatic in my celebration of cultures and ethnicities other than my own. middle-class, but not classist in my pursuit of experiences shared amongst people regardless of their tax bracket, politics, or education. american, but not nationalistic in my pride and shame in this country or my devotion to the notion that we all live on the same planet regardless of lines on a map and so share the same fate. male, but not misogynist or patriarchal in my relationships with women — whether romantic, platonic, professional, or adversarial — and not phobic about forms of gender expression that may be different from mine. i am a straight white middle-class american male, and i recognize the wealth of privilege this gives me, and while my hands most certainly do not hold the reins of this country, they most certainly have a lot in common with the well-manicured hands that do, and i can choose to deny that fact or use my position in society to promote equality and understanding between people regardless of who they are or where they’re from or who they choose to love.

lxx curriculum vitae (2013)

my resumé is in the quickened beat of your heart, the sharp intake and hold of your breath, and the gengle release you feel as the wight of your world slowly lifts from your shoulders and evaporates into satisfied sighs and smiles. which is a fancy way of saying i haven’t had a job since 2007, and i am a loser wannabe poetaster with no money or girlfriend who lives on his sister’s couch. but, you know, it sounds better when i say it the other way.

lxxi just be (2013)

everybody pretty much likes you just the way you are, and the ones who don’t are mostly dicks, and the ones who aren’t dicks never really gave you a chance, and the ones who did give you a chance and aren’t dicks and still don’t like you might like you better now that you have grown up and matured and learned from your mistakes, and those who would still dislike you no matter how much you’ve changed and have every reason to continue not liking you, well, it happens. a life spent trying to convince everyone you meet that you are a good person is a wasted life. those who love you don’t need convincing, and those who don’t won’t be swayed, so just be. what other people think of you is none of your business.

lxxii the end, finally, after all this time(2013)

every person ever born on this planet will eventually die. you will die. i will die. everyone you know will die. death is a natural and inevitable part of life, yet we humans (we americans) avoid thinking about it until the very end. we are so afraid of death that we push our elders to the shadows of society so they won’t remind us of aging, and we exalt all things youthful and sell and buy products to help us reach for this fleeting goal of perfection far after it is relevant. we invent religions that promise life after death and neglect the present for an improbable future. we drink and drug ourselves numb and distract each other with happier and more successful cinematic versions of ourselves. our children should be taught from the first breath to the last that death is not to be feared but embraced as a crucial part of the human condition. let us create new rituals that celebrate the end rather than pretend it will never come.

lxxiii lxxiii big poppa e is a three-time veteran of hbo’s “def poetry” series and a national poetry slam champion. he has been performing his work for live audiences since 1992, and he has been paid to read poetry in 44 of the united states of america as of 2013. the only states he has left are wyoming, montana, south dakota, delaware, new hampshire, and west virginia. bpe has two cats named aretha and thelonious. they are 14-year-old tuxedo cats. they used to go on tour with him in a black ford windstar mini-van, but now that gas prices are so high, they mostly stay at his sister’s in wichita, kansas, when he’s on tour. big poppa e has spent thousands of hours on greyhound buses from seattle to orlando and back again, and he has lost track of how many couches he’s used as beds. he is a mostly nice person who is kind and giving and loving, but he is a bit troubled by depression and anger issues. sometimes he hits “send” too quickly, then deeply regrets it. he mopes a lot and feels sorry for himself too often. he is pretty funny and a great conversationalist, but he is also quite shy and frequently uncomfortable around people. he is often lonely, but ofttimes can’t bear the presence of others, so he’s kinda fucked, but he is capable of such beauty sometimes, such calm, such warmth, such humour. he is fragile and fucked, tortured and lovely, extraordinarily ﬂ awed and occasionally brilliant. writing is pretty much the only thing he’s ever been good at, but he can make a mixtape that will break your heart and ﬁ x it for you all over again. kiss. ❥ bpe lxxiv