southern summer

“she’s just a little queer, ain’t she?
like a frog preferrin’ trees to lily pads,
like a cat preferrin’ water to dry land.”

sounds from a southern summer—the entree of southern life—aren’t supposed to mean anything unless they are served with side dishes of good southern relations between good southern men and women. and those side dishes must meet in the middle, run into each other like creamed corn goos over into fried okra.

“yeah, ain’t she just a little queer?”

where is that line—that cut off—between playing tag, our bodies flat in their homogeneity, and playing at house behind the shed, in the last room in the back of the house? here is the day on the calendar when the bra goes on and there can’t be shorts….the boys are looking.

“but she’s just a little queer,…
ain’t she?”

and looking into that web of branches won’t let you find no root. because fucking is what is done but no one supposed to see fucking so overalls mean pee-pees and dresses mean vaginas. southern genitalia means southern genesis and genesis is the book one reads around here.

“she just don’t have no interest.
i wasn’t so queer when i was a child.”

when is it that the girlfriends need to become the girl friends? and there is your grand-mama threatening to slap you silly. and there is your mama saying, “hush!” and there is your daddy, you better just hit the road and hope it don’t hit back.

“but won’t you look at that little queer?
like a frog preferrin’ trees to lily pads,
like a cat preferrin’ water to dry land.”

but in the southern wilderness,
in the southern summer,
turns out,
cats in water and frogs in trees
ain’t so hard to come by.

washing.

things i saw today:

myself, uncanny, in the mirror in the little lonely box that is the hotel room. how strange to be a stranger and how easy to be a stranger when speaking to strangers. and naked too, standing there dripping.

a considerable amount of hair twisting, into the mouth, sliding through the hand, bunched on the top to remind me of olden times when women always wore their hair up in order to not look sexy. now, up is for sexy. but, then again, so is down. everything is sexy.

the thing i learned today, which is somehow different from the things i saw today:

i must have stopped washing my hands with soap whenever my mother stopped watching me go to the bathroom. and this non-washing washing went on for many years until i started worrying about staying alive longer which never seemed to matter. i have almost no emotions attached to anything that does not provide reciprocity.

nostalgia.

the bar is a smoky bar. and the people…well, they’re just as opaque.

i try to read the displeasure of her face, the snarl of surprise? perhaps disbelief that after so many years, things seem just the same.

yet all those little particulars that i used to admire don’t seem quite as refining.

her good judgment; alas, judgmental-ness.
her unique name; i’ve heard it.

beer goggles work on our histories.

i hold her in my hand like a dainty tea cup, but i am much too stark for such a dish.

paparazzi

spending time alone and at home will make you start to think you are a movie star. every little motion gets two or three exaggerated takes. you turn towards your audience; you turn away. you hide in your bathroom with the door shut, cursing the paparazzi for disturbing your peace.

i stand in the shower like they do in the films. my head is bent under the current; my back towards the door. the water is much too hot, steam rises everywhere, and in one motion, i flip up my hair in reverse waterfall, wiping the liquid from my eyes so i can breath a sigh and see again.

do i hear a sound in the inner portions of my home? a door? a bump? a bang? i practice what i will say to mr. robberman with weapon:

“stop! don’t shoot!” tired and true.

how about, “you don’t have to do this. take my money and be gone!”

no, i will say, “hello, mr. robberman. how nice of you to stop by. you’ll find the good china in the cabinet above the refridgerator. i understand desperate times call for desperate measures.”

you see, i prefer comedy.

but then the sound becomes more real and almost paralyzed with fear i know there is no planning and sneaking out of the shower, i am naked and venerable and my feet wet the carpet and i almost can’t breath and i think, “what will be there right around this corner? will it be the end of life?”

oh, my, it is only the cat!

i bow and exit to the left for a sandwich.

the pinch of pain

she came into the bathroom. the steam made her feel immediately dizzy, and she fell against a nail sticking out from the wall beside the towel rack. it was a small space, there between the towel rack and the sink, up against a nail. what had hung from that nail in such a small space? there would be a small hole in her t-shirt now, and the knowledge of it being there made her stomach hurt so she needed to get it off her mind in a hurry.

“how are you?” she asked.
from behind the transparent curtain, the person replied, “what do you mean?”
the steam made her eyes water.

“i mean, how are you doing?”
“well, that’s a fine question.”
“it was just a question.”

the water turned off in a hurry. new knowledges remake old memories like filters remake pictures.

the shower curtain was pulled back, and the glimpse of naked flesh made the v between her legs as wet as the body of her companion. the flesh was quickly concealed for they were having none of it today, and a splash of water from a departing foot put out the fire like only water could.

still standing in the puddle, she said, “god damn that nail.”

footlights

some people i see as though they are clear like water. i x-ray their insides with my mind’s eye, organizing, sweeping up, sorting, until i know them better than i know myself.

but lately, my stomach growls too much, and i can’t concentrate. i stand in the light of the performance floor, peering, peeping, peeking out into the groups as they decline to dance, ignoring my side-show, dismissing my act. their heads are swollen like dead balloons as they comment on everything but do nothing.

“step right up! witness anxiety and fear in the flesh!”

but they do nothing. i am all stopped up.

the haunting…

you haunt the little city that is my apartment like an expert apparition. i pick up your discarded underwear, still warm to the touch, west of bath. i catch a glimpse of your towel cape; it flutters in the navel winds of the north. your smell, musky flowers, lingers near the refridgerator door—ahha! i spot your wet fingerprints on the oj jug.

i can’t live on these scraps; i must eat you all at once. at times, those little things you do escape my attention. i miss the little bunny on the side of the highway for he blends into the brightly colored fabric of green so well. but when i am starved of you, i feel every beat, every quiver, every moment of your mouth directed at anything that might resemble me.

i move about, but really, i’m motionless. my drive has gone when you live as ghost.

knowledges, or pooping out the truth.

deep in the middle of space is a large carnivorous mouth, and, ever so often, it purses its dark lips to evacuate its bowels of knowledge. but beware! it is a mouth of all knowledges, and not all knowledge is truth and how would you ever know in the first place how to tell the difference?

and when the ostensibly benevolent patriarch reaches into his pocket for some advice, he sometimes can pull from these pursed lips, this slit in the fabric of existence. well, he pulls out some things for you; his biggest export is fear. old grannies, walking wombs, media bees all fall in line behind him, lifting their accouterments high above their heads (see the kitting needles, the microphones, and everything now?) and mirror his lips with softer coos. these coos lighten the loads and you take the medicine.

but listen close: can you hear their fact that all this origin of fear resides outside yourself? the neighborhoods, the middle east, the automobiles and airplanes, the deep alleys of lost yesterdays. and you look deep and wonder wonder wonder wonder if they know that that which ruins you most is but your own damned self, your own being turned inside-out in that regurgitation called progress or desire or self-actualization.

“not i,” said the pig.

after the climax, before the climax

after dissolving every inch of calorie and completely annihilating the substance of the peanut butter sandwich in her stomach, the passion ran through her like music—deep cellos and airy violins.

she lay on the floor, spread, breathing in decrescendo, taking in the beauty of her sweaty body, touching her salty skin, pulling down her shirt, rubbing her chest; watching, in short, the red return to pink and, then, to white.

her body odor was horrendous, like soured rain or rotting trees or the smell of soil.

and, oh, she liked it and sucked in her breath hard to get all the little molecules stuck in her nose.

…

in fancy, she thought that he thought her beautiful; his silence was her circumstantial evidence.
but, here, in fact, he was a plain, brown paper bag…
perhaps crumpled at the edges but never printed…

certainly never marked with that shrill note of feeling she so often claimed.

put on your dancing shoes…

the sound of death is almost the sound of electronica music.

extinction existing as perhaps a more quiet and slow version of your favorite listening—downtempo to say the least.

machines, machines, machines, computers, computers.  little zips and zangs, like whisps and whispers.  and i ask, “what is that?” when listening to one or the other.

not just a fly buzzing, dear emily—instead a whole swarm of pests.

(but i like music so perhaps i’ll go down dancing.)