blue sunrise. sunset.
it feels like a day goes by,
every time you blink…

it’s a smooth move. with just one finger she corrals the wayward lock that’s fallen in front of her eye and simply slips it behind her tiny ear where it hugs her, grateful for the privilege. it’s her invitation and it’s the only place i want to be. just six feet and a smile separate us, but my heart beats like it’s a marathon. maybe hers does too. the finger that fixed her view now finds its way to her mouth where her gentle teeth take hold of the nail. it’s nerves. it’s anticipation. both our eyes are in their corners; gazes fixed and waiting for the bell. it’s my move and i’ve got to come out swinging in order to earn this darling knockout. mindful of her precedent, i hail the bloke behind the bar with just a finger. ‘same thing, times two,’ i tell him, and her quick smirk tells me she’s ready for her inclusion . the icy colds are clapped down in front of me as the barman dissolves into the periphery. i’ve measured the distance. it’s time for the show. employing the same single finger, i swipe a bit of frost from the side of the thick mug and flick it onto the smooth, finished red oak of the bar; a wet primer for the trick that’s to come. from the base of the mug, that much practiced finger gently hydroplanes the liquid gift down the way. it stops where it’s meant to, and now i’ll finally know her name.

We broke the bed, we did.

and though he loved her from across the room he could not introduce himself to her because he saw love as grabbing fistfuls of sand from the beach, and he knew too well the chesty panic he’d feel at the loss of a single grain…

You know the feeling. When you splash down into the cab and you can’t help but wonder how many sweaty backs before your very own sweaty back have seeped their way into the upholstery and left their lingering warmth radiating for the next poor chap who wrongheadedly decided to brave the passenger seat in a banged up Peugeot that has an axle about as sturdy as a seasoned pope and a clutch stench that makes your eyes melt from fear not solely of mechanics, but also from the realization that the cabbie is twice as loose on the juice as you are and it’s now your lonely duty to coax a conversation from him as if you’re talking a concussed stuntman out of that last, fatal attempt to jump the gorge, and all you can think about is, if this is to be it, why didn’t you just order the surf & turf instead of the fucking chicken Sinatra…

grass bleeds morning dew,

and grapes bleed wine and juice.  me?

i just bleed for you.

tonguing the rip in my cheeky trap to coax the blood we shared onto taste buds starved of your extract, i weep in bright silence, happy to have known you as briefly as a bunny’s glance in the frightening woods.  your eyes still shine in the back of mine even after i’ve shut the lids to the daylight.  but the memories are temporary; winter beards disguising the present as a flickershow of the past until you’re gone again for the umpteenth time, and i’m left with my heart still pumping your heavy blood while your ghost tightropes my veins, tickling my skin and raising the hairs on my arms. an ovation of thought…

You smile through the suds
Of bottle after bottle
But your eyes still frown…

sometimes i wonder about myself.  like why i’m presently sitting here drinking and tumblring and listening to a song i’ve heard 400 times, while on the verge of pissing myself, but i won’t go to the bathroom before the song is over because i figure that even if i were to piss myself a shower and some laundry will fix the problem, but if during that shower i was to fall and smack my head on the tiles and lose my hearing and someone were to ask what the last song i ever heard was and i tell them it was pj harvey’s ‘this is love’ for the 401st time they’d be all, ‘well… yeah… that’s pretty kick ass.’ and then i don’t wonder about myself anymore…

his cuticles painted with chicken grease, the fat man noisily sucks his fingertips to a high spit shine; the wet-nap no match for for his fowled tongue and glistening, swollen lips.  he chuckles to himself behind a passing thought of his dead mother until the chuckle gives way to the wheeze the tubes in his nose are meant to allay.  face reddened, eyes squinted, temple, forehead and neck veins protruding, his hacks echo off the paneled walls of the empty diner.  but this outburst is no normal fit.  something has broken inside him and he sits in frozen horror unable to draw even a gasp as his left arm explodes into a million thumbtacks convulsing his heavy frame a half dozen times into the table spilling his soda and the salt and rattling the plates to ape his very own last earthly gurgle until he’s keeled over in his lonely booth, leg twitching, flicking his soul out of his carcass through his toes.

it’s the fourth time i’ve watched him go down this road; a trucker on the highway to hell, what with gluttony peeving the chief the way it does.  his divorce and subsequent bankruptcy stole his belief in the chief a while back, and while i’m sure he’ll pay for that, too, i can’t help but think about the other three times i let his fat ass slide back into consciousness and why it had to be this one. why it had to be this time.  did i expect penitence?  a miracle?  i could’ve collected this deadbeat’s tab years ago. or tomorrow.  instead i’m late.  it’s fucking over.  i blew it and they’re all dead because of me. i’m sorry.  i’m so goddam sorry.  i should have been at that school hours ago.  but here i am, drinking coffee two miles away…