I’m your warm den in the winter, shady thicket in the summer. I’m nipping at your heels and licking your throat. The ends of my fingers feel among the sediment for traces of you. I’m the one sniffing your ass. I play dead until I’m chasing after you at twenty five miles an hour. You’re the carcass I feast upon and vice versa. The trees you climb are me. I’m the bare-chested natives of every place on your map. I’m your camera man and your British narrator. I’m your dying rain forest. I’m the volunteers who save your kakapo from extinction and the cats I kill to save myself. I’m the hunter-gatherers of your jungle. I’m the rain.
Author: admin
Acapulco, August 2007
You know, there’s this thing that happens. You’re in Acapulco, in a dance club, and enjoying that most fucking phenomenal of phenomena: the open bar. You don’t dance, but you linger around because a mass of sweaty half-clothed bodies has that effect. It’s dark as a closet and neon’s going off in every direction. You don’t hear, you don’t even try. You roll with it. You don’t say excuse me but simply maneuver into and through the throng with hands everywhere imaginable. And of all the sound you think you’ve forgotten by midday of the following sun-up, some of it embeds itself. You don’t recall it, and don’t even realize it’s there until you’re scrolling through videos on YouTube searching for something to fill the space. It’s never what you expect it to be.
the black bones
Step with me over the black oil and keep your sandals
on. Walk with me to those tables, sit with me on the
stickered bench, quiet like the streets at noon on the
hottest day of the year. Watch the needles on the ground
and don’t mind that old burned spoon. Give me your hand
and accompany me to this crab grass plain in the desert
air, where we’re going to find something better by the hour
even if it’s the sweat on my brow and the flaked skin on your
shoulder. Love with me in the heat of the middle of this basin
of fire and sin, sin with your arm over my eyes. Laugh
with me in heaved sighs. Come with me to the inside, to the
old place full of blackened death and low low light. Give me
your hand, give me your hand. I don’t know everything but
I know a lot, you know a lot, together we know more than
is good for us. Inside it’s colder and on the far wall it’s just
a lot of fucking old bones. I know more about the fucking old
bones than I’ll tell you. My poetry is bullshit from the heart
where everything should really be from. Read the placard
about those old bones to me. I think a wall of our home
would look nice with lots of skulls on it. Steal these bones
with me, they find them in the ground and ownership is
what we make of it, the alive and the dead. You may own
my bones when I am dead. May I own yours?
It comes down to what you want versus what is expected of you.
I look at the place next to my dining table and imagine a bar. On the bar, the usual: tequila bottles brought to the States by relatives, one of cheap rum, one of cheap vodka, and one each of the smoothest whiskey and scotch I can afford. Fuck all if I know brands. I’ve never been one to serialize.
The wood, dark.
My neighbor’s as shifty as I am. This behavior appeals to me. It is why I sit back and look around at bars, or when I go for coffee. There are people who don’t show who they are. She walked by today, we said hello. No acknowledgement of the fact that we hadn’t met for three months. This is fine for strangers. The people I don’t know leave no dents. Our front balcony looks over the parking lot and kiddie apartment complex pool. In the summer, everyone gathers out front. I chose the two-bedroom upper with a balcony so I’d have the room to breathe. The green carpet and matching wall lead to the back exit. The squirrels are gone, probably eaten by the cat. The spring frogs from the creek ceased croaking months ago, about the time the neighbor moved in. New neighbor ate the creek frogs?
I was missing three items: big chair, side table, reading lamp. A bar is extravagance, which is difficult for me to reconcile with other inclinations. I’d be more inclined to engage in the idea if the big chair turned, and if it turned to the balcony, like at the bar (the establishment, stay with me). On the rare day that I am too stressed to sleep and step outside for a bowl I expect to see someone else on their balcony, but the chances of this are diminished by universal coincidence.
I’m reminded of the Wendigo—an emaciated, jerky-like demon that craves human flesh and can never consume enough. It is always searching in the cold for more, more, more.
Aisle
The crate beneath me trembled. I was too heavy, but God, I needed to rest. My feet were killing me. I’d been walking for weeks, sleeping in alleys and doorways along the way. My mind was as burned out as back of my neck. I could have chosen the fall or spring to set out, but my patience had worn thin. I needed to do it now.
The ledge above me would only keep the sun off of me for another hour. I took a pull of my flask and leaned back against the brick. It felt like the back of an oven. It took a few moments for the warm whiskey to settle me swimming.
I remembered her face. She was only three years and four months old when I left her and her momma. Back then her hair was short, almost like a boy’s. The way her momma dressed her, in pants and all, she may as well have been. I never liked what Norma’d been doing with my baby. She didn’t want a kid like I did. She wanted something to distract her cause I sure as hell wasn’t enough. Always angry, always fishing but never catching. Can’t live with a woman like that. It’s just not possible.
But I know, alright? I know I shouldn’t have left my baby with her. I’m making up for that now, even if I die doing it. Lord gives every man the choice of penitence.
There’d be another long walk on Highway 20 and then no more. Almost home.
I got to thinking about what I’d said when I left.
You crazy? What makes you think you’re keeping her? She’s mine, you crazy bitch. I take what’s mine.
No job. Barely enough to get out and even look for work. I never should’ve left. I would’ve had to live with that crazy woman, but by God, I’d have her. I’d have her.
I needed one more thing. So I got up, seeing as the sun was on me anyway, and got to walking. My jeans were dusty, but I didn’t want to spend on laundry. I probably smelled, too, but I couldn’t tell. I needed the one more thing before I got going. My baby needed them.
I walked into a supermarket and found a nice corner where no one’d see me. Someplace cool. God, that cool after that heat. I wrapped my hands around the metal poles of a Wonderbread stand and held on like the plane was going down. It was the feeling of forgiveness on my skin. Things were going to be good real soon. They were going to be so good. I mean, really, people change with time. I’d been doing my penitence. Maybe Norma’d gotten some sense in her head. She’d treat me right, like her man and the daddy of her baby. She wouldn’t keep me away from her and would call the lawyers and stop it all. We’d be happy. I felt it in my fingers.
Cookies and crackers were in aisle 6. I walked up on one side and looked at all the boxes and bags. They all shined under the lights, but none of them were right. I walked along the other side and found a lot more I didn’t need. They must have had them somewhere else.
I found someone, a redhead about high school age. She was stacking soda bottles.
“Excuse me, miss?”
She looked up at me and made a kind of nose wince. Her nametag said Heather. “Yes how can I help you,” without so much as a pause.
“Well, I’m looking for animal crackers. I can’t see them over with the others.”
This Heather looked at me like I was a picture, studying features and things. Her face was as red as raw meat.
I finally asked what she was looking at.
“We don’t have animal crackers here.”
“Really?”
“Yup, Sorry.”
“Well, alright then. Thanks.”
That didn’t seem strange, at first. Then the other big store in town didn’t have them either.
“Not a one?” I asked.
Not one damn box.
I figured it’s a small place. Maybe they just had no use for them. I’d have to pick them up in Idaho Falls instead.
The walk out of town led me to an island just before the exit out onto the highway. It was empty, and they had a market. It couldn’t hurt.
Inside was a big market and one lonesome old Chinese man, or Korean. He was sitting in a card table chair.
Before I even looked I just asked him.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. They don’t make those any more.”
“What?”
“They don’t make animal crackers anymore. They’re gone.”
I didn’t understand. “No, no, I know they still make them. They always make animal crackers.”
“Not always.” His hand crept across the counter, finger over finger the way a spider walks. I glanced down and winced at the sight of his dirty fingernails. They were coated in a green liquid. Then he lifted it and pointed. “They don’t make them for you, mister.”
“What is this?” I looked around, searching for a camera or hint of some trickery. As I backed away he stood and kept his pointing finger on me.
“You,” he said. “You may not have animal crackers. You do not deserve animal crackers.”
“Fucking hell…” I didn’t know. I had nothing to say. I was walking out when he reached under the counter. I thought he might have been going for a gun or something but he came up with what you’d expect after all that.
“You do not deserve this.”
He had a small red box sitting on the glass, on top of the taped lottery tickets. The string handle was pulled loose. Right there, like they were calling to me. I could see a lion, bear, gorilla, and elephant, kind of blurry from being on the front of a crusty old box for so long. All I had to do was go over and take it, and I wanted to like it was all I had to do. It was simple. It was right there and it was as simple as walking to it.
bovine skull
If I see a bovine skull I think Pagan, I see fire and bones in the wilds and the gases from the bog. If I see the kneeling I think Ritual, I think of rites and repetitious worship. If I see the bared woman I think Goddess, primal expression of female and corollary to male.
If I had no words, a silent brain, what would I make of this? What must the wordless mind think of such an image? This is a consideration beyond silence. It’s meditation on preconceived images and the nature of natural versus societal.
stories
When I was fifteen and pimply I sat in a classroom and told people I had a daughter, and that my childhood sweetheart had died of a brain aneurism. One girl cried before I finally fessed up. Another girl became my girlfriend.
It was around that same time that I convinced one younger brother that everyone in the family was a space alien except for him and I frightened one baby brother by staring him down.
I believe these events mark the point in my life when I realized that making shit up and fucking with others for self amusement is useless human behavior.
this animal
I speak of “the animal” often, most often in regards to sex. “The animal” needs to fuck, needs to be satiated that way. This is not unique in any regard. But this animal needs much more. This animal requires a connection. This animal has been alone for a long time now, and has developed certain senses. A sense of honesty… a sense of the point… a sense of the state of things right now. The sense of the past is informative and the sense of the future is hopeful. This animal needs to protect, provide, and is confident in the ability to do so. This animal is archaic, is lonely by nature, is not searching. This animal finds what it wants when it isn’t looking.
next
I woke up alone again. My first thought.
You become used to people who are in your life for a while. Even if you don’t live there inside her bed, you get used to it. The sheets are different from yours and it smells like cinnamon and sweat and cum, but it gets good, it gets to feeling so good that you don’t ever want to leave. I mean, you get used to this, this feeling. This strength of character from holding her close and rubbing your skin against hers and knowing in your head that she’s closer to you now than when you first met her. When there was distance and unfamiliarity it was different than when you held her and whispered ‘you’re so fucking beautiful’ in her ear and felt your cock harden against her and felt her respond with a sort of hum that isn’t about singing a song.
My tears ducts are active. Next.
When neither of you wants to cook anything, not even eggs, and you wander her kitchen in search of something. You return with her parents’ hard-earned apples and you give her one. The walls are custard yellow and you eat that fucking apple. Wipe the apple dribble from your stubble and tell her to skip class, high school being useless as it is, you lie. You remain there and don’t consider that there is anything more than tracing fingers along the beauty of the stretch marks on her shoulders, her hips, her breasts, and playfully biting her with your fangs, telling her ‘I might break the skin’ because she doesn’t get off on the blood but she does get off on you.
I left the fan on. Something profound changed along the way. This humanity arrived later than expected.
In her long hair you see that the fundamental difference is about what is expected. It is all expected, and in the mole on her neck you see the what is wanted. In the mole there is only a spot of dark skin and you kiss it with your juiced lips to realize. The mole is neutral. She says ‘I am so tired of being here. I want so much more. I want to feel like I don’t need you to be my daddy.’ You hold her shoulder and say ‘if it makes you feel good.’ She says ‘I’m just a kid’ even when you assure her and see what you want to see when you tell her she is wise beyond years.
I no longer think ‘I don’t know’ with any sincerity. I think I know everything I want to know. No one will ever get rid of me unless I leave.
Her parents and sister won’t be home for a while yet and you blew off work. You rub your foot against hers. You lie next to her and rub your hand over her soft white belly. The blue veins of her arms guide you along a river of a river of a river and you don’t know that you’ll be somewhere else eventually because everything feels like the end of the world. It is all grand. ‘What will you name our first baby’ you say. ‘I don’t know yet’ she says. ‘Something pretty and Irish.’
I threw out all my coffee. I have some tea, no milk or sugar. That’s all I have.
a certain sensitivity
They said it takes a “certain sensitivity” to write that story and I didn’t know what the fuck they were on about. It was some shit from that place in my head where ideas come from and get forgotten. They laughed where I expected silence and didn’t say a word about the best part where he compares her to the Brooklyn Bridge. That was damn romantic. I’ll never be the poet Whitman because I don’t want to be. Similes are for pussies. Be the fish or the lion or the rich man who woos with diamonds. I can’t say why I wrote any of it. I’m the messenger is all.