Memorial Day, 2019

Hottest memorial day on record,

okay, so I’m making that up, but could

still be true. The Marine who never

really talks about it sits at the bar

he makes jokes at and posts

a poem on insta; it’s how I know

he’s there, I’m not there.

My Grandfather and Uncle and several

cousins have all carried guns for

America and lost or seen things I

never want to, at least, I assume.

There’s a lot of not talking about it,

but if the things that they’ve seen

are like the bodies in the documentaries

I’d bury myself in science fiction

and whiskey, or never want either

ever again.

Hottest memorial day week to date, well

probably not, but I wonder if I ever

have a child, will they be sent to the same

war I avoided with essays about

Pacific Northwest  imagery in the works

of Raymond Carver. A bit like

the skit about the ice cream taster

and the heart surgeon. The soldiers

I know are always the first

to tell me what I do is necessary

and usually I believe that they

believe that, and try to write honestly.

I do not know what music to

play in the bar tonight, since most

people will be making jokes

about bar b ques or anticipating

returns to different types of

drudgery. All I know is that

it’s the

hottest day in the history of days

and there are machines and technological

advances that mean I may get

to fight in that war yet, and the music

here is a bit on point: the entire

empty coffeeshop just burst out

in a singalong to “Is there life on maars?”

Piano Manatee Ball Championship

Fuck You, Billy Joel

Last time you were in the kind of bar you

sing about, it was still classy, and fun,

and you were there with your wife

and the drinks were free
and don’t try to tell me about lonely,

I will invent it for you
brand new and bloody

right before I break your fucking fingers.

Cold Snap/Sunshine

Bill Withers on the stereo

a cold, dry November.

Just enough before work.

The coffee alcohol spectrum.

I miss everyone, but do not call.

It is okay for it to be okay

to be sad, I have convinced myself.

Time is running out before

I am legally required to smile.

It is dark inside and outside.

The lights are low because

brightness is ridiculous.

The song that played

over the credits of a fifteen

year old movie

about teenage awkwardness

makes its way before I do.

I can’t not care, and I’ve spent

so much of my life putting a premium

on detachment.

A stylized canoe hangs upside down

from the ceiling. I don’t even know

what this song

is  called.

28/30: Anthropomorphy Now!

A pitch for a film about the  emotional lives of dead skin flakes.

Their tremendous journey from scalp to pillowcase with the vocal

talents  of Emma Stone and Aziz Ansari.

(or possibly Katherine Heigl, if she’s free and it’s comeback time)

A working outline for a novel about a melancholy espresso machine

waiting for a love that never comes, but never the less learning

to take satisfaction in the steam.

(a story for our times!)

A storyboard for a graphic novel about the half lives of

T-shirts, many pen and pencil close ups of weeping threads.

“Why doesn’t he wear me any more?”
(“Same” posts the heartbroken college girl)

A premise for a short story about the sexual predilictions

of floorboards. The whole thing is "wood" puns.

(Hint: it totally gets published, your dumb

thing doesn't)

A draft of a poem about door knobs. What hands have held them?

How have they turned? What fluids have dribbled down their

supple curves? What slight wrist turns? What pushes on their

shiny

nubile

frame?

Oh, knobby, knobby, knobby.
(This is the entire poem, actually)

all things return to the all things return to the poememe.

Lately in my new scratches, I find myself returning to the "all things return to the. . ." titling system that made up the second half of "Filthy Jerry's Guide to Parking Lots."  This is partly because it's a funny way to title pieces, and also because it's an effective way to title pieces. It might seem like a cheap hack to re-use a literary device ad-nausea but tell that to Marvin Bell or Shakespeare. Plus, if it gets me writing.

So, this is a draft of a newbie that may end up completely different, set somewhere else, but for now it's called All Things Return to the Chinatown Library Ten Minutes Before Close on a Weekday.

all the coughing in this library.

all the threadbare gloves.

every sniffle. as the sky goes purple
over the firs, the lights in here feel so bright.

a globe in the children's area.

a lego map of returning.

computers and computers and
"thank you for respecting others"

also means "please no obvious porn."

a woman with a face like a free paper
bag in a pikachu hat. cartoon merch
from a free bin.

all the standing, waiting for computers,

pretending to browse CDs, magazines,

hoping to check e-mail before 8pm.

after 8, there is no where to be for
free, no room connected, nowhere

to go where it's your public right to cough.

I don't know these things or need these

things for nothing, not as much, maybe, as
the man with the giant backpack full of knives

or something. I hesitate to guess what,

knowing I might be right, knowing I 

may know this room too well already.

But wait--

There’s more.

Jerk eyes open
Verizon wireless theme song in
digital slap

base operations across from
Zeek’s pizza glowering billboard
skating by on borrowed

internet, a sarlac pit
of creased envelopes,
a deletery of e-mails.

That is not all;

Past the white windowless van with the electrician’s name on it, past the backward baseball caps and scarred arms leaning over the freight trains, past the giant clock by the lamp store, past the testicles all bouncing in green, and the ghosts of brewers, all coming back with hooks for hands, there is another smoking hole in a wall, or the asphalt, cigarettes or asteroids.

That could be all,
but holiday specials forbid it. Towerless searses forbid it. Postal delivery drivers, presumably werewolves, forbid it with pork between their fangs. ALSO! Veteran vetrinarians, presumably evil mermaids, for-fucking-bid it. So there is more—

--a swift mop up
before leaving work,
a death threat bus 

stop, running on borrowed

fares, a deathstar
with its lights on,

but wait--