did it rain that evening at the show?
did we kiss on the bus the way back from the show?
i thought we did
then back to the beach to my place where you, feeling saucy, went on drinking down the boardwalk
i went upstairs to the garrett
was this before, or during, dog?
i said << i’ll take a nap
you said “ok, i’ll go out” so i lay me down lights out
you returned hours later, leaned over me, said
“oh, i don’t know what”
all i remember is on my knees over you laying down, kissing your bare belly
and you rose and said you felt so pretty and slept and kissed and slept and kissed and i remember nothing of the next days
you and me in my humvee
got pulled over in the desert
got busted down a rank, lost the stripe
got sentenced to a month as a talking water jug
took the highway out of the rear-view mirror
then us tricky parking in the city of angels
where we got us a hostelry
santa monica next to a gun show, and
i’m sure we went out and ate something, then woke up in white sheets where i
wrapped in sheets and not around you wrong-way facing
so you married the right guy
and the sun coming in the room and the sheets all white and you all gold, all brown
and the air so thin
and the room so big
and the yawn so empty, and
i’m sure we must’ve gone out for breakfast, and
walked the pier i just don’t remember
and whose car was that?
I-ten?
My truck!
No, you rent.
And rented all, these dates, these unconsummated good catholic girl dates
these sleepovers which is right there, not covering up
you there uncovered and not covering
you with your legs open to the desert air that mountain there, and
all the rocks the slippery way down
then the range police, hot pursuit, and
you in the driver’s seat
and us pulled over and me head-hung-low that month
at the colonel’s desk and the fuckup and the infantry officer’s tears and fuck, fuck, fuck
and it was no morality play
it wasn’t going to make a good story
just another year in a world of disdain
among a sandy crew of sailors
salt-eating motherfuckers
that ate at wounds open to that self-same desert air
those mountains there
those small rocks up there
and what was santa monica?
what else was there? and
what did we do? and
where did we go? and
how was it you went home?
to your real property job at the lakeshore front by the place they have concerts and small summertime shows and dogs and geese and one lost earring
where danced with old ladies and a retarded girl the night through
how was it those white sheets in the santa monica and
i just didn’t get it
how was it the mountaintop?
you glisten in the dry, and
i just didn’t get it
i just didn’t give it
then at the beach did give it, the first of only 2 times
until you saw me broken at the tables,
and then only bones, and
bones are the easy part
and i’m worse off now than that day the I-Ten
where the air dry
that mountain over there
we ate a muffin, you said
“i threw away every notebook ever … my mother’s a deacon … in her own way.”
and i realize now what i missed and it is time for a break …
<< i think i might take me a break … and i’ve lost it all like you with your writing
<< i’ve discarded it
all
all is gone
and my daughter, too
so no longer the blue room
no longer the covered bed or the yellow lamp beside her head
and you with your boys
years days kids games days hugs new shoes new cleats
tuxes to rent
there are many more and
sometimes mountains for now you might ask
“i wonder where he is”
he still in white
in crisp white sheets
down by the beach
in the city near the beach, having come in from desert dry and highway long and
day’s end without a or place to sleep
and we mustv gone
after that gun show
to my sidewalk cafe, the books, the beach the bums the residents and
marilyn monroe got her hair cut there, right there to the left of the church only spanish sung
and she kept her distance that small beach house
the hymns on her piano
the sheet music strewn about
he said “leave the army, come work for me.”
we rode his convertible corvette sunset boulevard heading was and the song “Metropolis” by The Church played aloud
he said “this is a great song, come work for me.”
and i mustv been back then pretty cute to any guy
with a blade grass stuck in his teeth, said
“cash this check.”
for there are places to gamble, gentlemen’s clubs no one knows
and they’re legal, all legal and his name, his name was
Mark, check-casher to the stars, said
“i serve others in the jesuit tradition, i am their mosquito coast, their mosca …
i am the mosquito king”
midnight at the beach back from the surf
with my black dog on the white beach in her red leash
i came across a woman weak slouching in a circle of light by the multi-storey carpark under a streetlight of sand
<>
ok, i didn’t actually but my memory’s shot through
been clocked all to pieces out that shotgun bike
out that shotgun of a motorcycle and anyways, she’s “The Hanging Judge”
<>
the dog is good and i am safe, and one block away and she, i figured
unsure of her cardinal directions this calligraph, came,
and looked at me drunk-wise side-wise as we retreated the block
as we walked the block to my
to my the house there by the beach
my black dog Ally, still a puppy then and
just warmed up the winter and shook off the winter and the spring a-coming in and
her just sterilized and me still at a loss for the tranny
“that tranny officer couldn’t kill a dog”
and, well, that dog did something bad
in the corner of the kitchen, sink,
between the sink and the stove and i, i,
guess i yelled at and/or yanked her, while
<>
and put the dog away
“that singer of yours doesn’t sing … and you talk to your dog like she’s a block of wood … watch this”
and she put her to the sit
and me to sing songs of my dog in that black lake in the brown pond near the ocean blue and the fetid swamps of michigan
where the roads were dicey and the records all seventy-eight
and played by needles way back then with a child on one’s back
the snow-covering road and
<>
one saturday night, the hanging judge came to my house, said
“your singer only mumbles
just speaks well
just mumbles
just speaks a line of shit and never hits a note
not like elvis, now there’s a man could hit a note, and
bob dylan , well he’d write a song about me, all true story-like
and you’d be
you’d
you’d still be all on your knee
pencil in hand and,
not a word to say”
she come in my house
she turned off my music
sat my dog
left into the night
that drunk girl of no cardinal direction and,
i would be king
left with a dog and a bowl of kimchi cheese-sliced non-dairy
that camp of “two beers per day, soldier”
silver sandbags for the senator
trucks a-bristle
bats
the mosquito nets
the G-P Medium
the chow hall the open air showers
the no-ice the hamstring a-hurt
that desire for cold
the sneeze, the eye
there on the zero, the patrol, the inspection the I-Vs, the
medics stoned upstairs
the darts with syringes
the Major’s interrogation before his drunk stairs, the broke leg
the officer’s club stairway to death
the “put on your helmet, lieutenant davis”
left
Yeah, ok