Too static

holy parachutes. hold fast. fast and fast. purpose in the scope of the vast, and on into the dull horizon of winter, hold dear, deer in twilight in golden grass, mute.

Saturday Night

Drove a grieving friend
to the liquor store
and admired the baptists in white.

Vacuums

She had bad dreams. Bad enough to wake her at four in the morning and leave her glazed in the direction of the clock, motionless, wondering about the grisly capacities of her subconscious.

From a Fool's Perspective

A crow stirred on the telephone wire beside the electric pole adorned with transformers. Almost at her eye level, he adjusted his wings and settled into place. She sure knew how to pick 'em. But the clouds would come down to greet the earth. And everything would be free to be its own self. Leaning on the door jam, she raised her red coffee mug in salutation, glad to have him in the neighborhood.

Dawn of the Jukebox

The clouds came down to greet the earth and she stood in the open back door, barefoot, bed-headed, and delighted. Everything would be free to be its own self again. She was wiser, but always and still a fool. Rubbing her eyes, Ursula smiled and inhaled deeply. It was good to make someone happy.

Dearest L,

There is some gawd-awful self-pitying tripe on here, so look out.
xoxo
L

That American Life

She sang, ‘In the middle of a dream I call your name. Oh Yoko!’ as she crossed an empty parking lot under the sun. Integrity plagued her at unexpected turns. Running a nail over the metal cord casing, she realized she hadn't understood it could mean different things. Like the first degree of freshness, she'd thought it also the last. Payphone pressed to her ear, she squeezed her eyes closed, held her breath and imagined the world at the other end of the line.

Run on Run on Run on Sentence

Tapped her flat-soled foot on concrete until the drums of her ears dilated her eyes and the reverb shrieked and drowned weeks of sighs and bass beat touched her organs with rich earthquakes,
gentle and deep.

Exile and a query to the cottonwoods in the backyard

Would she dream again of that alien house of her childhood, sealed like a spaceship with its white noise humming air conditioning as she drifted through the grey twilight of predawn, wrapped in an old yellow floral sheet for a kimono and of tucking her bare feet beneath her on the cool, soft sofa and fixing her eyes on some black and white precision feast of silver grains witnessing the hardships of postwar life?

Taken a Shine

I wish you'd come around!

She’d howl at the moon, all glassy-eyed through the thick bottom of that

mason jar

pouring heartbreak down her throat.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

She crept down the fire escape again, wretched in the vicious cold of morning. Glanced around one more time, the backyard was dulled, the hues broken and the white lattice arch showing its bones through dead vines. But she remembered how it had looked in September. She slunk around the back of the house, narrowly missed hitting her head on a window a/c unit, hands shoved in her pockets. Returning to exile.

A tender envy held her in rigor mortis, lockjaw of happiness.
Wood smoke languished on her pashmina and she begged it to stay.
Her pocket were full of holy relics, plain wooden pencils from pinatas and a bottle cap from a Christmas Moerlein. She laid them out on the breakfast table, little artifacts brought back through the looking glass. The taste of the beer resurrected spectres of September in a rush. With Over the Rhine on her lips, she huddled next to the fire, admiring the splendor of the assembled company as they salsaed and mamboed on the wet, cold driveway. Here it was a joy to be a fly on the wall. Ursula longed for such a family, the sort of longing that compels one to eat whitewash and dirt, the sort of longing that fills you up to your eyeballs until you puke because you can't imbibe any more of it. She slept like a baby on the futon while the wind swelled up and roared around the old house.

Switchblades Preferred

Ursula stiffed it through her shift, with a new notch in the game of resignation building in between her shoulders. He brushed her elbow with his fingers several times and she did not respond at all. Inwardly, she sneered. Setting the container carelessly onto the scale, she traced it back to the source, or as near as she could get. She thought, but didn’t say aloud, you see that line of demarcation back there by the trees? Back there, no, further still? Flirt, that’s right, go on, flirt. Joke about hooking up before you get married, and I will fake laugh and slow-burn full of rage because behind every joke is some shred of truth. Keep making passes at me under the cover of good humor and comedy. That makes it totally acceptable. Do you realize, I’m counting the hours until I will never have to see you again? Yet, sometimes it is enough to hold a set of aces in your hand. She wondered and frowned at the line of demarcation and how everyone came waltzing on over it, cool as you please, as though she’d sent them a gold-leaf invitation.

She fled early, speeding down the golden-lit business park boulevard home, the corner of her eye fixed on a frozen plume rising from one of the office complexes. Shed a layer of snake skin joyfully as soon as she got in the door and pulled the postcard from the pages of a book.
It said little. Albuquerque. She thought of heavy snow as I-40 wound through the rock and then a blaze of lights sprawling out beside and below them. She thought of the green dash lights and crimson taillights painting his features. She thought of the enormous, brilliant rising moon. It raised more questions than it answered, but its tangibility soothed. Remote, yet remembered. She wished he'd let her try to help. She hoped he didn't think she'd make things worse.
"Who told you there was no such thing as real, true, eternal love? Cut out his lying tongue!"

Grease the night

Late afternoon December Thursday
a stain glass blue punch bowl behind the trees
her bones feel the pull of some mystery

Grey wool socks

She drove out to the boardwalk after their basset hound fell asleep. The dog was old and getting deaf. She’d never been a watch dog, but if she’d seen Ursula leave, she would sit and cry until she woke the house. No one was awake out here. She lifted the hatchback gate and pulled out the sleeping bag which she always kept there. The stars were still pretty faint from the neighborhoods looming on two sides of the wetland. The moon hadn’t risen yet, but her night vision was pretty good and she walked some distance into the swamp. She tugged her hat snugger and the cottonwoods whispered hoarsely at her for taking such a risk with her health. She zipped herself into the sleeping bag securely and sighed and slept. In the morning she could see her breath. She drove home and piled logs in the fireplace, the old hound worrying around her ankles like a cat. Hearing people begin to stir above and below stairs, she made coffee and a large batch of eggs. Setting it off the burner, she poured herself a mug and sat on the couch, tucking her grey wool stockinged feet beneath her. The basset hound set her head on the sofa cushion and looked up at her anxiously.

Angel looks down at him and says "Oh, pretty boy can't you show me nothing but surrender?"

Damn you, you fresh-faced Judas
I would redeem you
So give me my sin again.

Hoarfrost and moss

She lowered her tongue, curling the edges and forcefully spat. The gob burst on the pavement a story below the viewing deck with a modestly satisfying thwack. Her shoulders remained tense however as she jammed her fists into the pockets of her slate down vest. Ursula burrowed into the vest as she unhappily scanned the wetland before her. It was late in the year for many birds.

The last rumor to reach her said the werewolf had been near the border in late October. With her furrowed brow she cursed him. As though her blind, uncomprehending animosity might have any effect on him whatsoever. With a huff of clouded breath, she pivoted and climbed down the ladder. She stalked down the wooden boardwalk into the swamp, the malcontented rhythm of her footfall frightening off any remaining wildlife.

The cottonwoods clattered paper dry skeletal leaves at her in rebuke and she huffed again. Yellowed grass rustled only slightly and she stopped in the utter silence of dusk stirring its foggy digits over the water. She squinted at the dying sun and glanced down at her Grandpa’s dusty binoculars, resting over her belly. Screwing her eyes shut tight, Ursula put down an impulse to stomp her foot like a child. She listened. It was quiet still. Winter had come, werewolf or no. Winter had come and she was glad.

November Thunder

She felt the energy on her ride home.
It was going to storm tremendously.
In about an hour.
Her blood stood up and answered and she wanted a midnight adventure.
Looking from the sullen ruby cloud ceiling and the lights over the bridge, she glanced down on the glittering parking lot and saw the werewolf walking at a distance.
The wind kicked up and the paper factory on the river glowed behind the trees.
“Florescent lights engage, blackbirds frying on a wire,” she hummed.
Vertigo was building up behind her eyes like a migraine.

All over the coast

The eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg nailed her in the solar plexus and for a moment green lights at the end of docks swum before her. Smiling winningly, she breathlessly stepped past him. To her horror her heart was pounding like a panicked bird trapped in a house, making her thoughts into zeppelins colliding and tangling themselves up in their haste to stay out of reach of the gorilla scaling the tower.
At the end of the week, she revisited drives to Toledo and Detroit in winter. She marveled over how much significance a silent phone could have. So restless, she shifted through the ashes of friendships one more time. As ever, her hands shook, and her weary eyes watched the horizon of a clear sky with mistrust. The loan hadn’t come through. That was disaster enough for now. She didn’t feel like doing anything, calling anyone, eating anything. Her heart lay stunned on the ground after two bouts of beating against the windowpane in a panic. She pried an ornate silver key out of the sandy soil, embedding dirt deep under her nails. Rubbing her thumb over the pattern crest she wiped it clean. She worried she would have to pawn it. And Martin Espada knew all about pawn shops.

The cloud cover obliged and the weekend advanced with a swing beat

They moved through parallel lives after hours. Birds slept. The building heaved a sigh in appreciation of its solitude, humbly cradling the night watchman. No superman swept overhead. A boat wept in the harbor. Transsexuals laughed, stumbling home in fantastic heels. Tom Waits smoked a cigarette at the edge of a gas station twenty-seven miles out of town, casting the glowing butt away. The trees all wore the veils of widows. A glass bottle shattered into the silence of 35th street. A girl wished to be loved like the Taj Mahal. The moon glared down at them all jealously.

We marked a month on our calenders

and craved flannel and the arching spark of campfire conversation.

Athena helps us

She set the camera and lightmeter down beneath a tree, looking on with satisfaction at the view of the Talmadge. Overhead a noisy bird concurred and gave her his blessing

Days like these she remembered the dream of the owl biting her hands, and woefully gave thanks that it had not recurred.

And it sounded something like this

Endless numbered days

Gustav ushered in some relief. She found herself sitting on the roof overlooking a verdant backyard in the morning light. The house was a giant centennial thing sectioned charismatically into apartments where the rising sun made the eggshell blue walls seem crisp and playfully painted sheets of paper inviting. They talked about the things that they were wont to talk about once more before parting for a season. Having trimmed one another's hair and shared clove cigarettes and a great deal of simple human affection. Lying on the rug next to the record player the night before, she observed a true difference in the sound of a vinyl. It filled the room, as though it had a presence. She wanted to string these tranquil moments together like beads, to wear them around her neck wherever she went as a rosary of small moments of bliss. With great reluctance, she tread down the fire escape.

All alone in the branches

Some of the trees were giving up and dropping out without any roman candle flares. Yet summer held fast her reign. Voices the only thing lifting the veil, sitting wearily in the shade of a thinning oak tree.

Days too long, nights too short.

The unsophisticated determination of the red blooded redneck was not to be underestimated in its power to exhaust all verbal wit and fuel the blackest of moods. She didn't like heat, didn't like slapping at mosquitoes, or unimaginative, cock-driven boys.
Sweltering heat brought to bear again the piercing droning grind of the meat saw in the cutting room. It brought to bear the crude wants of late middle-aged men which were only vocalized under cover of the prevalent whining sound. Also goaded, a young, outstanding specimen of white trash shifted into a frolicking sort of desperation. Lest she should escape un-fianced, and far more pointedly, un-boned. She sidestepped, blocked, belittled, and undermined tiredly. Caught in the flow, she was as ready to spit on any knights errant as be rescued by them. The weather report was unpromising.

La Morte de la Fay

Two girls ordered and sat next to a window spattered with the remains of an aging hurricane. One of them spoke of Mexico with reluctant longing. The other couldn't stomach the syrup in the bottom of her coffee and silently agonized over the unknowable predictions of her grinds. Together they lay out before them a map of their lives, while slowly, slowly chiseling away at a slice of key lime cake or peanut butter brownie. Outside lights began to struggle against the misty, damp gloom swept far up from the Gulf to the August graveyard of all such storms. Each girl was grateful for the weather, allowing for opened tall window sashes softly billowing curtains and sweaters usually reserved for Oktoberfest. Also the cool, wet pavement of the parking lots lent a brightness to the tentative shapes of their future.