Isobel and The White Night (Exerpt)

            Traffic lights are the best place to people watch. I decided this while still wearing my cashier’s smock, lighting up my third cigarette, sitting at a red light at an intersection like any in the mid-west: somewhere by a McDonalds, a major grocery store, and the place of my employment – Walgreens. Had I known that I was going to die only four hours after my grave-yard shift, I may have made better plans. Instead, I fantasized about the people who were waiting for the same stubborn light at 7:12 a.m. Maybe the woman in the red Durango is going home to find her husband screwing the neighbor that gardens too much, and maybe that mid-life-crisis in BMW next to me is going to walk into his fancy-pants office and get canned twenty minutes later. I thought about these things mostly so my life would seem more interesting. Working the night-shift at a 24 hour pharmacy in order to pay my way through community college, driving the car that my sister gave me as a sympathy gift for graduating from high school was not the life I planned on, but who ever gets what they want? Minus the douche-bag in the Beemer next to me…may he lose his job, and his car.

            I’m not usually this bitter. You might think it’s because I know I’m going to die, but I don’t know that I’m going to die at this point. All I know is this: I’m out of work, the sun is rising, the birds are squawking, and I’m getting pissed off because there are at least seven us here waiting for the light to change. I have approximately sixty-seven dollars (plus loose change) to my name, which is all that I have left from this week’s paycheck.  It’ll buy me a bag from Juniper, and breakfast for both of us…another morning spent getting high and hanging out at Denny’s. She’s a simple breakfast kind of girl: coffee, black. Hash browns and bacon, both extra crispy. Usually I can tell when she’s in a bad mood because she starts ordering fucking fruit salads and skillets. I hope its not one of those days. Me, on the other had, I’m a glutton for pancakes. All kinds of pancakes! Blueberry, strawberry, chocolate chip, pumpkin, banana, the list goes on and on. If they created steak pancakes, I would be the first to try them. So Juniper knows that when I start ordering waffles, shit is going to hit the fan.

            She isn’t just my dealer; she’s my big sister with best friend tendencies. Actually, she’s been attempting to play the playing the delinquent mom role as of late.  She’s not remarkable, not some stunning beauty that deserves the covers of magazines and other superficial shit. She’s a real girl with real blonde hair and a real attitude problem (it goes along with the mom-complex that she’s been developing). It’s her attitude that makes her astonishing: I’ve seen her get in the faces of wasted men at least four times her size, and they always back down.  You’ll understand better in a bit, when I take her out to breakfast.

Some Loud Thunder (Exerpt)

Their bodies are curled around each other naturally. They don’t notice the dim twilight creeping in. He is snoring in her ear. She doesn’t notice. She is twitching, nudging him in the chest. He doesn’t notice. It’s the slow recognition of patriotic colored lights flooding their peaceful bedroom and the pounding on the front door that stirs them. What the hell?  They don’t say it. They don’t need to. They hurry down the stairs to see what the trouble is.

            They are greeted by the Santa Ana winds and Officer Saunders. The police cruiser is sitting silent in front of their little slice of suburbia, and a splash of semi-familiar head of purple hair resting against the window in the back seat. “Are you Mr. And Mrs. Laughlin?” he asks them politely.

Disgruntled and incoherent they nod yes. “What seems to be the problem officer?” He asks.

“I’m afraid there has been an accident.” He replies, the regret only slightly noticeable in his tone. She grabs her already disheveled hair with a priceless look of horror covering her face.

 

†

            I had met up with Avery half way through sixth period. Lunch. “The beauty of the Cali schools,” he told me, “is how easy it is to slip out and around unnoticed.” It had something to do with the layout. Open campus and palm trees. I guess back in the Midwest they stayed inside all day. No lawns to lounge on, lockers were built into the walls…all kinds of crazy shit. Not that it matters. High school sucks wherever you go.

             So we met up at lunch, sat around like we were being good little school children eating our lunch and talkin’ about school related things. Really, he was telling me about how he had taken his dad’s car that morning and hid it in the back of the strip mall down the street. “Of course he knows about it! I just didn’t park here ‘cause I don’t have one of those stupid permit things.” He assured me, yet he didn’t look at me. I think. I was busy watching the teachers surveying us like prison guards. ‘Maybe they always walk with their hands behind their back like that because really they’re packin’  ‘was the thought I was lost in. He might of said something else important, like his dad didn’t actually know he had the car, but we had a way out and I wasn’t about to pass it up.

Stuck in a Revolving Door (ars poetica)

The space of my brain is filled
with line upon line upon
potential line of random
word combinations that form
these lines. Coming from space
or magic or imagination or
the regurgitation of information,
Tarnished and twisted into
some telepathy like sequence
of word to mind to image to
 understanding.

Poetry arrived to me at an airport,
lonely and longing waiting for
lost luggage. Suddenly, a line. 
A pen, a page.  Though to word, 
words to line. I began to write,
something, new or different or in-
between. Writing to myself
 0r the page. Maybe the page
 to me. I began to decipher my-
self.
 

The words came, the pen moved,
the scene changed. A purpose
unquestioned. It moved, I
moved and the words too.
We changed. For strangers,
for baggage, for self. A line.
Something that I called
Poetry that I may no longer
call Poetry but I did then.

I sometimes wonder
about these words;
If they wander towards me
or if they must be plucked from
the branches of character bushes.

Just Was

I like abandoned parks

when the high noon sun

can’t quite reach its height,

When the brisk winds are

a tickle to the cold sensors.

 

A time when I don’t

have to worry about

the context of my life.

 

Money spent glowing orange

and serenity, no one here

to enjoy the simple thrill of

swings, but me.

 

Everything makes a little more

sense, in a personal public playground.

Washed Away

          At dawn she opens her eyes to the poster of Paris plastered to her wall washed in the early morning lightness she loved so much. Blinking and staring, she refused to believe that she was awake, and simply gazed at the poster, imagining the world in paint. The light changed the view, in her mind like the water lilies on Monet’s pond. Aware that he was once considered a scallywag in the profession of beauty, Josephine feels a little lightened.

            At breakfast she admired the newly blooming violets outside her window, it a silent appreciation that spring had finally been welcomed into the world. But here again, as she dazes off, the distinct perspectives appear to blur like the brush strokes, beyond the texture of the world that has materialized in front of her. Even the chocolate in Josephine’s coffee has altered its form, the swirls more defined and deliberate that she had noticed before.

            It became increasingly difficult to concentrate in the shower, because she imagined the water droplets turning into the stubborn oil paints that she knew were so in-washable. As well, she could see the Lavender scent of petals of her soap materialize into form as she washed away the suds. Down the swirling drain were the precious purple the so invigorated her senses.

            She dresses without complication, far too aware of the concrete nature of her bedroom belongings. Having had such a permanent staple there so long, she could no longer believe in the beauty of things that held so much weight on her being. Yet, she glances at the poster of Paris, dreaming again of an escape. After a moment lost in yet another blend of painted reality, she snatches up the Lucy Bacon notebook/diary she so cherishes, and maneuvers out of her crystalline jungle.

 

            Josephine knew she wasn’t like the rest of the daily commuters – she knew that their visions weren’t as colorful as hers. She was also well aware that no one so desired the education of a closed down art school the way that she did. All those that she considered mental companions went to the famous Parisian art school Academie Colarossi. Home of the impressionists, my world, and my mind.

             The bus jerks forward as she pays her toll, and she takes an available empty seat, as far away from the window as she can manage. This is the anxious time of Josephine’s day – the over-decorated world of actual reality is far to overwhelming for her creative instincts. The bombardment of advertisements and statements crowds her senses.  She can’t remember the semblance of noise they call music, and she couldn’t recollect the formulas required for scientific discoveries. She could, however, remember the way the light passed through the orange juice pitcher at breakfast, and the way her curtains illuminate up the fading light of sunset through her bedroom window –

           

View from these Windows

Didn’t I know

that you came so

close to my window?

 

Now naked, standing

like a frosty light fixture;

Icicles as designs,

Diamonds, and light.

With the wind nodding

to say hello, friend

even to the street’s light.

 

Isolated in this haunt,

wandering souls ignore you.

Your nude limbs-

 

You see what they wish

you to be, posted

there on the corner.

A Date with Tuesday Lectures

 

We don’t like these words.

They snag, lag, and glare at us.

They are stale and lethargic.

They won’t move to the wits

that we send them to.

They won’t twist into shapes

of the dreams that we portray.

 

We want to see with the words,

But they won’t sing or swing or sway.

They won’t embrace the sick fame

and they won’t entertain the elite.

 

We will push these words

to those impassioned poses.

 

Since words have no room to speak.

Walnut Theater

“…I, John Sleeper Clarke,

pictured stars through oak scaffolds

as the news traveled over

the chairscape like a stain.”

                April 13, 1865 by David Berman

 

I inherited a political graveyard

through my stage and through my name,

for it was my kin-in-law who lodged

that bullet through the hat and in the skull.

So I will divorce Asia and become

an Actor.

 

Through years numbering sixty-seven

I found scripted visits and parting curtains

to escape the letters printed in New York.

 

A one month interment,

time away from the stage.

 

Only my sloped forehead

will show my wisdom.

Perspectives and Positions of Boredom (a symptom list from Nebraska)

Lacking desire for musical stimulation. Feeling rather unsocialized: no confidence in conversations, and little patience for the problems of strangers. A certain feeling of worthlessness because drive and motivation have abandoned the self. Inability to make decisions and/or stick to them. Understanding the aesthetic value of eye-level carpet and its terrains. The internal destruction of any remaining self-esteem.  Every moment makes one feel as though they are the rope in a tug-o-war match between desire and a black hole. Experimentation with horrible fake accents, and the innability to abandon them when company does finally arrive. Contemplation of dreams and feelings of distant deja-vu. Uncontrollable eating. Puttering. Constantly concocting great lines/ideas/adventures etc and forgetting them almost immediatly.  Greater understanding of the calming quality of lists. Desire for company, but anxiety over not knowing how to interact with them. Thoughts are clear and consice but speech is jumbled and lacks sense. More comforting qualities of soft carpet. A disticnt feeling of being ‘weepy’ yet unsympathetic. Unexplainable attachments to the word ‘mild’. Feeling a constant need to accomplish something ‘great’ or simply tangible, yet uncertainty as to where to begin. Complete understanding of what it is to be lazy.

“You wasted life, why won’t you waste the after-life?” – Modest Mouse

Sophia.

   Not everything dissolves,     and not everything falls apart.  Some fads are permanent, sometime I believe that one will stay.      She comforts these thoughts with the melodic tones of Laura Veirs  in the background…the latest in continuous audible stimulation, the hums and moans of the pink light    guiding her fingers on the home-stretched canvas.    Despite what the punks at the gallery said,   she knew herself to be true to art.      The clichés of paint being blood were core to her nature,     her being. It was the rhythms and stimulations of her sensory perception that guided the brushstrokes over the deliberate layers of newspaper and   articles.

She brushed the hair off her forehead, whilst leaving evidence of her purple paint choice behind.   Stepping back to put the creation in perspective,  she began to understand the flaws…She saw the wit and white between the strategic layers of paper, canvas and paint.

It was irritating,

frustrating,

     and in the end,

       a relief.

Abstract deserves the cracks.

     And reality deserves some fading light, stage left.

But this latter realization would  come later.

For now, there was the painting to deal with.

 

 

 

   Sophia caresses the sunlight on her pillow with sleep-covered eyes. Oscar greets her morning with a purr, and a stretch. It would be another simple   day at the   gallery , should she will herself that life existed    outside of her bed   at that moment.

     15 more minutes….

I swear…

 

The gallery calls promptly at 10:16.

 

Punk A is on the line with the request that Sophia not miss another day at work,   especially on a day when there was supposed to be  an opening….

Friend of the owner….big deal…..right….I’ll be there….

 

Just 15 more minutes….promise.

  Oscar simply goes to find his food bowl, leaving Sophie to her excuses.

 

     11:09

The phone rings again.

This time it’s her step-sister. Another mini-crisis with the wedding across town.   She wants    Sophie to provide some rare   art  for the  reception hall.

Fortunately, this is dealt with by the machine , and Oscar is too distracted with food to notice that Crazy still hasn’t gotten out of bed.