Time

S

T

A

N

D

S

STILL

A clock

Which

No longer

BeAtS

Frozen

Land

Heavy

Weight

S

u

ff

o

ca

t

es

As we D

I

V

E

I

N

Head first

Hoping

We can

Swim

Until

We find

We can't

S

I

N

K

I

N

G

Into

The

Abyss

A

Darkness

We

Cannot

Win

Today

My mind is a blank slate

Please write on it

Filling it with ideas

Beautiful words

That I crave to hear

For if it is not you

And some fool instead

Then

I am afraid

I will become a fool

As well

I received a phone call from my buddy sitting in a bar out east this morning. It went something like this:

“Dude, I just got a fuckin’ text from my girl saying that we’ve grown apart.”

“No shit.”

“A text. Not a phone call, not a fucking note, a text. A little square box of transmitted text that basically put me on a bar stool at 10 a.m.”

“How long you been seeing this one?”

“Like three weeks.”

“Grown apart is code for she wants to fuck someone else, or she already has. Not to make you feel worse, but that’s all that is. Especially after three weeks.”

He went on about their time together, then got around to listening for a minute. He made a comment about how I should write about it one day, about people in this attention-deficient age, then said not to waste my time because they’d only read the first few lines and go elsewhere. His boss called. He ignored the call to wrap it up with me, “I should call him back. Thanks for talking. I can’t remember how long it’s been since I’ve had a real conversation with someone.”

We hung up and I thought about it. Last week I had a long conversation with a good friend who has a lot of shit falling down around him, but when we hung up I felt the same way, it had been awhile.

There’s a guy I see every morning when I walk my dog. He walks his dog right past me, and every single time the motherfucker gets within hearing distance, he pulls his phone from his pocket and looks into it like he’s texting someone. It’s been bothering me for awhile now, but I always forget about him after a few yards. Friday I remembered, and I watched him after he passed me. And sure enough, every time the prick passed someone, out came the phone. I understand not being in the mood to talk to anyone, but there is a true sadness and isolation he gives off, and it’s common today. But I will say this, with elements like him removed, the day was beautiful. The water of the bay was black chromoly and the birds dive-bombed the surface then shot back up eating in mid-air. A really hot Asian girl jogged past us in red shorts that let her perfect ass bounce freely up and down, up and down, -all the sun and all the life of the bay and its air moved with a warmth that transcends all the petty things that burn me out. I came home and checked my email, then plugged in the old electric and typed letters to some people who had been on my mind the last few months.

The devil staring back

winking

waiting

savoring it all:

I'll be the featured kill

down there for a good

long time.

“Texas is like a white trash Canada. It should feel like its own country, new and different, but it feels inbred. You seriously feel like a psychologist when you have to stay here, you feel like a genius in a field of retards.”

He leans forward and lights a cigarette. Coreen stares at us, “Oh. That’s not true at all. Texas has a lot of beauty to it. True, it has some bad qualities, but anywhere does.”

“Don’t try to sugarcoat a redneck shit sandwich.”

She shakes her head at him and looks over to me, “Oh, I don’t want to have to elaborate.”

—No time to elaborate. The fire and wind and flowers are fusing. I check my watch and wipe off the back of my neck. The cherry sunsets of Venus are lost, the vastness of its lemon iron heart is lost. Streets streaked with penny gold and laced velvet windows are gone now, gone forever, and where they once stood is now a city with a blank face. Sun dead and grey, fields which harvest nothing but replication of dirt and weeds. We have been left and forgotten here. Left to breathe, fuck, and rot. Which is fine. I imagine it was always like this. It was always a displaced sky. I smell their skin from across the room, sulfuric and salty. I remember Angel’s take on the ocean. She said it was delicious. I saw it for the first time in 6 years with her. We had parked by the pier in Pismo, and I’d tasted her stomach beneath the bloody wind. We had intercourse in full view of the water, and I convulsed into her from behind, holding up the back of her dress, yellow and bright, while she gripped the rail at the end of the pier. Two bums were fishing off the side behind us. We were quiet and heavy there, and gulls made hungry swoops close to us but the fishermen on the shore threw stones at them.

Angel rests her hand on my knee. We’ve been driving since Albuquerque. From there we had driven from Stockton. I’d met Angel while she was there with her parents. We had a three day fling. Her father was stationed in Germany. Her mother was from Spain. Her real father was doing life in a Spanish prison for murdering her mother’s lover, a teenage boy she’d met on the streets of Badalona. Her stepfather met her mother by chance somewhere in Europe. He’s from Stockton. Her mother was poor, and she married the bastard because she and her daughter were almost homeless. Angel is seventeen. I’m twenty-seven. Her stepfather used to stand in the shower behind her and masturbate. He never had sex with her, he said he was waiting until her eighteenth birthday. When Angel told her mother about it, her mother hit her and called her a liar. Angel is heartbroken over her mother. Angel’s English is broken and hot. She called me collect from Germany for half a year. The phone bills were insane. I didn’t care. When they flew back over before summer, Angel ran away from them and we hit the road. We’ve been on the run for weeks. We’re sitting in Dallas with my brother and his girlfriend. They know our story. Angel and Coreen have bonded like sisters. Coreen had similar problems with her mother’s husband, but her mother pressed charges and left him immediately when Coreen told her. The guy took a deal. He’s out now, but he’s out of the picture. Coreen and my brother are in their thirties. My brother builds houses. Coreen works at her mother’s cafe. Billy met Coreen in Phoenix. They lived there for a year. She wanted to move back to Texas.

Billy’s a tough motherfucker, but when it comes to Coreen he’s a small child. Coreen’s a tall, healthy Texas girl. She burns up any room she walks in. And now I have Angel, and Angel’s one sexy bitch. I hate to call her that, but she is, she’s the ultimate bitch. She’s tall and sculpted. Her skin is bronze fire. Her coal hair hangs in her face when she sleeps. Her lips are red and full. Her nose is flawless. Her eyes are deep black. When I watch her I can see God Himself rubbing his thumbs across her frontal lobe, smearing her brow with golden skin. He has a long beard with blood and flesh wiped across his smock. He crafted her as a completely separate project. When she talks my skin jumps. Her fingers are long and slim. Her feet are arched and smooth. Even her toes drop me to my knees. Angel loves me. Angel doesn’t love many people, maybe no others. She grew up hard and mean on the streets of Spain. She’s seen more death and disgust than any American. She likes to lick my eyes. I fight to keep them open while she does it, but I hang strong. She tells me my eyes are the doors to Heaven. She won’t let me cut my hair anymore. It hangs down to my chin. She bites it while we fuck. She tells me when we stop running somewhere she wants me to give us a baby. She talks about how beautiful the baby will be. She’s seen the child in her sleep. It is a boy and he is a perfect mixture of us and God. I don’t believe in God, but I don’t tell her that. I obsess over her ass and her thighs, over the grip of her sex. She sleeps nude on her side. I watch any available light carve around her body. She owns the Sun and the Moon, the ocean and the earth. All is her slave.

Billy lights two cigarettes and hands one over. Coreen doesn’t smoke. Angel won’t touch them. I take the smoke and blow rings over the table. Angel smiles and breaks the rings with her breath. She squeezes my arm and rests her knees on my lap. She turns eighteen in nine days. We’re getting married at the time of her birth. Angel’s mother became blind for survival. The prick she’s married to is in relentless pursuit of Angel with her. I know he married her mother to get Angel. I know he wants my head. They have the cops involved. He’s playing on that soldier bullshit. He’s an upper-ranks man now. I know it drives him batshit to think about my mouth in between Angel’s hot ass cheeks. It doesn’t matter. In nine days she’ll have my name. I only have fifteen hundred saved in my pocket. Billy is going to pay me cash to be a laborer. Angel is fine with being at the house with Coreen. She can go to work with her and help in Coreen’s mother’s shop. I don’t think Angel likes Texas. But she understands. One of my buddies lives down in Morelia, and he told me when I get some good coin saved up I can slip across the border with Angel and live there. Nobody gives a fuck about us in Mexico. Coreen goes into the kitchen to make drinks. My brother and I are flying on mescaline. It’s my first time. I’m sweating bullets. Angel laughs at me. I tell her I’m thirsty. She gets up and walks into the kitchen. Billy watches her ass, “Goddamn, man. You better hold onto that shit.”

“Tooth and nail.”

The girls come in with the drinks. Wild Turkey and water. Billy leans back with his drink, “So this cocksucker has a bead on you?”

Angel looks at me.

“Jad,” I say to her. She rolls her eyes and sets her drink down. Her breasts are fucking perfect. Her shoulders and neck, all of her screams at every moment. My brother glances into her dress. Coreen slaps him. He laughs, “His name’s Jad? Fuck, man. He was born to be an asshole.”

I put my smoke out and wipe the air clean for Angel’s face. She kisses my neck. I pick up the glass, “I bought the car off this dirtbag in Modesto. I transferred the plates and title in Reno. I insured it in Medford. It took a few days of zig-zagging, but we appear to be heading north.”

Billy smiles into the ashtray, “That was smart.”

“I’m not worried about it. If by some fucking chance they find me first I can say I had no idea about any of it. I’ve never met him. I’ve seen a few pictures. He doesn’t look too bright. But you can’t be sure.”

Angel picks up on some of the words. I rub her knee, “But if I can get a few months of straight work here, we’ll be alright. We can coast off the money in some Mexican shithole by the water, and come back in a few years.”

Billy takes a long drink from his whiskey and lights another smoke. A drop of sweat plunges from his brow into the paper. It wears the paper away and the tobacco creeps up to the surface. He laughs and sets it on the table, lights a new one. Coreen grabs the empties and goes to pour the refills. Angel kisses me and runs after her to help. Billy and I stare at each other and sweat. He peers over my shoulder. I look back and watch the guy across the street park his truck on the lawn. Billy laughs. Coreen sets the drinks down on the coffee table and lets the dog out. Angel comes in and takes her place by my side.

I climbed a mountain and sat there on a palm shaped rock, looking out over the towns. The whole world was something, or it was supposed to be, and the faces were supposed from something, but everything had fallen short because the two of them were tangled together and helpless now.

a night after WORK

aligned behind

this glorious brown

violence-

Sears Communicator

Lucky Strikes

2 for one at the Shell station

the friendly Middle Eastern clerk

who once had the beard but changed it to a police mustache

personally, I preferred the beard

but I am not fucking him

I don’t think anyone is

and no one is fucking me currently

or recently

but he let me slide on some change

and I came back and put the milk

in the fridge and set the coffee pot up

with water and a fresh

filter full of grains

so tomorrow all I have to do is

wake up and hit the

switch

and on the wood floor of this place

you would be able to see clean clothes

and scattered short stories

some poems

and my dog chewing through one of

her pig ears

all in perfect synchro

with the Dazzling Killmen over the CD player

these keys moving, roaring, slightly

off beat with the

whole picture.

on the floor

lines divide

themselves

into areas

the area of the poor

the diseased

the areas of talkers

the areas of dreamers

of suicide

all multiplied by the sorrow

I sit in the midwest and

and smoke reds

on a sunday morning

garbage strewn across the floor

death sitting in every

corner of the place

60 bucks in my wallet, a dog,

enough possessions that I

would need

a car to move them

2 days of eggs in the fridge

sitting in the midwest

on a sunday morning

hating my instincts

and

the days here

and the nights here

keep blending, melting together

into one long haze

divided by the lines in my heart and belly

divided by vacuuming the rug

and sleeping in stints of hours

multiplied by the sorrow again

as the dryer bangs away in the next room

as a cricket sings electric in the dark

below my floorboard

as the locusts gather to shed in the late summer

with the lightning bug retreating

while my body

deteriorates from lack of nutrients

the dream hardening

each day of flatness

the dryer banging away

somebody should secure

that damned thing.

I used to sit at the

table with my old man

and watch him smoke

cigarettes

they were early mornings

and I could see

his disgust

at having to leave home

as early as he did

to roof houses

to roof buildings so high in the city

he would often get nosebleeds

my mother would sit at the table

enrobed and sorry for this-

popping the heat blisters across his back

in each blister I saw

his own death

his own demise by the hours

which took on his age

“Well,” he once told me, “you better finish school and go

to college, save some money before you settle down

and start a life for yourself, and if I ever catch

you living like this I’m gonna haunt your ass until

the day you’re in your deathbed, boy. Don’t quit school and

don’t be a fuck-up like me.”

I’m now an adult and pushing

up near 30. my mother is dead

but the old man is still around

and

I hope the son of a bitch never dies.