Hawaii

These routines and calls out for attention are not just that – Who cares about a clueless party of thieves anyway – at this point everything written out and photographed for me to see – it’s almost like I took some brief trip – now back to whatever level of hell you call this – New England – with baseball games already being played as black skinny fingers longing to be full of green point at the sky still – while the air is still always white and misty – they walk around with fifteen different chips on their shoulders about nothing and everyone – people telling me I am making a mistake – people trying to give me even half a reason to experience slippery roads and chimneys spewing out adorable Christmas smoke one more time – not knowing me – have you ever listened to anything I said – I see groups imploding again – people working against people – doing the same shady business transactions they’ve been doing all along – blind men – blind women – I plant seeds in brains and dump water – I’ll soon be far away and only read about what blossomed out of it – wondering who else will be let down and if I even care at this point – things and stuff and places and people are older now – I have nothing new to offer here and this place has nothing to offer me – I’ve exhausted all the things that can get me high here – I’ve got nothing to lose or win now aside from a severe case of sanity – one more night without a small space to call mine is enough to push me – one more “yeah I’ll give you a call” followed by silence is enough – one more “wait, what?” is enough – really though there is nothing going on here – everything - and nothing all at once

People Magazine's Top 23 Sexiest Women

23.  A million awful blues songs could have been wrapped around her neck like an albatross. She thinks everyone is in love with her, I see right through her though; her eyes have no color.

22. I walk in and look for you across the room. Who knows if you even remember what I look like? Who knows if you have ever seen me? You ignored me again yesterday. You took advantage of your eyes and looked at me for a half a second today though. You took advantage of me. No phone number. No little note stuck on my car windshield. Another day you don’t know I exist goes by. I go home and look forward to you, and you go home and wonder why nobody talks to you.

21. My only real memory of her now is her tongue. Her only memory of me is my saying “no, bad idea” The last time I saw her I was this close to her. “This close” I said to myself. Leaving her in the bushes behind a hamburger joint would have been a good idea. Her friends would have killed me though. I remember her lovely tongue though. How funny the same tongue that spewed so much garbage was responsible for an enjoyable late night meeting such as that one. I sometimes wish I had wings to fly away from girls like that. Quickly fly away.

20. I think she has green eyes. You know what they say about the ones with green eyes.


19. I turned out the lights for the fifth time and opened the drapes an inch. That prostitute was still out there on the balcony. I think she saw me. Beautiful black woman. I waited for her to walk by the room again. She walked by looking around at windows. It looked like she looked right at me, she looked right through me though. I heard her cough walking down the balcony and back towards me. Just as she was about to walk by my room, I opened the door and made believe I was going to get something out of my car. We exchanged hellos and she asked me where I was from. I invited her in to smoke a joint. We put the television on, and lay on my bed while Charles Mingus plucked away in the background. She wasn’t a prostitute. She was a dancer from across the street, she was supposed to meet a friend there, and ended up stoned on my bed, not thinking anything about money. I told her I enjoyed her city, and was surprised there weren’t more cowboy hats around. I was pretty stoned when I told her she could stay in the room for as long as she wanted; I was a night owl. She responded with a kiss on my cheek, and left.


18. The ones I am truly in love with. I never think about them much, they are just sitting there in the back of my head for good.


17. It took him three or four tries, but he finally asked out that girl from accounting. She made him feel like jelly when he caught little glimpses of her. She made him develop a stutter in front of xerox machines. She couldn’t look at him, so he thought she was “probably a bitch”. He finally took her out though. One evening in the fall he took her to dinner, and for a ride in his car. They talked about music and boyfriends and girlfriends. He realized one thing. She was better off a ghost. She was better off as a mystery. Shrouded in manilla folders and paperwork, and paper clips and water coolers. The best thing about his date was that walk of hers. She had this walk about her that was one of the main selling points about her. Some sort of perfect balance of confidence and insecurity wrapped up in some mysterious costume of short skirts and dark eye liner. Walking to his car he realized he was in love with how she walked. She did this cute little strut. That was all he wanted. He didn’t want to kiss her. He didn’t want to see her naked. He didn’t want to know about her experience living in the city with roommates from hell. He didn’t want to take off his clothes in front of her. He wanted to watch her walk.


16. So I guess I was fooled then. I guess I was fooled, but in a fun polite kind of way. You sort of knew what you were doing. Holding this fresh orange carrot in front of my face, only to reveal a yam. Holding a stack of hundred dollar bills in front of my face. Holding yourself hostage for me would be the best thing you could do. I think the bus will go by that route. I think we can pick you up when ever you get yourself ready. So before we do get this bus in third gear, what is it exactly that you needed to tell me? Why should I believe you are who you say you are? For all I know, you could be the enemy. Your hair color is incorrect. You’re taking a look to see me and I see you every couple of days. With a quick brush of your hand you could probably knock me over I feel so fucking light around you. You could easily take the steering wheel and drive us to Vegas to put all the money down on one game. One game of chance we would play together. Split the money immediately, so as not to cause any future friction. Take out some sort of insurance policy for my life so you don’t shoot me in the temple. Now that I think about it, there is no need for me to date women who are taller than me.


15. Hey hey mama, gonna make you throw up. Hey hey mama, gonna make you burn gonna make you throw up.

14. She ain’t really the devil, she just talks like that. I look into her eyes, and I see big dark red valleys. Fire and blood, and red and steam and demons and fire and red and blood and valleys full of demons and steam and smoke and fire and red and her eyes and blood and the valley the demons the red blood in the valley the smoke coming out of the demon. She comes to me every night. She comes to me and tells me which of my hands is the “devil hand”. I am to not use this hand until I am instructed to do so. I will obey her and her army of demons.

13. Your favorite Van Halen songs

12. Sloped on the stiff motel bed I flipped through five horrible local television channels and turned the sound off. It took me about ten minutes, but I did it: I dialed her number. I knew it was a bad idea. I knew a big reason why the trip was such a success. I needed to get away, and I needed to be away from her, for her benefit more than mine. I had given her a letter before I left, written in my favorite font and everything. I should have left it alone though, but I called her. The conversation was as lonely as the parking lot of the motel I was in. I looked at the map and checked off when I would be able to call her again. Halfway between Knoxville and Chapel Hill.

11. We drove around in my car all night sometimes. Talking about music, books, film, boys, girls, all that good stuff. I do better around women. I have way more women friends than guy ones. Men are boring. This is what men talk about when they are together with other men: computer equipment/video games, sports, the internet. Her and I though, we would talk all sorts of shit. Divorce, our sex lives, our families, everything. We could open up. I can’t picture ever talking with her about computers or anything like that. It’s like a special event when I hang out with her. Nowadays, it’s rare, and good when I do. Someday I wonder if we’ll talk about our wives and husbands.


10. Big fat Debbie dancing with a Michelob bottle in a garage lip-synching the AC/DC song “You Shook Me All Night Long”


9. Her and I woke up one morning and decided to make breakfast. I hadn’t cooked for her in quite a while. I loved Sunday mornings with her. The winter mornings, looking out at the back yard, and the snow and trees and bare clothesline. She came over to me as I inhaled the steam coming off the hot coffee, and put her arms around my neck. The next Sunday I was in my own bed until three in the afternoon, while she fed the birds with a new pair of shoes.


8. I was a shithead to her husband back when we were young and dumb and teenaged. Years later, in my 40’s his wife is sending me pictures of her body parts and plans to meet up for coffee in the afternoon while he's off at work. Wow they all do lie don’t they?


7. I only hired her so I could look at her all day.


6. She wanted to be like her mother. She told herself that alcoholism, and addictive personality was hereditary. What she failed to realize was that she was just weak. She didn’t learn any lessons from watching mommy crying in the kitchen all night. Remember those nights lying in bed listening to the faint sounds of your mother crying in the kitchen? They would get louder and louder. Your little ten year old sister didn’t know what was wrong with mommy. Your father did the right thing, tried to get her help once. It didn’t work once, so he left. Smart man. You can’t count on the alcoholics. It’s a disease or something like that. If mommy gets it, you get it. You watched what it did to mommy in the kitchen. Now you sit in some dark bar waiting for that one guy to take you home and fill you up like the daddy you never had.


5. She held me down with her arms and kissed me like nobody had ever kissed me before. The worst kiss of my life. The worst lay of my life, she. I can picture her face right now. Way too interested. Please, don’t say my name when I do this to you, I want to get home in time for Letterman, and I don’t need anymore guilt than I already have.


4. I emerge from the lake and walk up the sand and dirt. I walk towards the cabin we rented. They are all in there, the three other couples. Playing cards, smoking cigarettes, and drinking beer. It’s noon on a Sunday. The cabin is filled with crazies. The crazies laugh and joke. My date is sitting on the couch with some sort of exotic drink between her legs. I walk over and tell her that we need to go out to the lake. I found something in the lake. She says she will join me later in the afternoon. I make my way back out to the lake and float around on a raft. I fall asleep and wake up on the other side of the lake. There is a cabin that looks similar to the one I was staying at. There are people inside playing cards, smoking cigarettes, and drinking beer. It’s one in the afternoon on a Sunday. There is a woman sitting on the couch with an exotic drink between her legs. I tell her she should join me in the lake. We go to the lake and I show her what I found. Solitude. I show her this, and tell her to go back to her mediocre life in the cabin.


3. I am not going to entertain any of the ideas she throws at me. She wasted me. Years ago I met her in a subway station. I am not taking her drugs she offers. The drugs she offers are lips and knowledge of Swedish films that ruins any amount of pride I may have in my open mind.


2. The last eleven waitresses I have had


1. Dreams and nightmares are not occupied with her and her amazing hair anymore.

New Mexico

Maybe I need a woman around to make me less crazy – one that will make me go one way and one way only – instead of going up and down every few hours – a drug for me to ingest – I wonder what those real drugs do to people – I can’t think of ever doing them – seems like you stay on them forever and you’re still crazy anyway – a woman with a nice straight head on her shoulders – one who doesn’t care about shallow things like most women I know – one who doesn’t lie constantly – one who isn’t insecure – I’m just kidding – with good weather comes better moods they say – April showers bring May flowers and all of that – April is almost over it seems – every week now, flying by like so many memories of miles logged – like when you forget where you are and how fast you’re going – Zen and the art of not driving like some asshole in the North East – blurry white and blue and green and all the colors marijuana can bring out for you with a plate of iced cold water and cigarettes – dizzy from loud music  - happy you are nowhere to be found – maps hidden in the trunk – internet and phone access your twelfth priority – memories of pussy you ate three years ago now a distant memory – the idea of someone in the passenger seat sounds like the worst idea possible so you keep this all to yourself – talk about it constantly like an old guy talking about different cops he knew back in “my day when a man was a man” – at night though, when you are flat and everything is a straight line and there is nothing but black and warm air flying through your vehicle – the sound of whatever your sixteen favorite songs that day are at top volume playing over and over – how great it would be to share – I can never figure out if I want to share those moments with someone or just experience them myself and then talk about them. 

Wisconsin

No secret messages ever reach me now – I hit myself over the head with a trillion ideas without any kind of focus – all of these dreams, scattered and quite the mess – my communication skills are at an all time low – this happens every – well this happens every few days – I give up and give in to whatever – I can spend time with certain people and be content and eternal – I can spend time and not be able to make any eye contact because it pains me to think of how wrong it is – I can spend time with women and only women I desire – they all see through me – there is a closeness I feel to some people I don’t get with anyone else – I tell them everything – I don’t tell any men anything now – I  forget e-mails happen and can’t tell what day it is – late at night though when everyone is sleeping off their headaches  and their “fuck that day sucked” – when the women I want to span time with are having some empty experience far away – I sit here and make up stories about the east coast and how horrible it is – it really is – when I leave here for good – sooner than later as planned – I can’t make it back this time – sirens and muses – fuck them all – I can't let them drag me away – I have so many things to do and none can be done here – none of the stations come in here – that sound you hear in between radio stations – men and women speaking some language underneath a blanket of black and white dots – I hear that and it keeps me up all night – I think of her voice and her eyes and her laugh and her smile and it’s fresh in my head as it should be – it’s none of my business though – we’re like family – everyone knows but me – everyone knows but her – a useless batch of ideas inside me that will never happen – why I ever tell anyone anything is beyond me – they all lie and fill each other with worse stories – the men all want to fuck the women and the women all want to make pretend they don’t see a thing – we all know – I watch and listen and read all about it – it’s on the front page of my inbox every three days – more obvious than last time – I see it – whoever doesn’t see it, well they just don’t want to – each time I make less sense the better off I’ll be – I don’t want them knowing anything about me at this point – none of them – watch them as they change into their summer clothes – watch them as they think the winter is over – you can see the ice cold grey winter surrounding every one of them – white, cold and emotionless – good luck with that. 

Delaware

This place is bleak the end of a novel always cold here and there everyone seems to want a piece of your time to talk about empty bottles left on a shelf it’s like a giant vampire as it sucks everything out of me and makes itself even more of an asshole everything and everywhere forcing me to spend weekends hiding out in the cellar coming up for air and food and music and books and film and pussy and caffeine forcing me to reevaluate where and when I want to come out. Black horns help me out on blah blah blah Friday nights like this one and the one before and the one after it. I lost out on all of my old party contacts. Grey hair and a need to just shut up for the night keeping me content and never depressed even though I seem it. I just want to get away. This place, they all need some sort of an escape method; alcohol, drugs, constant television so they don’t have to talk to each other. I want to do the complete opposite of this, sit around and listen to some stupid girl talk about this and that and everything in between. Sit around and listen to some smart chick talk about this and that and everything else. I don’t want to listen to men complain they are fat or men complain they are cold or women complain about potholes in the road or women complain about how so and so from thirty four years ago wronged them. All of them drag me down and make me talk to myself about life and how to live it. I guess I am retiring.