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7. A house and
 

Outlines on the carpet of things that aren't there, only a telephone, yellow case hard like an eggshell, cord lying curled in the shag. Walking in and putting things down, boxes down, hearing the carpet crush like never again, like not after the walls are occupied and the floor space is laid out and has been walked over by the same feet for feet times feet and shoes and maybe that's the problem, maybe our feet weren't meant to touch the same surface over and over again, back when we used to move all the time or back when the ground was dirt, and now it can all just feel dirty, used-up, old, washed-out with familiarity and disgust and memories of other places like this, or a January like this, or three Januaries like this right in a row, for fuck's sake. And thinking that one day you'll get a house like this and just bring in speakers and instruments and microphones and making the whole goddamn thing vibrate, making the whole goddamn thing glow with noise.
 

Memories of west Texas in a house with aluminum siding and a crumbling overhang above the back door, the desert oilfields, reading the story about a rocket car and wanting to go out to the dirtfields and build one and race it and crash the fucker into a mountain somewhere. And climb out and raise your arm high and yell "Yaaaahhhggg!"
 

8. Drinking and
 

Standing on the street, standing outside a bar, standing in the lobby of a bar telling people as they leave to have a good night, now, standing inside a bar looking over the filled chairs and looking at the bartender and wondering why all the bartenders have to be ladies with tattoos on their arms, and why there's a picture of Jesus behind the bar, and why it's a hologram, and why his eyes blink when you change your position, shifting your weight from one foot to the other as your knees and your heels get sore and 3-D Jesus gives you a wink. Standing at the bar with a drink in your hand and listening to the talk, standing at the bar and drinking your drink slowly, keeping your eyes down and wondering when you'll have drunk enough to sit the fuck down and stop wondering about whether you've drunk enough so you can just fucking drink and not worry about that shit. Tasting your drink and wondering how much drink there is in there and whether you paid too much and how much money you have left and why you have to flirt with the goddamn bartender to get some goddamn service. Sitting and drinking and talking to yourself about your week, only quiet or in your head so the bartender doesn't hear, talking about your week and how it went and about the goddamn subway and the goddamn neighbor's dog and asking if the kitchen's still open and the bartender saying no, but smiling a little, but then not smiling, and that's OK too.
 

The dusty, darkened shirts hanging on the left side of the bar over the supplies of lime juice and salt shakers and dog biscuits that say "I Love Firefighters" and
 

9. Women and
 

I used to have dreams about video games, dreams where I was playing video games or I was in video games and I always won, they were always lucid and I could control my characters perfectly, and one such game should I be recalling correctly (which is of course hardly guaranteed seeing as how it is a dream and my REM cycle is etc) involved a video game wherein I was a balloon flying through the sky dodging obstacles and this is somewhat strange seeing as how I would never play such a lameass video game in my waking hours but nevertheless there I was, flying through the sky, dodging everything.
 

And (I feel like I've already said this, stop me if you've heard it before) I used to lie in bed at night on my back (which is not how I sleep I sleep on my side and my shoulders get sore and I snore I'm told so it would be nice if I could sleep on my back but oh well tis not to be) and close my hands and maybe sometimes if I recall rub the balls of my fingers together so the grooves of my fingerprints lined up like gears like metal tracks in an industrial process and it was smooth, gliding smooth like ball bearings, and there on my back I would lie and I would close my eyes and I would feel myself become very small and float up and out of my room and towards the moon and do you know that whenever I see the moon I have to blow it a kiss? I put my two fingers to my lips and blow the moon a kiss. But I don't see it so much anymore in the city, and the other night I blew a kiss to the bright light above a cement mixer in the yard near my subway stop.
 

And that is what women are to me. That or a sad song. Maybe women are a sad song.
 

10. Dogs and cars and
 

They keep burning cars outside my building. They keep burning cars on the street outside my window, the street behind the park they covered with concrete where I play basketball, the street where the ambulance drivers park late at night when they want to sleep. They burn a car a month but I never see them light it in the dark, I see the fire and I call 911 and the firefighters come and put it out. I can never remember the name of the street but they find it anyway, they find it from the black smoke coming up and out and over my building, the black smoke blacker even than the night. When they burned the first car it was summer and the windows were open and the smoke came in the windows and I could not breathe.
 

And the dogs don't bark at night around my building, they don't talk to each other between yards through the moondrenched night air, they are all locked in their own rooms at night and when they are let out they bark, they run down the hall one way and back the other way and bark and when they bark I say things, I bark along with them and I say things like "ass shit my cock" and "rub fucking ass my dickhole."
 

The noise of dogs is the sound of a car on fire is the sound of a ukulele in an empty house is a solid fuel engine being lit is rain on dry ground is the sizzle of meat is a heavenly choir is a song, is a sad, sad song.
 

11. The Breasts of Bathsheba
 

Oh Bathsheba Bathsheba are these breasts yours or the breasts of the lord? Oh Bathesheba Bathsheba bring your mighty love to me, bring me your tears of hope and mercy. David when he was called came with a mule and his harp, and whenever the the king was low David would play a sad song with his harp and the king would feel right as rain. The harp was falling apart the strings were thin and stretched too tight but David played on, David played on, and one day David will slay them all, he will leave the women baking in the sun to be raped clean.
 

And how did they sing those songs way back when? Were those Psalms he wrote slow blues numbers or were they bright or were they angry or did they just feel nothing at all? Bathsheba Bathsheba did you go to your death singing just to make the notes last though you knew that sound must die as we must die as our words don't die and Bathsheba Bathsheba if we found your tomb today would the melody still be in there, echoing off the walls for us to catch in the rounded sepulcher of our ears as we cracked open the shell of your resting place?
 

Bathsheba Bathsheba your breasts are mufflers are like the foam on the walls of music rooms meant to absorb the sound so it does not go on for too long so it does not disturb the new sound that we are making even now; from whence it came so must it return, caught and absorbed in the breast like tears and maybe echoing still and maybe crying still in the hollow left if only we knew how to hear it, if only we knew how to write it down and tell someone else how to make that noise, that noise, oh that noise.
 

12. Granted That Enough Has Been Said I Sing Then ^[1]
 

I will sing this song beside your grave even if you are not yet dead. I will bury you under a wall of sound. I will drown you in jerked tears and I will get you drunk with the rain flowing into your open mouth turned towards the sky. Do not choke, oh, do not leave me, oh, I do not know who will listen when you are gone. Oh I am tired of living alone oh I am tired of driving by myself and listening to the radio and getting where I was going and turning right around again. Oh I am tired of Bibles in drawers and my own nudity and reading about what has already happened.
 

I will build you a fast fast car and turn it loose. I will buy you a dog and give it a name. I will make for you and eat with you a meal that never ends, a meal with flakes of my own dead skin in every little bit, and I will serenade you while you eat with my small little voice. I will give you a kiss like the kiss I give to the moon. I will still the twitching of your breast with my hand. I will turn you into steam so you can, yes, float, away.
 

j_moody: i like these a lot. they are more placid and poetical than the first six, i think. i miss elvis, tho. Add comment