Posted by marko on 12/24/2006, 9:20 am there’s an old photograph & tattered prayer card that came of course i can it too. you don’t think i have feelings. you scene 35 the asphalt’s so hot it’s distorting out future. feels sort of i want to sleep 10-12 hours a day. at least until this blows scene 37 i can’t recall the name of the motel. i tried looking it up it’s the first thing i think of when i awake, unless i’ve just it could be the slingshot that snapped on me, or too much of a it’s always been an unlucky number for me. it’s no wonder.
65.167.39.211
scene 33
from my aunt kathy between the pages of this bible that my
grandmother bought me as a boy before she died. i think
that’s enough to remember. there’s text in red print &
that’s all i need to know. there’s a flight ticket & a passport
that remains a mystery. a friend of d.a. levy claimed he
borrowed two suitcases the day before he gave himself
a third eye with a .22. he asked why would a man borrow
bags if he wasn’t planning on going somewhere. then he said,
but in a way he did leave of course. he went to israel. those
were his words. i’m not exactly sure what he meant. but i
have some idea. my ticket & passport have israel as their
destination. but i have no .22 shells here. i’m not going to
borrow any luggage either. i have two black nylon bags.
but i don’t need much room. one will probably be sufficient.
i read that some westerners after visiting jerusalem, return
with what’s called a messiah complex. but that won’t happen
to me. i’ve been there before & still can’t do a single miracle.
but i’m not coming back this time. on the last trip a light
beckoned me upward. i was afraid. i didn’t move an inch.
i’m no longer afraid.
scene 34
think i have no heart. you think you’re the only one that feels
things. cadillac fins with hash browns on the side. is there
some sort of rule i don’t know about, that says it always has
to be running through our heads at the same time. orange
sherbert on sunday afternoon & a dinosaur wearing sunglasses
from the dollar store. you can call it surrealism. or you can
call it a wild imagination. you can call it overstepping the
boundaries. but i thought you were more open-minded than
that. melted chocolate spreading on the sidewalk in summer
& breaking a nut, but still hard fifteen minutes later. well,
i think if you’d try to think back to what we were talking
about earlier, you might see the connection. playing who
blinks first with tropical fish & a mason jar filled with rusted
nail, nuts & bolts & wondering why doesn’t someone throw
them away. i don’t think you give me enough credit. i don’t
anyone does. evidently none of you have any idea how
difficult it is to make what passes for conversation. without
a strange reaction & an abrupt ending. a skeleton key on
a piece of string & rolling red dice playing for his dad’s
wristwatch before he notices it’s missing.
sci-fi doesn’t it. but when we got there all we’ll feel is tired.
& the last thing we want to do is talk. we won’t even want to
look at each other, but the place is too small to avoid it. if
i’d have floored it, maybe we’d have been surprised. it may
have been scary as hell. but it might have been so beautiful
that we never would have wanted to leave. either way, we’d
have some stories to tell. but the highway patrol were sitting
every ten miles because of the holiday weekend. that’s no excuse.
i should have taken my chances. i have points to spare on my
driver’s license. i know it’s the black drawing the heat in. but
it looks cooler to me. it reminds me of streamers. the shiny kind
that throw light around the room. last wedding reception i
couldn’t look at them because they made me dizzy. i may have
had too much to drink. but everything makes me dizzy now.
i feel like i’m standing sideways on a steep hill. i just as soon
lie in bed & stare up at the ceiling until i feel like i’ve stopped
moving.
scene 36
over. it has to be at once. i can’t take naps. can’t dose
off. either i hear someone yell or a loud crack. it’s hard
to describe. not exactly a gunshot but something like that.
i want to sleep it all away. so of course i’m having trouble
sleeping. up in 6 a.m. darkness listening to the rain that
fell all night. a fitful few hours dreaming of an ex-wife
stealing my money, then me trying to suicide myself. no,
they were different dreams. why can’t i dream of sex with
strangers. i don’t want names. i prefer naked in a crowd to
these nightmares i’ve been having. they went away for
a long time. then a few years ago they returned. i can’t
make a connection. i’m processing information is what
science tells us. where am i getting all this bad information?
i don’t watch tv. i no longer read the paper. i decided to start
ignoring the news. i thought, why put myself through it.
there’s nothing i can do. it only drives home how ineffective
one man is. that is doesn’t matter what our opinion might be.
in the yellow pages but it’s vanished. i remember parking
in the back lot in case they’d run my plates. i remember the
cans & bottles & mess & making sure i put the do not disturb
sign on the door even though when i signed in i told the manager
i didn’t want my room cleaned. i didn’t care if had clean sheets
& towels. i hate those huge mirrors they have in motel rooms.
probably half the people in them are trying to forget something.
trying to start over. & we’re confronted with ourselves
every time we move across the room, making it that much
harder to forget who we are. what we’ve done. & why do
they insist on putting the heads of the bed back to back
with a thin wall between them. so you hear every intimate
detail. & it makes us even more lonely. i wanted to cruise
but i was entirely too cinched to drive, & don’t the streets
around here. & i’m not paying a taxi, & probably come up
empty. so i turn the tv up to drown out the noise, & fall asleep
with it blaring until i’m woke by someone pounding on the door.
the numbers on the bed stand are a blur. it takes a minute to
remember where i am. are they pounding on my door?
scene 38
escaped a particularly disturbing dream. i begin doing the
math. as if the results will be different than they were last
night. it’s almost the end of the month. i want to kick myself
for not showing more restraint. if i can get through the morning,
i’ll take a couple xanax or klonopin, & some zantec for my
stomach. that should get me through the afternoon. about six
i’ll crack a bottle. that’s when i do the majority of my drinking,
the last week of the month. otherwise i rarely indulge in
alcohol. maybe a couple glasses of wine of the weekend.
but they tell me combined with all the pharmaceuticals i
take it would wear out my liver fast. alcohol isn’t my drug
of choice anyway. i can remember a few years when it was.
seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. but now i think about it, everything
was on equal ground. the floor was always slipping out from
under me. i never knew where i’d wake up. i know where i’ll
wake up now.
scene 39
good thing. maybe it was a bad thing. either way, it’s necessary
i’m told. it could be a much more complex defense mechanism
that isn’t quite so apparent, or simply growing older. think about
it. we keep gathering information. is there room for all these
reckless facts? wouldn’t the brain have to clear out some space
occasionally. i was ridiculed for rising above the crowd. i got
it worse than if i’d been unable to keep up with them. i could
have landed in a crow’s nest with all the shiny things. some
valuable i suppose, but mostly junk. it certainly wasn’t an
ivory tower. i wouldn’t set foot in one of those joints even
if someone paid my way in. it could have been a metaphoric
moon, poetically walking a foot off the ground i was so in
love. i wish i could remember all their faces, all their names,
all the ways they took me out of my own mind for even a
short while. i wish i could write each one a breath-taking ballad,
or at least a heartfelt thank you note. it doesn’t matter what
was true. only the way it felt.
scene 40
three sixes after all. i could give you concrete examples,
but i don’t feel like drudging all that up. i feel bad enough
already. so the 18th was part of the tradition. i should have
seen it coming. but i didn’t. i rarely do. if i’m so cynical
& paranoid, then why don’t is see it coming? i admit i was
considering blowing it off myself. but i would have given
more notice. i would have been sincerely apologetic. i
would suggested that we could get together some time in
the future. but what you pulled was dishonest & shitty
& hurtful. deliberately picking a fight over something so
insignificant in order to pull out. i had you read all wrong.
but when don’t i. nothing unusual about that. you came
on to me little sister, in case you’ve forgotten. you set it up,
not me. but you were, & are, so incredibly beautiful, that i
couldn’t be bothered with numbers. i didn’t remember
how that one carried a curse. or bad luck. whatever
you want to call it. i don’t want to ####ing talk about it
anymore.
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