Downtown

Grass growing tall as summer rolls out of bed. The game of 'will they mow it soon?' I always hope they don't and on my way to work in some months a snake and I will meet and we can call a truce and I will be on my way. I don't eat seafood anymore because a small fish and I called a truce some years ago.

Is the sky blue or smog? The humid haze and a breeze that stops and starts and the smell of the mill lilts through the town.

A bench. The canyon of downtown. Buildings reaching a few stories and the sunlight breaks direct for the mid afternoon and then shade again slips and I'm watching the people and occasionally writing in my notebook and wishing, but wishes are not worth writing about.

Outside. Sidewalk seating. A coffee, black, on the table in front of me and a man with a dog sits near me. I see him from time to time and always with the dog. White. The dog, but also the man. He sips and people know him. They stop, talk, and move along and he always stares out at the street as if waiting to begin, and I assume he has already ended. I assume he is fascinating to know, but I know it is fascinating to assume.

I borrowed a collection of Bukowski poems from the library but, as happens, I am bored of Bukowski and I also borrowed Hemingway's unfinished novel. I have read it three times and the first time I read it I went through a long period of creativity and the second time I read it I didn't, but now... well, also not much. I've been considering more Faulkner, but I'm always unsure about syllabus writers and so I find myself perusing the autobiographical graphic novels in the library. All of their trains were late and all of their coffees were lukewarm and all of their gardens wilted and I'm reading my seventh. I'd like to write one and I consider a number of talented artist friends who may want to collaborate with me. I swipe my hair across my forehead and sip my coffee and wish I had the courage to stand and pet the dog (white) and talk to the man (also white) and enjoy my coffee (black) in good company.

I don't.

From the Window of the Kitchen Where I Work

Spring unfurls under the grey New York sky and I kick slow through town, through home, between the shifting shops and restaurants, the library and the cemetery. The skyline grows and shifts as coral, millimeters a year, only noticeable through photographs and "Oh, I remember..." and "that was when..."

I walk the bridge and climb the hill toward the center of town, and the air is still cool mostly and the traffic is always impatient and in other parts of the country people smile when you catch their eye and here they look away or tighten their brow or mouth inaudible curses and it wraps around me, warm and comfortable. Fuck you. Get out of my goddamned way. How've you been?

The open mics are all gone now. The musicians have all moved or moved on. The drugs have become rare or weak. The joy has been sucked out. I kick through the town and I will get coffee and borrow a book from the library and walk home and enjoy


Not Drinking


and


Not Participating


and


Barely Existing.


This has all been a choice I have made. A search for a deeper meaning, or meaning at all. An attempt to center, or rescue myself.


From the kitchen where I work I gaze through the window at faces I have grown with over the last handful of years, people I didn't know in my previous life, people I will forget shortly in my next. Knocking through this town, building to building, lover to lover. Job to job, dream to dream. And where does it end? For me? We'll see. For them, please, o please, don't end here my friends.

I watch from the window of the kitchen where I work and morning, then day, then evening, and night. Morning, then day, evening, and night. I type in my employee number, clock in, clock out. Go home, every seven days I put away all but twenty dollars of my pay.

This grey New York sky.

Through the week I get mostly coffee at the coffee shop and sometimes I get food at a gas station and the rest of my money I hide away.

They all drink around me. Go out to eat. What's five dollars? Ten? Twenty? What else is there to do?


Grey.


What else is there to do in this town?

We come close. Hold each other. We kiss. We fuck. We cry. We start bands and we hold hands and we move in together and break apart and what else is there to do in this town.

Go out. Get drinks. Celebrate, commiserate.

Please, o please, don't end here my friends.

I dream.

I lay on my bed, in a small nearly attic room with slanted ceilings and a stuck open window and someone's old butterfly stickers glued to the wall. I lay on my bed and close my eyes and dream.

The window down. The forest sliding by. The road under me. I dream and I am moving. Fading into the air. Disappearing and if I never come home again good and if you never hear from me again I'm sorry and if I find myself... if I learn who I am...


The grey New York sky.


Lay on my bed and dream.


When I get enough money.


When I get my license back.


When I get out of this town.





We all wake up together and roll over together and go to work together.


We all live and love and dream together, we all waste and rot and fuck and snort and pretend together and





one of these days, I'm gonna leave this town.

A Handful of Snakes

It was evening and the summer of 1989. I was five, turning six, and sitting in my bedroom reading a Ghostbusters magazine in deep woods Maine. We had come the year before, I assume fleeing a landlord, or chasing the dream of 'work up north', or maybe as a way for my parents to find a new beginning. I was in my second school and third home in that year (which had become standard) and had made a few friends. At the moment things were still gold and green and evening shared a haze of dream, the exhaustion from spending the day outside with the cats and my young sister in the yard, or the treehouse, or the puddles, or tall grass surrounding the property. The adventures of Ghostbusters. The sun across the land, falling slow in fading sheets through my windows.

I had washed for the night, excitedly, after just beginning to take showers instead of baths, standing and reaching and becoming a strong man. I had brushed my small teeth and found pajamas. Laying on my bed and reading and the sound of the lawnmower outside of my open window. My father cutting the tall grass near the house. Further away and within the next few days he would set fire to the rest of it and my sister and I would watch from the porch or when the flames were smaller we'd come close and watch the border burn and eventually die, leaving only a scent I love to this day, and blackened stubble waiting for rain.

I read, and he mowed.

My mother, I assume, bathed my sister or cleaned up after me, most likely both.

The mower stopped and I was only vaguely aware.

My father mumbled outside and after a moment shuffled to my window.

"James," he said.

I rolled over and hopped to the window.

"Hi, Dad!"

"Check this out." He lifted his hands. They were cupped and he opened them and in them a mess of pink and red and brown and bits of white. Wet and small. 

"What is it?"

"Snakes," he said. 

I didn't see snakes. I saw nothing. Meat, at best. Slime.

"Where?"

He turned. "Right over there. Hit'em with the mower. Must have been babies in a nest or something. Pretty cool, huh?"

"Uhhuh," I said. The image of the snakes moments before and the blades shredding them in panic was all I could see and the image sits with me now, thirty years later. 

He turned and threw the wet mess into the grass and wiped his hands on his pants. "Back to it." 

I watched him start the mower and thought that the tall grass had more nests and that when we burned the grass in a few days the snakes would be able to escape into the woods or under the ground as the flames slowly moved outward and I hoped he would be finished with the grass near the house soon and I hoped there were no snakes in the rest of it.

I laid on my bed and didn't want to read anymore and soon the sun had gone down and my mother had said good night and I was in bed. Back to it.