Just To Be On The Safe Side

Reading and writing doesn't come easy to a guy like me, but there were a few words I recognized only from listening to the news, so I took the whole thing to my friend Aaron to see if he could figure it out. He and me don’t have much in common, but we get a kick out of shooting clays on Sundays, and both our grandfathers left us 12 gauge field guns. That's how we got to talking. Those things really beat on your shoulder, so we took a break to sit in my car and drink coffee. Aaron’s wife lets him get away with smoking my cigarettes once a week. As we sat Aaron stopped talking a second after I handed him the folder, then dashed to get his reading glasses. When the door shut again he was entirely focused on the pages, and my curiosity mixed with an admiration for how quickly he seemed to absorb the convoluted phrases.

All high-rises built before 1967 include a hinged pane called a Rescue, Inspection and Service portal every ten floors. They tell that to window washers on our first day, but we learn on our own that the people on the safe side of that glass wouldn’t care to provide such an extravagance for laborers hauling buckets and squeegees. We are not a concern because we aren’t visible. The scaffolding barely squeaked as I hopped into the empty conference room.

I just sold a car I rebuilt and my parents had left me some when they passed. Aaron and I started with just a bit, each of us, but after the second “strike date” he understood the level of confidentiality, and collusion, the whole thing mapped out. And we were all in.

Aaron and I still shoot on Sunday...or Wednesday, or whenever we damn please, and my daughter just sent me a photo from Paris. Can you imagine that?

Play in Motion

The plan didn’t go much further than drinking a bottle of vodka upon arrival. The final night of bar-tending, two bus trips and a night spent in a city I would never know seemed like its own accomplishment. From the station another city seemed to open in two directions and the one I chose led to buildings huddled around cobblestone roads leading to a canal. The set of stairs wound from view, and a forgotten winter chill rose from the masonry as I sipped, Mediterranean soil caked still in my shoes and perspective also. I cared less and less of the sudden nightfall as my lips pressed the bottle, somehow I found my way to a small outcropping on the campus of a University. I saw the floral toned lights of an enormous whirling Ferris wheel as I lay down, unsure if they were real. I couldn’t manage to care.

Mixte

I was thinking of a ship that had been washed inland by a ferocious storm and came to rest on a boulder with weeds and sunny hillsides lapping about. Occasionally a little bird would land so that the boat pivoted and its bowsprit pointed out towards the ground, then a few random gusts would come along and the boat would once again tip skyward.

I used to think the ship would dream of surrendering to one side or the other, but I’m settling into the notion of it turning forever.

Vapor Trail

Sometimes I hear the land rumble with millennia as I drive 45 minutes late to meaningless days. Then I hope the birds and air are defiant with creaks and not resigned to the dilapidations of my efforts and the people who hoard them along with other’s into little piles to block peaceful streams and eviscerate pastureland.

With the sun radio reports, car chase hubcaps and lipstick cases dropped in nightclub passion come to rest. Living room bulbs are snapped on to reveal wine glass ponderances and cushion defecting television remote controls.

The roadways hold me to their course with rumble strips on either side. Then between fluorescence and linoleum I jingle machinery and tickle notions unimaginable to aboriginals here. Returning, I will pull over and run, maybe guard rails are no match for me.

Plumbing, OK it’s Plumbing

Argh

Good Will Prescription Eyeglass Bin

Trapped inside the bellows of a concertina playing unsent letters and forgotten promises to harried crowds unaccustomed to foreign tongues, my smiles stick like barbed wire peanut butter.

Somehow this billboard marches along where I think I am with people tilting their heads to read the words.

I can look up all hot day but plumb line brick layers will never fit this in their wall no matter how sturdy or bright my mica sparkles from its uncut rock.

Last years poinsettia where my steering wheel stood missing roads to cut diagonally through back yards and retention ponds with a laundry line and trash can lids crimping wiper blades missing the glass to interfere menacingly with radio reception.

Retiring to drift on air mattresses splashing to Cuba my dreams instead take me past Blackbeard commandeered cash registers swashbuckling paper cuts in lemon juice seas.

Auto

In boyhood Saratoga my dad leaned on the antiques case as a clerk described tools made from worn 19th century farm implements. A file, you see, will always retain it’s grooves, never relinquish them.

They kicked most of me out just after turning sixteen, the police station would have none of it. I slept in the driver side back seat of a trash filled Mustang, February. When I snuck into the Y to warm up in the shower there was a man watching with a lit cigar. I paper toweled off and dressed to become a display for other kids behind passing school bus windows.