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.

Concourse

My car is remarkably slow and tiny so I’ve grown accustomed to muscling the teal speck into a middle lane from an on-ramp abreast scoffing semis and braking sports cars. But even amidst that today I was able to notice a disemboweled animal lying just where the slow lane merges.
Whenever I see the image of roadway carnage I brace myself; feel alone. A gentle amorphous part of me begs to resist further knowledge while something from almost the same place feels obligated, as if there is something to be gleaned. But what can be? An insight into the moment? A gesticulation languishing in the discarded body? Or maybe the satiation of a darker need. I hope not.

So there I find myself horrified, jostled about by traffic and unable to look away when I realize that this viscera is nylon batting oozing from a toy. And now there is no other place for my original emotion but aside that bear in the path of oncoming motorists.

Bound

On a long, slow Southern coast I settled in for a bus ride as the eager congestion of signage abated to homes, then farms. Resting my forehead against the air conditioned pane, rutted side roads permeated with a heat and stillness deeper than skin. Toiling from the city, stoplights stretched further apart as the vehicle’s groan from them became a tympanic hum. From beyond wool checkered seats two disembodied British voices happened.
I gathered that these friends were returning to Danville, a city not far from my own stop. As I listened they continued:
-If we’re meant to stay we’d best figure this out
-It seems more like something you’d best figure out
-I won’t be handing it off to you then
-I don’t see why not, you seem to be done with it
-Would you rifle through to dial the numbers and
contact all my girls?
-No…not all at once. I’d start where I was a weak fist
and a strong second
-You see, how can I trust you?
-With the contacts of women you stole from me?
-Jenny will not have it in the house
-Two valid passports stamped by agents of the Queen
-She’s the one
-Very page three
-I won’t have it
-Then let me…If you’re sworn to be done with them
-There’s a finality to it
-Or to your feelings for Jenny?
Here there was only the motor’s comment as we accelerated through a remote stop light. Well ahead, beyond the drivers shoulder in his recessed compartment, the bus’s curved tempered windshield heaved through humid cicada air as that tumbled around the rectangular body to succumb to a vacuum behind in a gentle serif.