Just Another Tuesday

 

Just Another Tuesday

Like the raven said “I want some more”

so I walked down 7th street 

to the 8-liner lounge,

where purple greed flashed

off our wet eyes as a Puerto Rican

lesbian named Fish and I

fed our rent money into the machines.

The purple neon lights told me

that cacophonous happiness

was just a few pulls away, and 

Fish said her cousin once won

twelve thousand dollars, but

now he’s back to selling speed.

Pockets empty, I kicked rocks

on the walk back home.  The grackles 

with their throats full of stones 

hacked out their laughter, saying 

“he’ll be back some more.”

Every now and then, if I have a lot of laundry to do, I’ll take it to the washateria in the middle of the night when it’s empty.  What takes me three hours at home, I can do in less than an hour.  And my home laundry situation is in my landlords’ basement.  Also, I kinda like laundrymats in the middle of the night.  White noise and watching things go round.  So tonight, the attendant was watching the Telemundo soccer show quietly, and I was watching things go round, when out of nowhere he took his phone out and blasted “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do.)”  That was it. When it was done, he put his phone away and went back to watching TV.  Sometimes I kinda feel like I want to just stop leaving the house.  But if I did, things like that wouldn’t happen.  

October 31st

 Dmitriy P, the Ukrainian Cowboy

Skullet peeking out of a black cowboy hat,

Dmitriy P darkened the door

of the pub today, high noon,

and he has admitted to himself

that only mezcal and Lone Star 

will get him back on that horse:

stirrups higher even

than we were last night. 

No one knows better than DP knows:

the most dangerous showdown

is with ourselves; the devil 

in the sight of our pistol

looks just like us; 

the dusty Main Street

Is really just a mirror. 

October 30th

 More Excitement for the Change of Season

The late fall sun jangles

while I open up my house 

and lay on the floor

while the north wind blows 

through the screen door

taking with it all the summer 

dust and the death 

of my friend Rick. The angle

of the light could be ominous,

but it isn’t, it is cocky —

as if to say, whatever else 

you have in store, you 

beastly universe, we

are not impressed, we

have seen it all. Great things 

have come and will come again.  

October 29th

 Blue Norther

Late in the year in Texas,

when the wind turns,

ripping out of the northern 

Panhandle, and scraping

the sky clean of any cloud,

the sky turns somehow 

bright, blue, and black

all at the same time, it is

cold at last, and we are as

close to eternity as can be. 

October 28th

 Some of Us are Monsters

She’s a beast

He’s an animal

You’re a piranha 

I’m a rattlesnake 

October 27th

I like to pronounce 
extra syllables 
and silent letters
sometimes —
just for the 
fun of it!

Connect-cut

Or-ee-gone

Tem-per-uh-ture 

But then I forget 
how to really say them. 

Pull y’all up? 

October 26th

Temperature below
ninety degrees. Let’s fire up
the oven tonight!

October 25th

So many shots, and
several beautiful women —
one of them in drag!

October 24th

 Another Metaphor for How Things are Going Lately

The hay wires meet 

around the telephone pole

at midnight, and I am

searching for a needle

in the dark by gently

brushing my hand

across the carpet

until I yelp,

so that I can finally

darn this darn sock,

but first I need to

learn how to sew.  

October 22nd

 On Turning 50

Here’s to the ones who

said we’d never get here.

Let’s drop  the curtain, and call

the rest of this an encore. 

October 23rd

 Sprawling Gambling Scandal

“What does the mafia

have on these ballplayers,”

my brother asked.  They

all keep throwing games.  

Chuck the bartender 

replied “what don’t

they have” in this age

when everyone’s life

is one click away. 

But it’s an older story,

I think to myself, as

old as the first human.

The yawning emptiness;

the burning need for more.  

October 21st

 Some Guy

Some guy committed a crime,

and some guy investigated

some guy was bereft of life,

and some guy was beside himself 

with loss.  Some guy picked up

the phone to make a call, 

but he put the phone down 

again. Some guy waited 

and watched, but the truth

was all knotted up

like a twisted cable 

under a dusty end table. 

October 20th

 The Long Night Shuffle

The nights are beginning

their luxurious winter stretch

as the northern hemisphere 

tilts away from the sun, and 

I realize how much we depend

on the haphazard wobble

of our planet in orbit.  

Without it would there be

weather as we know it?

And if not, what would we

talk about?  Without the seasons

would there be time at all?

Our celestial wiggle

turns our rock into Earth;

our planetary boogie

makes life wonderful.  

October 19th

 No Kings

We don’t need a king, 

we need a hand. 

We don’t need ICE,

we need an ice chest 

full of tamales.  

We don’t need

another angry dude

on the internet,

we need a national

weather service. 

We don’t need global tariffs, 

we need a phone call

from our little sister at 3AM

when it seems like the last light

in the world has gone out.  

October 18th

 Jack O’ Lantern

Born on a little bit

of October afternoon air 

is all the potential

of a Saturday night;

the evening yet to begin 

is full of weird, wild potential,

like a pumpkin, smooth 

and plain, until 

a knife and some fire

enter the picture, 

and then who knows 

what it might become?

October 17th

Gendarmes

Citizens such as myself 

find themselves at odds 

at times with those more inclined

toward the rules. 

Put another way, if

a gentleperson should indicate

that they are “of arms,”

they will find me making

quick use of “the legs.”

October 16th

 A Neat Little Bow

I cooked dinner

and cleaned the kitchen

and stowed the leftovers 

away in the freezer, and

the evening was tied up

in a neat little bow,

which dramatically contrasted

the unmitigated chaos 

that was the rest of my life.