HomeYears, 10.7.2011, afternoon

Yesterday morning I bolted out of Indianapolis with a cheap fever for a pretty southern drawl while the sun was still low and yolk-yellow before the sizzle. My buddy, Arabian Panda, was cramming textbooks down his throat for his medical school exams. Last time I'd seen him that anally retentive he was selling his sperm in milk jugs at Cambodian lunch buffets. Needless to say, a night was enough to get me jonesin' for a break out of there.

Hopped in the rental black Jag and sped south, cruising the highway like a canoe down the Mississippi. Nothing smoother than the smell of Louisville luring you south. I was burgundy with desire. Stopped in Shepardsville, Kentucky for a quick perusal of town living. It was all lazy summer and fried food. Hospitality was a chubby middle-aged woman with the personality of a sun god, smiles and giggles in every word she spoke. Left me mesmerized in the sunshine of that tiny little town.

I got to Nashville after noon. Rolled through the red hills and the whiskey green grass of the town with a cheshire grin, sticking my head out the window. Music pouring out every door. Cute blonde girls in tight jeans, tee shirts and boots. Cool dudes with beards and tipped pork-pie hats. Passing by the houses with their front porch open doors and walls full of pictures or rooms full of instruments. This city is made out of musicians. The walls of buildings are built with piano keys and upright basses. Every house has a set of strings and nimble hands ready to dance notes like electric muscle.

The fellas brought me in, we got drunk like a summer party, laughing at the bar, swinging to the tunes of mellow guitars and skittering drum skins. Food and whiskey, brothers already and getting ready for the wedding in the smokey mountains. Hope the bears don't claw me to pieces before I fall sweetly to the sound of the heartbeat pulsing melodic through this city.

Currently Reading:

"Portnoy's Complaint," Philip Roth

tired

Where is your job? what color is the fox tail you dreamt of last night?
It finally hit me, she's gone. She's walking around the city
with my spoiled nephew in his billion dollar shoes and she
doesn't give a sugar about the taste of my name in her mouth now.
All dolled-up for the free-lunch seminar, with make-up
and balloon throwers to enthrone the flower-wilting voices
they conjure from icelandic gestures. Give in or get out.
remove your hat and wake your prim-rose cauliflower nose
to the beauty of this deadened-leaf autumn mourning.
the dog walkers are out in full sprint, climbing the streets
like they're about to miss the parade, but it feels more like
running from the apocalypse, just an altogether useless venture.

Oops

I hit the sugar off the table on this one, again.
reaching for the cutlery, but knocked the table
to pieces. terminate the shards into calculated numbers
even the boss couldn't get hit head out of the glass jar.
i missed the exit every single time we spun around
that drunken, dim summer carousel. Itch off a remark
from your lips, from the teeth of devils they pour
across the floor in endless droves. saxophone.
saxophone number two. oh geez

HomeYears, 9.12.2011, afternoon

Last couple days have been a real trip. Alan Angus came down from the snow-tipped bearclaw country friday night. We reminisced over three dollar bottles of wine and cheap dark spanish cigars, waltzing around half-drunk about the train station inside of town. The air tasted liked heavy molasses. Catching up is always about unraveling memory like a roll of tape without any fingernails to stop and pick at. The total unraveling: a cerebral flood of euphoria, nostalgia, and the ridiculous. Anyway, we got home early, finished off the bottles, drinking all the way until the pillow, hungry for sleep.

Next day, the breakfast we had was tremendous. Mother Maggie whipped up a storm of eggs and sausage, roasted hashbrowns and coffee. Once a couple hounds start grubbing, ain't no stopping them. I was fiendish, Alan always grateful and polite in his wildness. After, we dressed up, suit and tie, and headed to the racetracks for a day on the town. Chaz St.James and his lady, Ms. Whytecliff, met us at the tracks, waiting in lovely summer clothes, bright-eyed and smiling like the sun. The day was marvelous, though we lost all our money on the sinewy muscled horses with their toy-sized jockeys. Sweat stained our shirt collars the color of sand. Drove into the city, cigarette-lipped and rolled up sleeves, met Daniel Huron and David Hoyne for some Chicago style hotdogs at the famous dog joint off of Clark Street. I lost my car down some flea-walled broken bottled alley, city lights and pretty girls distracting me. It was also the drugs. Left me totally confused. Once we got back to the apartment, we chilled our throats with some mexican beers, laughed in the dim light of the bohemian room, walled with top hats and tapestry, incense, books, records, rugs and couches; the den of social scholars, of men that will never be seen.
After that we hit the VioletHour, swankiest bar in town. A line over two hours long and we snuck in with hat-tilted smoke signal charisma. Got to the back and swang to real jazz. Classy drinks Sinatra would have guzzled. We laughed like the bubbles of gin The Jefferson's would have danced to. You know what I mean? Sweet Bourbon with a sharp citrus zest in the gums, the finest of arts.

The next day was the same gravy. Slept until the sun woke us through the open windows. We had breakfast and meandered around the city hazy and smiling. What a scene for the sunday-primped pedestrians. Went back to David Hoyne's and took out the bicycles for a long ride to the lake, to show Alan Angus the depth of the city. He was drooling with awe, like a pita chip in front of a tub of hummus. Drooling. We rested at the edge of the lake, near the southern chin of the city, next to the museums, right out there on the grassy hill, gazing at the skyline as the golden sun began to dip behind the metallic silhouette of the skyscrapers.

Drove back home to the Willow residence and slept like narcotics reveling in the middle of a heroin fantasy. Stone still. The next day, a fine-toothed excuse for a day of work. You can't dig the dead man out of his grave. Even if it is just covered in day-old sleep.

"A Blind Man" by Jorge Luis Borges

I do not know what face is looking back
whenever I look at the face in the mirror;
I do not know what old face seeks its image
in silent and already weary anger.
Slow in my blindness, with my hand I feel
the contours of my face. A flash of light
gets through to me. I have made out your hair,
color of ash and at the same time, gold.
I say again that I have lost no more
than the inconsequential skin of things.
These wise words come from Milton, and are noble,
but then I think of letters and of roses.
I think, too, that if I could see my features,
I would know who I am, this precious afternoon.

HomeYears, 9.8.2011. afternoon

Loosened that stiffened neck tie, fought another squeeze with the harrowing balloon. Drove back home and popped a brew, watching the clouds swirl circular and menacing.

After my coffeehouse meeting, I hopped in my old '97 Jeep Grand Cherokee; fully stocked with rattling exhaust, broken stereo, and non-functional car-phone. Vehicular vestiges of the previous automotive era. Timeless. I cruised uptown with the windows down to meet Small Gun at his new apartment. He was late, as usual, so I got out and knocked on the wrong apartment door until I heard his heavy, buffalo-heeled-stomping down the spiral wooden staircase and he opened the door adjacent to the one I embarrassingly berated for the minute. We laughed and slap-hugged each other in the custom of our contemporary flat-headed frat-guzzlers. Hopped back in my car and hit Hollywood Diner near the highway. The food at these places is always as quick as it is greasy, but never disappointing. So we dined for a Hollywood hour. Which in Chicago time is roughly 20 minutes. Catch those facts, Smackie. We just diggin' 'em up, and knockin' em down. You know I got that old Tom Waits tune dancing through my mind, fingers of piano jazz and electric rhetoric. Drove back to his place, and left him snoozin' on the new beige couch. That brother will never get up.

Skipped out on the second interview today. Don't know why. Didn't have the courage, didn't have the interest. I don't think I could see myself becoming the guy I try to avoid on the street. I'm desperate for cash, but there are always other tunnels to the hidden gold.

I'm back home now. Laughin' at the old bloodshot moon in that burgundy sky...