the pit

Wes would come to work in the morning, still trying to wipe the night off his face.... ready to take the heads off those chickens, but it’d get hot inside the slaughterhouse, he wasn’t good for much more than a couple of hours.. only time can shed the rum, it’s heavy stuff... Hey boy, you’re gonna grow up strong, just like me... just like me... a vagrant... put him in the TB ward only way to keep him out of trouble... no need to watch him, they’ll be dragging him back come morning anyway... died over a bucket of garbage crushing Styrofoam... being economical.

You’re the spitting image of him Nancy said... is that right, funny thing I haven’t saw you around home then... Yeah well times change... sure they do, times only change when they’re convenient, like when the bill comes for the tombstone... times change alright... dying never had anything to do with it.

There are so many ways to die... you can die like Wes drunk with your head down in a pail of garbage, you can stick your head in an oven, fall asleep at the wheel, or have the cancer rip through your lungs... in how many ways can you die, you can’t count the ways... the thing about death for those of us left behind is that it’s never the same old story... how did your parents die, your aunt, your friend... there are so many circumstances but not even the circumstances can make it right or wrong...

Did the Buddha not die, was he not a man, like Schopenauer, like Kerouac, like a flower... maybe the Buddhists will say he didn’t die like that... as much as I want to, I don’t know if I believe them... or maybe I do.. they were at least right about the suffering....

I was reading Journey again tonight and early on he writes:

The biggest defeat in every department of life is to forget, especially the things that have done you in, and to die without realizing how far people can go in the way of cruminess. When the grave lies open before us, let’s not try to be witty, but on the other hand let’s not forget, but make it our business to record the worst human visciousness we’ve seen without changing one word. When that’s done we can curl up our toes and sink into the pit. That’s work enough for a lifetime.

as close as it gets

Don’t bore me I’ve hugged people too, crawled right inside some, consumed their words, etc., etc., and I’ve never gotten close enough, not that close. But it’s really not so hard to understand, life flows through me and you even as it manages to flow through the grasses out there on those cold and lonely prairie plains, I’ve already figured out that you can’t be close to something that you are.

She called me today it’s been a few months since I heard from her. It was no surprise as I always expect to her from her. Things are much more agreeable now, not like that night three years ago when I called from a hotel room in Portland Maine after a week away.....

"I’m on my way home," I said.

"That’s great, but I’ve got something to tell you, oh, but it should wait until you come home..." she replied.

And, I could feel that coldness that women have when they want absolutely nothing to do with you, they couldn’t be happier if they heard you had already positioned the barrel of a gun to your head. Out of sight out of mind.

"Well, you know, you may as well come out with it, don’t leave me hanging here, you know I was never one for surprises."

"No it should probably wait, it’d be better for you if we wait"

And, things went on like this for a bit, you know the scenario.. Until the secret got to big for even her to hold in (which, she was holding by the way, not out of my best interests, or out of any concern for me at all, but because it made her feel powerful, it was her secret)...

So she laid the bad news out... she had gotten into some other guy, he liked foreign films and was very virile. Believe it or not she was more graphic, at 26 I was already thought of as an old man. Hanging up the phone came easy past this point. After the click I stood up, drove down to a market and bought some local beer because I liked the colour blue of the box it came in, I wish I could remember the name.... came home, sat in the tub with my clothes on, got out, watched planes trains and automobiles on the television, and slept a scattered sleep.

Things went from bad to worse in the days that followed... I lived in a hostel for four months, somebody stole my two plates and a glass that used to belong to my grandmother (she ate poptarts and drank 7up from those dishes), and the bastard who ran the place would come into the kitchen when I was making my dinner to make fun of my habit of dining on noodles, "that’s not healthy you know", "hey noodle man", "let me guess noodles again?" utterly banal, and because of which is actually quite painful to repeat...

So all of this happened in the winter of I can’t remember when but by spring things had started to get clearer again, the year was 2002. Come summertime she had called to apologize, said she was a bitch, the guy turned out to be an utter bore, and all in all being generally overly and, I figured, insincerely apologetic. So I replied with something like: yeah well it’s all water under the bridge and all that bullshit, don’t worry about it.... We’ve continued to talk on the phone. She’s now with some Scotsman. It makes sense, she likes the Scots and the Irish too she told me once.

Anyway so this time on the phone she mentions that she had told this great guy all about me and that maybe she’d want all of us to get together sometime.... well, clearly this was not a good idea or even something that I want to do, but I was reminded that although she was a bitch I’m gentler and kinder.....

.... Yeah, I’m gentler, kinder, that’s what they’ve always said, girls like that, and even if that’s true, it’s never been the reason at all, it’s because I’m a loser and other losers like them, feel better about themselves only when they’re standing on somebody else and who easier to stand on?

Ah, and besides, go ask the bar maid or P., who had to pull me from the place before the bouncers did last weekend for hassling her for a beer for the road. I then hollered at him too for not understanding and then fell down in the middle of the road and pissed my pants.

So go ask them or anybody else who has just read this drivel, and they’ll tell you that he’s a loser and he’s not the kind of kind you want him to be.

a night on the arms of venus leaves you a lifetime on mercury

And the doctor has put his last hours of work in for the day by telling the man that the cancer has so thoroughly eaten his body that he won't live another month, not another month. The chemotherapy was no help, he says blaming its posionous effects on the cancer.... You may as well have bathed him in Mercury.... So go home why don't you, he says, and when you can no longer get out of bed, give us a call and we'll see to it you get to the hospital right away so as you can die properly. And, besides we're all waiting for a show — I've been promising the new nurse a good killing for months now. I secretly hope it's a long one, you know, so as I can point out to her the physiology of death setting in. She's an exam to pass. We'll put you on a rocket right on out of here, boy. No more watching the leaves turn to brown for you, hey I don't want to hear it, we all had hopes you know...

... and, tonight I'll fall to sleep dreaming of the tall thin waisted girl with short brown hair I saw on the bus a week ago, she wore heavy wool mittens, dark plaid pants and a belt that passed outside of the hoops. Oh, if she were here now.... if she were here now I'd be more than willing to keep this tragedy going. I’m a human being, like you, I care not what I do.