.

You know how South Bend, Indiana is — something propelled me to go out at like three in the afternoon on a day off and get hammered.

Anyway, I was riding my bike back home a couple hours later and had to drain the main vein. There was this giant pine tree I thought I’d go in. I’d heard some kids playing about 50 feet past it so I figured it was safe. Just when get out and start emitting urine, I hear this young girl’s barely-audible breath and I see her legs and feet standing stone still, though I never caught her face. She stood there the entire time I was doing my business, just looking, then I zipped up and got back on my bike and neither of us had a complaint about the situation, as far as I can remember.

..

 

* Sunshine Sammy returns: “Why don’t you like my dog, a**hole?”

Hey, Rick. It’s me, Sammy, from the other day. You were over. Yeah, how’s it goin’. Look, why don’t you like my dog, a**hole? Its name is Gertrude and I hope you know she’s got gout, arthritis and a metal plate behind her ear. I mean Christ, you didn’t even smile at her…you sat there on the couch drinking my V8 and looking like a frickin’ air traffic controller. Gertrude and I have been having a heart to heart about this matter and we’re not too pleased. Plus, knowing you, you’ll give me that whole bit about how dogs are loud, smell bad, drool on and chew everything and are potentially lethal. Bush league stuff, I’m tellin’ you. Someone’s gotta get you TRAINED on being a man. And don’t even come crawling back to Gertrude, either…she’s busy. She’s…she belongs to the neighbors…I mean, she’s doing something.

 

Now we see

With James Brown blaring in the background

On a booming jukebox

 

The spectacle of America

That evades reason —

The skin-blessed women

Dancing next to the athletes,

The purveyors of life, blood and vibrancy,

 

The whole system of deluge

Within want, an orgiastic orchestra

Of that for which man will fight, and

 

It is the plentitude

That defines us, the endlessness of

Immersion within a lethal light.

 

It wasn’t originally conceived as funny,

Though it seems our only choice to treat it as such,

Our platform of deaths and

Mocking skies in this

Post-catastrophic idea farm

Where light dies and is mimicked

With faces in temporary shapes

 

Today,

For the first time,

At my seasoned age

 

I am a trespasser on this land

And I see things which are like molecules,

 

Little vacuoles of anger come

To spit fire now

And taste their own ashes later.

 

So your life’s composed on all sides

Of tense bisector eyes

Which contort

 

And then summon themselves up to the sun

With feather tears and

Dance club validation

Well

 

That’s what

Being a nice person is,

Isn’t it?

 

Somehow I’m no longer in the mood for “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” since having taken in this U.S.A. – England 2019 Women’s World Cup semifinal. It goes like this.

England was down 2-1 when one of their girls threaded this beautiful pass to this other, who netted the ball to tie the game. After a review, though, they found her to have been offsides, by about one foot or so, if that, thus nullifying the goal.

About 15 minutes later, an England girl was going in for a pass that was a scoring opportunity and took a wild fall from an approaching American. On the ensuing penalty kick, the American goalie made an incredible save, diving and grabbing the ball at the corner of the goal right as it was about it go in. The game ended in a 2-1 U.S.A. victory.

After the game, they showed the England girl who’d got her goal taken away. She looked about 25, broad-shouldered but with a friendly-looking face and an upbeat disposition. Her face was pale except for her eyes, which were wet and had red rings around them. Looking at her, my eyes welled up with tears.

And I was looking around at all the players walking around after the game, the Americans celebrating and the British clapping in obligatory class and concession. And I just wish I wouldn’t have seen any of this. I wish I wouldn’t have watched the game at all.

And I was looking around for any pair of players who were from opposing teams, congratulating one or exchanging any pleasantries. But I just didn’t see it. One American girl tried to help up a British girl from the ground, and though the British girl wasn’t rude, she didn’t extend a hand and it was clear she didn’t want to be touched by the American. The British girl who got her goal taken away was clapping, in observance with the general custom of a game’s end, being the loser. She definitely handled it way better than I would have. I would have cussed and insulted the ref, after that offsides call, gotten thrown out of the game, and then seen that ref in my dreams that night, which of course would have been stupid, almost as stupid as watching this fu**ing crap was in the first place.

 

For some reason I sometimes get nervous friending people (it’s probably a good reason I just don’t know of), so it seems somehow less painless if I’m on about my ninth Natty Ice sitting around the crib after work. Typically I turn in about three or four on these nights and hopefully snooze off ‘til about two… well on this night a frazzled frenzy piqued me from my sleep roundabouts 11:30 but the crushing human sensation was undeniable. It was like I knew what the glory of death was like. A lot of people were from my high school and the experience was an undeniable roller coaster of eyes, memories, images and emotions, pounding in and out of my mind like a drug invented by Bassnectar.

Sometimes you have to lean on this high school sh**: like I friended this one girl I worked with and she not only declined but blocked me… to be honest it wasn’t even someone I liked that much, it was just like more awkward not to friend her than to friend her seeing as we’d worked together for a year and a half. Then with this other girl from my high school, well-shaped, I got the same feeling like we didn’t know each other that well but our scholastic past bought me the social media privilege and hey I guess I’ll take what I can get these days. Then even being friends with the guys is cool: it gives you another “like” here and there and if nothing else another half-amusing meme complaining about women. We all possess inner beauty. But for other times, there’s still shots on social media sites.

 

 

I live two miles from the nearest grocery store with fresh produce,

One and a half miles from the nearest laundromat and

Two miles from the closest post office,

But just two blocks north and one block east of me lies

Terre Haute Brewing Company,

A brewery of rhinoceros proportions –

I like going in there in the middle of half price growler Mondays as

They’re playing “Touch of Grey” by the Grateful Dead and

“Rhythm of the Rain” by The Cascades,

And it’s the type of thing that people will get mad at me for,

I know,

Going in there and filling up my growler,

Then walking back to my apartment with that giant brown jug

Of world-class beer all for my enjoyment,

I know,

I’ve just rendered an especial luxury,

Sidestepping reality in multiple ways