.

I wouldn’t mind seeing that guy and seeing what he’s up to even though he recedes every time he’s around me — gets nervous and laughs and such. But I did just hear him profess things with a directness to another type he’s around a lot — one he knows better and might be inclined to poking a fish in its bowl or setting a paper plate on fire, if he had the chance.

And he’s got three brothers. While I’m at it, I might as well confer with all four of them and propagate a race of beings always in positive motion. Well, they all wield stark, adamant distinctions to each other, with one talking about shooting up a house, one in law school, one proud and one prouder, and it’s true that I’ve never imagined the situation of having identity heaped onto you every day, every day, like wet, mildewy clothes that you’d trade and replace with a coat of cactus snow if you could, the better for your blood to course through your veins feeding you tiger venom and swagger.

I didn’t put any music on

Because there was a wedding going on outside

And I thought about the wedding

And I thought,

Well,

If that were me getting married,

I would want everything to be just right —

I wouldn’t want some random dude picking the music

And playing some song about looking at a girl’s a**

Or something

And it was pretty quiet, around the day

And not everybody was in the best mood

But we got through it

And at the end of the day

I was sweeping the cook’s line

And I felt your presence, somehow

And I glanced over and

You were standing listlessly,

Resting your elbows on the table

Where the sous chef was cutting cake

To go out to the wedding guests.

.

You stretched your body out

So your behind stuck up and out

And it was shameful how we went on with the day and

It was shameful how I liked you for that,

For how you fell against the table,

For the animal it brought out in me and

In order to get back to me

I’m going to have to mythologize,

Which is a weakness women perceive in men

And see, most clearly.

.

But I think about how you’re a perfectionist.

.

Virgin girls are perfectionists.

.

And you feel ugly and you see ugliness.

.

I feel that about you.

.

And when you believe,

Your eyes light up,

Or sometimes your body forms a sensual shape

Which is just

Your gods trying to give something of you

To a world that has no idea how to accept something

So perfect.

It once went without saying

That all the freaks and weirdos

Were included in the music,

In the spirit of the music,

Because what was really weird was

The setting of the sun,

The binary of the human sexes,

The myth of cooperation,

The oblivion to pain and the

Apathy to someone else’s

The birds are out there singing.

.

They sing with each other.

.

It’s hard to tell

Which one starts it,

But one will commence the cadence

.

And then another one will join in,

Chirping right after the other one,

In rhythm,

Hence spawning a chirp from the other one,

.

Or one of the other ones,

To be exact.

.

They remind me of a ska punk band, actually.

.

Then, the uncanny thing is that

They’ve designated one bird, which

.

I think is

The one with the highest-pitched chirp,

To man the coda responsibilities,

And emit a series of identical chirps

To end the final cadence.

.

This final bird, the first time,

Emitted three chirps.

.

The next time,

The birds did the same thing,

And the final one put out seven chirps.

.

One, time he did four,

One time, five,

One time, six,

But not in that order,

And never fewer than three,

And never more than seven.

.

And the sad thing is,

I know what they’re doing,

And I feel like I’ve lost the ability to do that,

Myself.

.

But then,

That’s what pedagogy’s for.

16 blocks south of downtown

The church stands,

Paint peeling off of the outer walls and

Wooden boards wedged in the

Windows of yesterday,

As if to keep the rats and mice warm,

Or maybe to keep our hearts a little warmer.

.

I suppose the rodents can still pray in there

But for us, the house of God has perished,

As we scornfully shirk its visage

In animalistic transactions of alien ore.

 

My oracle descended on me

Like a panorama of night through

Divergent clouds

.

When the woman struck my heart

And gripped it with her hands,

Clutching and shaking it into life

And into cognizance.

.

As I stood there making small talk,

Issuing smiles and

Cracking amateurish jokes,

.

My spectacled oracle related to me

Exactly what was happening, the

Woman spreading her crystals

And powderized chlorophyll

.

All

Around

The parameters of my heart

.

As if planting a seed

Of something that can be felt and

That can be smelled,

Like a whispering spring wind

Bringing you to quicksand eyes.

I missed the wedding,

The entire thing,

The entire 15-minute wedding,

Because I couldn’t find the banquet hall

Where it was located

In my own hometown

And no one else knew either

At the gas stations that were within a mile of it,

Out in the country.

.

I got there at 5:15 —

A cloudy, generally pleasant day in July

With light rain.

.

The time that I got there

Was exactly concurrent with

The opening of the bar,

Which we were all free to indulge in

Limitlessly and

At our own discretion.

.

At one point I caught sight of this

Attractive redhead I’d worked with

At a sports bar in town,

Me cooking and she waiting tables.

.

I couldn’t catch her eye but

After the meal and the bussing

She seemed to be standing by herself

So I went over and said hi to her.

.

I’d noticed that

She’d been there with a boyfriend

From the activities before

But at this moment she was standing

By herself.

.

I got a friendly greeting from her —

A smile,

And eyes that were lit up,

Sort of like a reference back to the

Volcano of elation

I assume

To

Exist

Up in the sky, somewhere.

.

We made small talk and

When I asked her if she still worked at Brothers

She went “Uhh,”

And waited like five seconds,

Before answering “No,”

With hilarious deliberateness and

An intense look into my eye,

As if she’d just come upon

A significant revelation.

.

At one point I got a finger against my chest

With eye contact and conversation and I thought,

There’s no way this is really happening.

.

Plus she’s with a boyfriend.

.

Well I did have on my $20 straw Fedora

That I’d got at a 7/11 one summer,

So you can kind of see how

Things were working out.

.

I picked the right time to break off the conversation

And said “see ya,”

Strolling then back to my mom’s table with

I’m sure an extra bounce in my step.

.

When I saw the redhead later she was flushed,

Sitting with the boyfriend which was this huge dude,

Outside the stoop of the wedding at about nine,

Maybe waiting for a ride, or something

Along those lines.

.

It was going to be a long day the next day,

For sure,

I got the idea.

.

The wedding was great —

Or, I should say, the reception,

Which as I alluded to,

Lasted three hours and 45 minutes,

In comparison with the

Actual wedding,

Which lasted 15 minutes

(All of which yes I did miss for reasons partially my own fault).

.

I’d drank two Beck’s on the way up

And I had one left in the car and I figured,

Well,

It’s about time to get back to that.

.

I’d said hi to the bride

At one point, who was my cousin,

Said hi to the groom, with whom

I got along real well,

Greeted any number of relatives cordially and

In general found it a near flawless experience,

For all intents and purposes.

.

That redhead girl I saw was in nursing,

Which she’d turned to after waiting tables

At our bar.

.

Medical clinics and oncological units

Flooded our town like wildfire and

At weddings, the spiritual formality was scant and the

Alcohol consumption rampant.

.

Nobody asked why.

.

Nobody had to.

The woman and I both realized internally

That we needed some conflict in order to be happy —

.

That the being “friends” thing didn’t really work,

We both secretly hated our jobs,

Hated the clothes we had to wear

Into our jobs,

.

And we were both a little bit scared,

Too,

When

.

We drove across town passing

Boarded-up blocks and

Societal refuse with heat outside the gas station

At night.

.

We’d shout, then,

Shove,

She’d bite me on the leg and I’d

Smack her in places of her body

I can’t disclose, we

.

Got to body coating

Like a high school rite of passage

Officially endorsed by The North Face,

Then quit,

Then still hated our jobs we had to go back to

The next day.

.

I said to myself,

Hey,

I’m the king of my little

Fucking mole hill here.

.

So we tried being friends,

It was night in winter

And we both felt a sun burning

On the insides of us,

.

Perceived a red,

Bulbous ball arching up around us

With us at the excretory bottom and

The man in there was playing a harp,

.

It was a paean to death,

The death of the white man and

His blood running like sangria

Across the frozen ground

The same damn color, after all.

Oh, bad actress,

You emit a spiritual odor

That’s unapproachable

But I love you anyway

.

And it’s not even that I love you for trying —

I love you for how you hide,

For how you’re disappointed by Whole Foods cashiers

For no reason,

How you

.

Don a flannel shirt and jeans

In a Western town and

Can’t seem to find the appeal in the Fleet Foxes

.

And how nothing works,

For you,

You portraying this malady

With a conclusiveness so final that it’s beautiful and

.

Everybody knows you,

Bad actress,

Knows you well,

And I love you for that.

Once upon a time

Somebody saw somebody gyrating

And creating various

Rhythmic, physical mishaps in

No

Particular direction at all

And thought to

Themselves, this

Is an art, “Dance,”

And

So

An

Art was born out of

The absurd and the surreal

And the

Surreal encompassed the

Blinding generosity of

Baring herself to the

Stone, gluttonous masses.