Bought On A Road

This is what started as a free-verse poem that became a sort of epic. It's cut into parts, though the parts do not need to be read in any specific order.


Bought On a Road

I.
Giants walking, fiends talking hyphenated spells on wretched little ears.
I borrowed these flowers for you.
We all want to be discovered by the right people.
I want to be discovered.
This vanishing act is getting old.

Sunday I wrote a poem for our dead fathers.
We have these ghosts around us.
They shriek and moan and they tell us they didn't have to tell us it doesn't happen this way.
Without these verses the forest is just wood and chlorophyll.

Undying rest, spare my love this awful burden.
She knows not of the whispering you and I do and with a binding kiss such as this we will never grow old. We will never believe in another single thing.
It will be this and only this that makes us and the world and nothing in between.

But I cannot refer you to a clown who shares his shoes with a politician.
I cannot lie to you anymore.
It will be a hard, hard rain that falls on our heads.
Yours and mine.
Black is white and color is a mystery onto us again.
We won't worry ourselves with such sensibilities.
Instead, we've only this tangerine.
Will it last us all night?
Will the candle last us dear?
Don't tell me you love me again.
Our breathes must be still.
I have only the one match and you still have your corduroy dress to mend.

So did you see that great white beast rolling down the highway in the dead of night?
His knuckles as white as the headlights that lead him to that terrible place.
Where the ghosts leapt up from their chairs and shouted, "What the fuck are you doing here!?"
You and I aren't welcome here.
Their faces twist and contort like some awful circus side show.
We run out to the desert where the wind cuts our face and the sky is a cracked painting.
Your great-grandmother hands me a peach and asks me to recite your name in Arabic.
Again and again she says until my mouth is filled with dirt and Indians build fires on it.
They dance around.
Drums are played loudly and children laugh uncontrollably.
Coyotes smoke peyote and witches brew tea of Egypt.
And there, in the center of their madness is my father.
He is wearing purple stones around his neck and asks you to recite my name in the old language.
You open your mouth but the guttural sounds of the old language cannot be said by such a beautiful tongue.
He says, “Speak!"

II.
Now is my own discontent,
Where from behind panes of glass I am mocked,
As a stowaway on my own vessel.
I christened her in the beginning of this journey but I am losing control.
Again and again I am reminded that I must quit this life of the imaginary.
Return to my home in Glastonbury and be quick among the moors.
Dance, Prance, be quick along the moors, boy.

We die tonight.
I hope we die tonight.
With, Without this club of heroes.
Always arguing,
They laugh,
Always at each other’s throats.
Like wolves.
They feed on the weakness of our great uncles and our granddaughters.
It is nothing I cannot worship on my own.
What we were asking for were answers.
What you offer does not console us.

Someday you and I will cry,
A dehumanizing cry.
A tirade for tyranny.
A fulmination at fascism.
Our gums will bleed.
Our skin will crawl,
Up your walls.

I wrote you a letter on a leaf of paper.
How elegant it was, the way the ink formed letters,
Then syllables, then words.
It was my intention to fold this letter into a boat.
A small paper boat.
I could sail in the gutters, along the street.
The rain water could carry me to the heel of your boots.
There, I could dock my vessel,
And be taken up in your empty china hands.

III.
You and I,
We play these games,
Running around in Circles,
Until we are sick.
And we die.

And if you die,
You’ll worry me sick.
Spinning on the lawn, in circles.
Playing your games.
Wouldn’t I?

IV.
Hey Alan, You look like a Tuesday, you sure that tie ain’t on too tight?
Hey Alan, Hey man.
Hey Alan, You look exhausted way up there.
Hey Alan, Hey, Hey man,
Hey Alan, You know, we all miss ya down here at the pool hall.
Even Frank admits he misses ya.
And you know how hard it is for him to say that.
Hey Alan, Hey man,
Hey Alan, ya know Margery cut some Guido punk the other night at the pool hall.
They locked her up for a night but you know Frank and the boys bailed her out.
Hey Alan, Hey man,
Frank’s boy Tommy had a concussion at the game last Saturday.
They say he might not make it through the night.

On/Off

"When I was five
I went fishing with my family.
My dad caught a turtle.
My mom caught a snapper.
My brother caught a crab.
I caught a whale.

That night we ate crab.
The next night we ate turtle.
The next night we ate snapper.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale..."
Tao Lin

I got talent. I got a taste. My story "Thursday" was published in the University literary journal. I guess that gave me permission to go wild. I was looking down a road that could have ended me in my mother's position. I can't keep going on like that. There's something I need to be working on. I haven't had a drink in five days. What started as a pact has now become closer to an endurance contest. The smell sickens me. I think of that feeling in the back of my brain and the pit of my stomach turns. Whatever.

Yes, I was published in my University's literary journal. Which means... something. It means an audience of six credited editors found a story I wrote one morning as practice (a Thursday morning) worth putting in their simple typo riddled journal. But I appreciate it. It gave me the initiative to submit to other journals.

Last night I had a dream my significant other was unfaithful. I wasn't angry. At first. It was Halloween. I dressed as a vampire at a Church function. I thought this was clever. When she told me I remember I thought, "She buys me everything, why shouldn't she be allowed to see other men?" I'm smiling. I'm still dressed as a vampire when we lay on a hotel bed and I ask why. I got angry but a black man told me not to argue. He told me she was so good to me I had nothing to complain about. He went downstairs below our hotel room to a room filled with water where he was attached to a machine. He said, "I can hear everything down here." Fuck.