Barbara Kruger called about an hour before I was to go on tour with Jesus and the Mary Chain, “I need more words! I AM FUCKING OUT OF WORDS!”

She was stuck again. She had just returned from Japan after thirteen months of programming an electric fountain outside Tokyo, she said that words had become foreign to her, letters and symbols no longer made sense. I told her that was the place she needed to work from, but she only laughed.

“I need new fresh things.”

 “Eat some fruit,” I told her.

“No not pithy or metaphorical, all of that shit has sailed.” She was getting angry.

“No, I am suggesting you actually eat fruit.”

“Oh.”

“Hello?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry.”

She began to cry.
It was then that she realized all conversations with people she trusted could no longer be trusted. She felt that everyone was suggesting words; cryptically and consciously. Maybe it was time to move into some other format, maybe it was time to move into the small house. Maybe it was time to eat some fruit and leave all of the idea making to the idea makers.

So the next day Barbara woke up early and ordered a rental car to be delivered, put her bags in and headed out of town. She drove for about 3 hours, stopped at a service station and bought a Kit Kat bar. She stood outside her car when a young girl maybe 13 approached her.

“Burn it for you?”

“Excuse me?” Asked Barbara.

“Burn your wrapper? Trash? Loose papers? Nobody knows about it.”

The girl was dirty and feral. Barbara stared at the girl and sized it up fast, meth, homeless…but someone’s daughter…someone’s baby daughter at one time.

“I see what you’re up to.”

“Excuse me?” Asked Barbara.

“I said I see where you’re going with this. You’re not fooling anybody. Don’t be a jerk.”

The girl stared blankly at Barbara.

Onion butter was used frequently during the high holy days at the river house. In the summer they used shallots, some tarragon, bark from a milkweed if they could find it, mixed with a sprig of rosemary or flat leafed Bibb lettuce.

Gary walked to the market and smelled the smells given by the morning. He loved this more than anything the day had to offer. He loved being alone. He loved being alone on his walk. His mind quieted best during this alone time. He would begin thinking about what to wear, then what to buy at the market, sometimes his mind would jump around but it would eventually drift back to what was in front of him. The dog would come to him, scampering and breathing heavy, playfully as dogs do. It always wanted to go out when Gary moved toward his shoes. He would not pet the dog, he would not look at it. It was not his dog.

On the walk he would begin looking down, carefully watching his step. As he moved forward his gaze would lift and the road would spread before him a little further. That was when the smells would begin. The brush along the road was abundant, thick. The heat from the sun had plenty to do with producing the smells. Gary came to the conclusion that the smells from the bramble in the morning were slightly different than those in late afternoon.

 A grasshopper flew across his path. He remembered catching them with a jar back home. He and the Peck boys; Billy, Johnny, Jerry, Barry, Danny...some with nets, some with jars.
 Bees and grasshoppers.

Gary had no idea that simply taking notice of what was around him at any given moment was exponentially increasing his own compassion for everything around him.
Gary was clueless about Gary.
He had lived his entire sixty seven years with little notice of how he moved through the world. Gary had little regard for anyone other than Gary. He lived without regret, without shame, without caring how others perceived him or how his thoughts and actions might anything.
 He was unapologetically, Gary.

After chatting with the "Tomato Man," and the "Bread Lady," and buying perhaps more goat cheeese than he needed, Gary made his way over to the flower area. He rarely bought flowers as the grounds surrounding the house seemed to always be in bloom. He noticed the older Spanish woman sitting in the shade wrapping up some water crowfoot blossoms for a ten year old boy and his mother. He watched the Spanish woman tie the twine and smile as she handed back the change.

"Where does she live?" Gary wondered to himself.
..."She was someone's daughter once."

Four days later Gary put on his other pair of Merrell walking shoes, found a collar and leash for the dog and took it for a walk. As the dog sniffed and stopped every four feet, Gary reflected on the time he added some zeros to an anonymous account at a bank he clerked in, maybe in Kansas or Wyoming. He couldn't remember exactly.  He grinned, and watched the dog move away in pain after getting stuck by a barrel cactus.

She spoke spanish poorly... well, she wrote it poorly. Words like, "no tiende hoy quien Pedro, buene suerte con eso." She was a riddle. None of it made sense to him.

He thought about her brow constantly. They had a flame out. She was drunk, he was awkward and insecure, unable to read signals, he had a beard and hated himself. She was young. He was older and started remembering every small gift he had bestowed upon her.

It was a disastrous office party. He was swingin' hard and she was dodging, skirting, with a feminine guile the likes of which he missed in his own youth. The whole thing was spirited, easy and innocent. This went on for about three years.

She would tell him about the time she did that, and he told her things about things and stuff. They were both working each other from the very beginning.

And then it happened. He went back into the loud German restaurant to use the bathroom, she waited and Sydney took off.

"I ordered more tequila."

"Really? Uh oh..."

"No, it's water." She laughed at his look, she had tricked him again.

They made it about as far as the parking garage.

She gave in.
He gave in.
It all caved in.

Nothing was the same.

It's finally Halloween and my mother's home was selected as the meeting place for Parents Against Pedophiles, Predators And Proselytizers. There were about 70 people in our house, walking around, talking, planning, drinking punch that my Uncle Deet had made. Our cat, Sprinkle was under a bed or maybe up a tree in the backyard. I wished I was there too. I recognized Mr. Glosser right away. Glosser was my principal when I attended St. Mary's three years ago. I had to drop out because of my illness. I was still quite weak and no longer attended school of any kind and my mother didn't care. She saw that I was reading Will & Ariel Durant history books. She saw my initiative and didn't want to stand in the way. I followed Mr. Glosser around our house. He never saw me. But I saw him. He did something unusual. Unusual in a way that I've always remembered it. I carry it around with me like a locket. He would pick up little cheese squares from the dining table which was littered with pot-luck plates and smell each one, walk away, with a square still in between his fingers, walk out onto the back porch, check to see if anyone was watching and then move his hand down the back of his trousers and lodge the piece of cheese somewhere down there...presumably holding it there somehow. I watched his wingtips and the bottoms of his trouser legs and I never saw them fall out.

And again there came a thunderous applause. His teeth! -The ubiquity of his teeth had commanded them all to clap wildly. All but one. Caroline was raised to distrust everything. Her father reminded her at the breakfast table each morning, after she and her brothers and sisters had completed reading both the Le Monde and the Wall Street Journal, that "one of the great paradoxes of the human physical senses is that your eyes actually show you what you believe, not what you see." Dorothy Parker taught her, "Any story twice is Fiction." And it was Ben Franklin who wrote, "Half the truth is often a great lie." The charismatic row of teeth now stepped to her. The door was closed. He didn't look at her but stayed focused on the pad of paper and asked directly what she thought of his new reality show... "Stuck In A Tube?" "No," she said. How about, "Eat This?" "Brain Slam?" "Put Some Cheese On It?" "Tokyo Back Bend?" "Ass Faced?" "Your Mom Sucks?" "Stick it in my Eye?" "My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad?" "Whip Lash?" "Pole Pirate?" "Squished?" "Steal This?" -Steal This is very popular in Russia. She sort of sighed.

I'm about done picking up your things......Haiku #4340

the messes you make
become bigger and bigger
they are your messes

buried cake

Funneled whispers of fennel through the open sore
Called upon the scent again of that Little Tokyo store
Strolling aimlessly with mighty aim
Upon close inspection, methinks it needs salt.

Dirt park gifts, hills with stop sign secrets, wrist o tenders, creams, unguents and ointments, bathtubs, fogs, heads held so high, sharpened words, fighting sticks, dirt people dirt people, shellfish cactus, normandie normalcies, waitings, wonderthings, wonderings, wanderings...

Put on the ol' delusion disc and let it spin...

...at red lights, into the mirror of bits, past that one place and that other restaurant, that alley, that Ivar sidewalk- back to me...covet runneth over.

Saw it all come up in the reflection of the forlorn for lease carpet storefront, the one on Franklin just east of some other street.

Funny how it never goes the way the imagination makes it go
know'd tat, druid tat
too much time wasted on the ponder.
I'm a pander ponderer.
tre small thoughts that are best left to the past ether.

criss crossings, what if's, how 'bouts and contractions, up and dislikes; music, art, what is right, wrong, giggled and fat, none of it fits.

Shaking it, pick axing it through the bled blood. Scab upon scab bored scab...ooze still punches into the soup.