rover dover river rocks
picked up placed on
put down and packed apart
water springs again
falling on the flat
cold, blue and lifeless
leaves cleared, netting set
wire mesh above
a basin clean, full, black
noisy water springs high
but for how long?
eels and leaves shushed
branch sand
orange petal
ashen thorn
sad pebble
drum thumb
poked brush
moss beard
lotions of sea-ivy
trails out window shed
lapping splashes
rocks laugh

Little Splits

His intentions were honest now, finally.

"How long do you really wish to suffer?" Asked Robert. "That's kind of heavy now right?" He took a drag and looked up Vine, his car was calling, go home, laundry, mail that thing, call that guy, 20 other things that he wouldn't do.

"Yeah, that's good. I like that. That's good."

He thought about his day and the rest of the time ahead. At least it was sunny. The girl who was crying walked past both of them, head down, still crying.

"What's goin on with your finances?" Robert popped up.

"Oh shit, I don't know. Same thing, still chasing my tail- things are okay though- don't know why. I mean, I can't say really other than giving it up y'know? That's what I keep doin' and seems, well, still...still alive....somehow....didn't think so 4 years ago."

The trees canopied the one lane road, the hill was endless, it climbed and fell. The turns were unpredictable, there was no flow to them but this was a neighborhood so nothing made sense. People started building shit anywhere in the 70's. House after house, on-top of house, on-top of house. The stop sign gave them a few ways to go.

She stopped the car. Turned off the engine. It was a coupe, quick, stealth, she looked so fucking good behind the wheel. She flashed looks fast. He caught every one. He couldn't control himself any longer. She started it and then it all became a game of blink. Blink first. He didn't blink, he blanked and then snorted, "fuck...
"I wanna kiss you right now."

"No, you can't." She was serious. "Cause then we'll start fucking and who knows what that'll lead to."

That shut him up.

"Damn, I'm glad somebody's thinking."

A coyote jumped from the hill into the roadside. The coyote stopped and stared. The couple stared at the coyote. They all stopped for a moment and stared at each other. Then from the front left of the car, two more coyotes appeared and stood with the first, they turned and stared at the couple in the car. He turned to her and said, "I want to kiss you right now."

She looked at him and held his gaze and she too was burning in this moment. It was fierce, it was raw, it was animal, it was fucking sex coming at both of them. She opened her lips and said, "Someday, when we fly across the bridge on your bike...going 100 miles per... I will sit behind you and I will pull a chicken bone out of my boot and I will stab you in the neck."

He said he would welcome that gladly.

The coyotes were joined by about 22 other coyotes now. Some began to fight and bite
at each other but a group of them stood patiently....watching...waiting.

As he put his head down that night he wasn't aware of the fucked he had shrouded himself in. He was so far down the rabbit hole, he had covered his entire head in fucked....

All he could do was think about the distraction of her and how it might offer some sort of solution or some real fucking chaos.

But that was 4 years ago.

We couldn't have fit any more in if we tried

It was a Ford Econoline van, brown, '77, the year that punk broke...but this was '86, punk was dead, jokes were in, barely.

My father asked, "Can you get it in writing?!"

We welded the sliding door shut in upstate New York, Niagara or Buffalo, maybe Corning. The engine blew outside Greenfield, Indiana. The differential failed in Benton Harbor. Radio stolen in Joliet Illinois. Windshield smashed repeatedly about the head, neck and shoulders.

A brown van need only be brown and a van to draw suspicion...we were pulled over at least once every 6 days.

We logged mile after mile, hour after hour, endlessly for years at a time. We were not on the road, we were in the road. There was no end in site. Homer talked to us in our sleep. We lived in shadow, as ghosts of ghosts. No one wrote to us, no one could call us. We were living, breathing cartoon characters, swerving the soggy states like ding dongs.

New shoes and pool halls made me happy out there.

Yesterday, a sand hill crane made it's way to my back door in Los Angeles. My first thought was, this crane is lost. This crane is on a journey and needs to rest, gather some strength, search for food. This crane is strong and lean. It keeps me in it's view, head in profile, making sure I am paying attention.

After spending the afternoon with it in my small backyard, the crane made it clear that it was not lost. The crane was here to remind me of the past. The wind itself was not enough to remind me of Kearney or Lincoln or Fremont or Grand Island or Hastings or Valentine or Brule...of the spring...of the way the sun would shine on the pin oak trees in May.

It was loud in the cafe, ceaseless from all corners, louder voices, chairs grinding across on the wood floor, the door opened to street noise which clubbed the room, the glasses being put away behind the bar were like crashing cymbals, the lady with the cackle stuck in her throat, the table of 4 drag queens, the coked up host arguing with the manager about missing monies, the table of female softballers, the pecking chatter between the two bar backs from El Salvador. Constant. I wasn't there. I checked out. I wanted to be home in my one bedroom watching the rest of Video Drome. I wanted to get on the phone and crawl into her baby talk. I wanted more to drink. I needed to get away from my cousins who were from out of town, dressed like they were from out of town.

This tall brunette with perfect eyeliner poked me. I turned and could smell her, she was all done up and well out of place.

"My friend and I have a disagreement and we'd like you to decide who is right."

I immediately fall in love with her. I'll have the answer, whatever it is. I'm quick on my feet and hold a bachelor of arts in something from somewhere. I will be her answer man and save her from the droll troll she is chained next to.

I take a peek at him. Dreary dolt.

She says it has to do with animal groups, "Is it a battery of barracudas or a colony?" She thinks it's battery. Her follow up question, the key question, the question of my fate is, "Do you think there is any moral impediment to women becoming rabbis?"

She had me at barracudas.

She lost me at impediment.

I had no clear answer. My cousins come alive and begin to chime in excitedly. This is their first New York conversation, besides the one with our waitress from Ohio. The cousins give complete opposite opinions. I decide not to say anything. The chatter subsides and we all go our separate ways.


About 8 months later I'm on lunch break...sitting on a bench in Bryant park. I am reading White Noise, which is to say, I am re-reading White Noise, some of his riffs give my mind the hiccups.

"Do you hate women?" She asks with game-playing familiarity.

I look up.

"Goodbye Columbus." I think to myself.

"From the Orlin, downtown... a few weeks ago." She says. "DeLillo huh?"

We deny ourselves nothing. We carry on for weeks... months. Two years go by in a blink. On and off, we answer each other, meet, share in this life...all while living other lives. We can't help ourselves. We have lost control. We decide we're French and we're allowed. We indulge and forgive each other but never ourselves.

One day, she calls crying. We meet. She tells me that she has been diagnosed with leukemia. She's been told to get her affairs in order. I ask her what she wants to do. She asks me what I'm referring to. I say, "about us." She says she doesn't know. I suppose I don't know either. What do I want? What did I ever want?

He was clever but seemed to be malfunctioning

"Whaddya got- more puppets?!"

He was in my face. There were 7 people from Germany in the audience and he was armed for battle, somehow consumed with what I might do. Why so abrasive? Why was he threatened by lil' ol' me? This was like fifth grade all over again. Oh, right...we're in showbiz. Everyone is socially retarded...forever. There's no growing up, no getting out of it.

We became pals.

He lived on 2nd and A, just below. If he wasn't a junkie he lived like one. A studio apartment, shit everywhere, mattress on the floor, books, coffee mugs, Klipsch speakers that he cranked up. I was in high school again. He thought fast and talked faster. Engaging, challenging, self pitying, angry, always in pain or searching for it.

"Here, read this!"

I took a book he handed me.

"Let's go eat something!"

my life has taken on a palindromic quality.

“I seek misery.”

She did not actually know this though.

She was trying hard to remove thoughts and feelings of fevered pitch. Trying to reverse that trend. She was unaware. She was ignorant that she, was her own worst enemy. -Had no idea how to spot it. She just filled her pain with more pain or clothing or trinkets or witty, hurtful emails or characters she would put on over the phone or food she wouldn’t allow herself to eat or rigorous exercise or breathy acoustic music with the faint whisps of a harp or xylophone or travel or reading or some sort of distraction.

Her hair was straight, the skin on her face was clean, but there was a bomb inside her brain.