Peanut Butter and Saltines

This is not her.

I went this way when you went that. You see it's all the same to me, or so I want to believe. None of my friends will believe this shit I assure you, but I find myself once again in a professional limbo. They love me, I swear, or I wouldn't say it in the first place.

The decision never gets easier. I walk around constantly in wet socks. I have been making footprints through your house. Your mind cannot begin to imagine. I have 15 feet of loving and a half-tied nitwit who wants nothing more than to sit in the corner of your bedroom as you drift off to sleep. I'm good for something, just not good enough for that. You think it's a favor, and maybe in the "big scheme" it will be. Only time will tell. You've never wanted for anything, or so it seems. A family from Grosse Pointe, or one of the Pointes, automobile money to be sure. You drive a foreign car, a roadster of the cheapest sort, just to thumb your nose at them. They still love you. God and country can keep you together, and your house will smell of the sweetest potpourris sold at the most boring of shops.

I made my way upstream at half past midnight and looked in your window and you were asleep. Such peaceful sleep for so young, and at this hour when wolves silhouette themselves against the moon. A heart beats solo in the corner. I am making the crinoline under your skirt and it itches your sunburned legs like nothing since mosquitos in summer on a rainy night in Key West.

Speaking of Key West. I will be staying there for the summer on a friend's couch. It's a pullout and I will have to take my own pillow. I will lie naked, my body spilling out in the different directions - Atlantic, Pacific, Ursa Minor... He says that jobs are plentiful and the air is hot. My arthritic legs will weather well here. I know I never make any sense. You've said that more than once and so I will say it here just so everyone knows your thoughts.

Sooner or later there will be one million dollars in a safety deposit box and we will do the subterranean rescue. Jeremy and I are buying the Atlanta Braves you know. You thought it was all a hoax, but we've got the "silent partners" and the Series is ours.

I love the last time you spoke to me in whispers as we were naked on the floor and talking in secret tongues - both of us on our knees, yet you still sitting in my lap. All of that has changed now.

I do headstands on pillows made of Turkish wool, and you howl at male ballet dancers with cod pieces. They are cod pieces you know, and you are not so deep yourself.

I fixed your well that November when it froze over and you were happy to have the water again. I rewired your studio like it was your heart... you always loved that dad was an electrician - he can remove your shorts. I did a cartwheel when I first met you.

Tomorrow I am shaving it all off. The hairs, the nails, the hairs on my hobbit toes. I will be free. There will be truth for a while. I missed you most while you were up North. In that place. One of two that have ever elected socialist mayors. Strange in that way if you really think about it all.

All things become one, but I feel like nothing. Jeremy will write something soon to bring levity to this whole forum. But for now, I cannot figure out, in my heart of hearts, for who this love letter is intended.

Distortion

Waveform of my distortion.

This is for making babies. My mother was half indian. I'm going to Memphis in the spring. Gonna see Graceland. I know babies and I know you. Can you hear me when I speak like this. I'm going to ride off into the sunset. Make a thousand mistakes. I'll see you on the flipside. On the flipside is the best song. There are voices and then there are voices. Tonight is the first night. I've been around the world and back. I played Black Sabbath at 78 speed and I saw god. The first time I saw god I was 14 and at a coffeeshop. When the wind blows over yonder hills we're all gonna be alright. You lived in the house on the corner up on a hill. I thought about you tonight only 17 times. I am sleeping tonight with the whale. Please please me. All I'm saying is give me a chance. Saddam is the celibate one. I got things to give. Give it to me. I thought about making 15 asses out of myself tonight. I feel like sleep and yawn and 64 other things that I dare not list here. I don't wanna hold you close. I'll just hold you responsible. How did I get mixed up in this. I went to the market for two slices of bread. Daddy worked the railroads during June. I thought I saw you last night walking under the moon through the park toward his house. She's fresh with baby in belly. I've made serveral other mistakes in just the past two minutes. My lungs are swelling. I am swelling. You will never understand. I've taken out a loan for the remainder. One of everything in the vending machine called life. I am an insanity magnet. I am attracted to the bottom. Algae eater. What of it. Make a smile if you feel it right now. Please please me. I thought about it once for a few minutes. It may make a difference in your life. I might make a sudden sound but don't think anything of it. I am walking across the park. I made a mistake. I find the right thing at the wrong time. Your eyes will see the skies of SF. I am completely different now than I was two minutes ago. This is all about me. This is all about you. Write on the back of your hand and then do dirty things with it. Jesus was a revolutionary. I'm making my way back to the bat cave. Scale buildings prostrate. I think you were a good thing. This is goodbye. This is not goodbye. Say it now. When you say it say it loudly. This could work out. When you say it say it at the top of your lungs!

I believe that lovers should be chained together.

Let the Mad Run Free

Our best effort at a photo of the pink lady.

Take a walk through this honied city, meander down its crooked alleyways and passages, languish in the smoky crepuscule of its ancient hostelries, and you will begin to know its heart.

I saw the Pink Lady a couple of weeks ago. She was stood on the High Street shouting at passers-by, body pitched forward, finger pointing in admonition. Slaver sprayed from her turgid, fish-like lips as she turned on a cyclist: "You're going to fucking die." He sped by too rapt in thoughts of getting home to realise he was the damned one. I could hear her ranting still as I passed over Magdalen Bridge. But she was right: he is going to die - we all are.

A few days later I saw the Envelope Man carrying his plastic shopping bag full of dog-eared letters. He wasn't on the bus or walking down Cornmarket Street where I usually spot him - he was in W.H.Smith's, enquiring about filing systems. The assistant was being very polite and taking his potential custom quite seriously, even though he must have known that a man with long greasy hair, a tangled beard, filthy anorak and Jesus sandals who has lugged this same bundle of mail around town for the past ten years, to my knowledge, is unlike to have undergone a road-to-Damascus experience and decided to invest in a set of lavender box files. I left clutching a birthday card for my brother.

Then yesterday I saw Beaver Man. Beaver Man could be homeless, an alcoholic or just a bit of a hippy. He does not argue with street furniture or rifle through litter bins; he doesn't wear a wedding dress when visiting the cinema or run through the city streets half naked with a crazed and hungry look in his eye. No, his distinguishing feature is his hair: although he is white, he has the most amazing and shocking dreadlocks. They hang down to his shoulders all around his head, that is, except at the rear, where a vile-looking wad shaped like the tail of a beaver hangs to the middle of his back. That's Beaver Man.

Whiksey

Whiksey

You see, that's the problem. The first whiskey of the night makes me feel like I am in love. It overcomes me from the pit of my stomach, rising in flightiness to my head and I swoon over the 9 volt battery sitting in the corner. But, the last whiskey of the night makes me feel heartsick, and I know that feeling way too much. Like I am somehow rotting inside, and that there is no way that you would ever take me, or take me back.

I arose this morning at 4 AM to try to get out with the camera when the morning light was good and to see the world like I hadn't seen it since I was swimming in high school. To make sense of this city when it moves more along the pace of the place where I grew up. Residual whiskey in my bones, like a dead lover, weighed heavy on my mind and the only photos I could find, which seemed beautiful to me at the time, were ones on the shadowy sides of buildings, perhaps the peek of sunlight around a corner, but no more.

I went to bed with thoughts of you, and I awoke with you still standing there in the corner of the room. An apparition of light and darkness all tied up into one little mess. It was not you I assume, as you were across town, the continent, or somewhere else as your alibi would prove - but a bundle of tied miscellania - earrings, one sock, a hairpin - enough to conjure the spectre.

There's a dream that I have had, and had again, that seems to be unwilling to let me go. A hyperactive kid jumps in and out of a pool in a NC summer. I walk around the pool patrolling until my heart falls out of my body and into the water in the deep end and the tike swims down, sits on the bottom and eats it in a matter of two bites. My therapist knows nothing of this and I would rather keep it that way. I know it says something about me and you, or the apparition of you in the corner of this room, as I watch the war tonight, and try to drift ever so silently into slumber, and dream a little dream... dream, dream, dream.