The sky shat snow some more, and the coffee shop’s a colloquy of the damaged,
the alcoholically damaged, the neurologically damaged, and in comes Choo
Choo, the fat assed wonder, to wipe off his tiny spectacular feet. Oral B.’s
tugging at the waistband of the loveliest sweatpants this side of the Great Lakes,
and what? I’m sounding more like Denis Johnson than I’ve ever sounded like
myself. Just another butt day at the margins of the world. Is it any wonder that
we feel like we feel when they put the Adult Book Gallery dead smack in the
center of things, high inside the choir loft of the First Church of Christ, and even
the fratboys drop their irony in the mud at the bottom of the lake. The trick is to
keep on laughing. You said it yourself when you said it was too late for a good
wink, then proceeded to go ahead and do so. Expertly, I might add. Mother, my
name is Paul, and though we once had more than a passing acquaintance, we lost
ourselves along the way, far from our vivid ocean, on the bus route northeast of
Owego. The right hand doesn’t talk to the left. Nothing we do appears to
matter, and when we try to make it to the end of the sentence and can’t, we get
indulged for it. Of course you’re a little frozen, their faces try to tell us, because
we brought you here. Frankly, I’d prefer some censure, a kick in the pants, an
old fashioned slap upside the head, but good luck getting anyone to see us. In
the meantime we have these balls of solder rolling around inside our brains. Are
you with me? The lights turn off in the valley, one by one by one. Heat’s
something we could use a little more of, what with words that far away.