i was in the beer line during the seventh inning stretch

i have finally climbed out of a nine week long whiskey sour. i have worked on a few new items for those of you who care. which looks like not many since no one has left any hate mail comments about my whereabouts. and as any good american knows the great game of baseball has started and you will find the rangers only a game out of first place, as poorly as they have started. i can tell you only this. i have moved into a three bedroom house with the woman i am going to marry, been to nine baseball games, wrote some new poems, losing a great friend to the city of san antonio next week, consumed vineyards of red wine and like i said got lost in a huge whiskey sour. and with that some new poems, some reworked poems and such. but first a baseball quote that should have been left on opening day.

"there is no sports event like opening day of baseball, the sense of beating back the forces of darkness and the national football league."

author george vecsey




the art of drowning

i cannot see you from the next room
but i can hear you
whenever you cry in the bedroom late at night
or when you set your diet coke down on the coffee table

i am not thinking of how late i am running this morning to work
with no conceivable way of reading the morning paper
or a short story by carson mccullers as her collected stories ride
beside me in the passenger side seat

today i think of you my own personal version of virginia woolfe
and good morning mrs. dalloway and how i am a thin as a reed
writer banging away at his typewriter
with his torn cardigan describe and move scenes and characters along

i wait, hunkered down thinking i'm hidden under pale, green corduroy pants
and a faded black t-shirt that reads "god bless johnny cash"
hoping to make a connection with you the way one might hope to be connected
by a long chain of handshakes to lou gehrig or f. scott fitzgerald

knowing this precise moment is the once every two months
where for a short while you you can no longer cope
and i take my arms and wrap them around you
hoping to take away some of the pain

hoping you know that i am fighting the depression with you



the dive bar napkin chronicle

i'm writing this hungover as hell from last night
it feels like an alley cat shit in my mouth
i sit at a bar at an undisclosed watering hole on greenville
it's 10:14 in the morning
there is spicy bloody mary at my disposal
and a bottle of aspirin in my messenger bag
bob the bartender asks "what the hell happened to you last night?"
i flip him off and tell him the world was going to end this morning
and to just serve my beer and mind his own damn business
opening a can of worms
he preceded to bend my ear
"i remember when i was your age. i'd be doing the same thing you're doing. diving face first into a hangover to piece together the events of the previous night. that's what i was doin' alright."
"nobody fuckin' asked what you were doin'," i said.
"sittin' in a bar before 11A.M. drinkin' with the other derelicts of lower greenville. you look like death came to your door this morning to relish in that hangover you got," he said.
"yeah, well i left a note saying i was back at the bar and to come back later," i replied

twelve hours later i sent my tab through and signed over my $43.50
a cab was called
i went home
and fully clothed i passed out
waiting for death to come knocking with roses in its mouth



tabasco on eggs over easy

it's funny some days in the morning
you pull out
and splash down onto beautiful flowers
below
then you go make breakfast and drink coffee


most of the time it's hard to find a friend

the sacrifice of inhibition
the sacrament of scotch
queen size mattress the alter
take off your clothes
this is holy ground


the girl who didn't like tom robbins style of writing

the boy was wearing a pair of saggy-kneed tan trousers
a holy blue t-shirt that read "jay farrar is my personal god" on the front
and light brown hush puppies
he had a big bushy beard that looked as a raccoon had passed out on his face
and glasses that resembled the style worn back in the sixties
usually a cigarette drooped from his mouth and tonight was no different
and his thin lips seemed too relaxed to hold it but they were quite the contrary

just as he stood there at the jukebox feeding it coins
flipping through songs of people he lived vicariously through
thinking there was a time that he had had a television set
and the last night he had it he was on the couch with his girlfriend
watching the foreign film channel
one of those subtitled deals where as soon as you finish reading the bottom of the screen
the pictures changed and right in the middle of a scene
she turned to me and said i want you to move out
at the moment a girl taps him on the shoulder and says don't i know you

the evening was full of shooting pool
him drinking cheap red wine and smoking non-filtered lucky strike cigarettes
and her being patient with his clumsy, foolish ways
as the night progressed he would recite her lines from books he thought she wouldn't have read
but she knew all along and played along because it was his way of pursuing
the late night had her driving him to her home because he was to drunk to drive
and she wanted company

stomping out the last cigarette out with his foot outside her house
inside she made him a turkey sandwich on wheat and soon thereafter
he passed out on the couch with a half eaten sandwich
she just giggled at his snoring, took the leftover sandwich, threw it away
and went upstairs to bed

awaking early the next morning, walking without briefly knowing his surroundings
not yet understanding what was left behind
headed to where knowing he could recover his thoughts
just after finishing breakfast lifted his two-thirds empty pack of non-filtered lucky strikes
from his pearl snap shirt front pocket and with it fell a piece of paper
he tapped the butt end on the table and lifted it to his mouth
first ones always best
stared at the piece of paper, put it back in his pocket
thinking we'll see the spectacle i made of myself last night later
after a nap he showered, watched jeopardy, read awhile then call

he thought the conversation went off as if butching an easy ground ball
after weeks of dating and generally wearing plaid shirts with a different style plaid sweaters,
vintage trousers and hush puppies she could tell he walked confident in lazy clothes
one night after consuming many glasses of red wine and she had eaten like fifteen christmas cookies at a party they went back to her place
after getting ready for bed
he read "when they were very young" by A.A. Milne
a prequel to winnie the pooh as she fell asleep
he whispered softly in her ear
you commandeered my heart long ago

and with that he got up and went downstairs to the kitchen
to eat the two leftover christmas cookies they brought home from their party


that sells for a few dollars at a time

look at the blossoming young flowers against the wall
standing under my spare art work
that sells for a few dollars at a time
they talk and laugh
and drink on daddy's credit card
a toast to them
what are they talking about?
who knows?
a promotion, someone's engagement, a life altering experience, nothing of importance?
nothing i care about?
bartender another drink for christs sake
and another toast to the blossoming young flowers against the wall
standing under my spare art work
that sells for a few dollars at a time


if i could i would flee the scene

so a few years ago i started writing
and without much talent
and writers need depression, anxiety, trauma to draw inspiration
but that's not my point

the wealthy keep artists around to amuse them
make'em laugh, they're eccentric friend
something like a fucking novelty act
folks will all explain to them

but they don't understand our kind
but the thing to remember is that artists are magical beings
and gods and artists are the only people who can grant another person immortality
live forever
and everyone wants to be like a god right?
whether they admit to it or not