Patrick Fealey's Blog, page 14
November 18, 2012
DAVID'S LAST PARTY
DAVID’S LAST PARTY
drinking was in his blood
but when he remembered
his mother’s drunken madness
it kept him out of bars
the first time i met him was one night
i stopped by this used bookstore
in haight and fillmore where i worked
david was talking to the owner
i had a bottle of johnnie walker black
in my pocket and handed it around
david passed
irish parents.
irish neighborhood.
irish church.
altar boy. (the priest once walked back into the candles and set himself ablaze before the silent congregation. david put out the fire and the mass resumed.)
assistant to sam beckett.
trappist monk.
the monk thing didn’t work out when he called pope john paul II a fascist
david was also masturbating too voluminously in the shared quarters, his bed boards slapping while the monks tried to say their bedtime prayers.
he had wanted to be a trappist monk
but he did much better as an existentialist
writer.
aids volunteer.
computer whiz.
a painter’s painter.
a flaneur –
a nocturnal and alienated intellectual
who strolled the city by night
and then got up and drew and painted
the first time i visited his place i saw paintings hanging from clotheslines the length of his huge apartment
i was an art critic
and i had just entered matisse’s studio
later
david lived austerely
made it on social security
on sixth & mission on section 8
dyed his own hair black
shopped out of cardboard boxes
on the steet
rode the night bus home
to his stouffer’s meatloaf dinner
and gave niggers the utter contempt
they were looking for
then his aunt died
and he inherited $120,000
he stayed on the row
where he continued to step
over murder victims
outside his front door
but he started going to bars
mostly the same bar
cassanova
where a family of hip, famous, the hoping to be famous, and those with tattoos blossomed
for him
while he drank dylan thomas
more than once below a table
he did buy a new computer
new teeth
and visited me on the east coast
and took cabs instead of buses
always asking the cabby to stop
a block before
they reached his building
we’d exchange emails 2:30 a.m. western time
and he continued sending drawings and paintings of women
david had a masculine hand, but the feminine in his models prevailed
of several thousand works
there remained about 100
and i think this is what broke
his creative heart: he had lost his life’s work
40 years worth of paintings
to a storage place
for the lack of $85
i was glad he had made
many new friends
at cassanova
but i knew these people
were drinking first
and so was he
one bartender, margarita
sucked off as many
men employees at the
bar
as she could
and a sort of rivalry developed
between them
as well as a coke addiction
but she had a liver
that put her in the hospital
routinely
she brought david ensure and cereal
after that doc cut his intestine
and sealed him
to his death
by peritonitis
david’s estranged twin sister
a republican
who was repulsed by gays like david
and knew nothing of art
wrote me to say she had removed 17 boxes from his room
(including 100 pounds of our correspondence, which she was kind enough to mail me)
and she gave his last paintings
to margarita
his sister was perplexed
that she could find no cash in his room
and asked me for help
“where did david put his money??”
she said he could not have
spent it
not the way he lived
i laughed and multiplied
the whiskey and hustlers times three years
and all i could say was
“look in his books” – all 20,000 of them
drinking was in his blood
but when he remembered
his mother’s drunken madness
it kept him out of bars
the first time i met him was one night
i stopped by this used bookstore
in haight and fillmore where i worked
david was talking to the owner
i had a bottle of johnnie walker black
in my pocket and handed it around
david passed
irish parents.
irish neighborhood.
irish church.
altar boy. (the priest once walked back into the candles and set himself ablaze before the silent congregation. david put out the fire and the mass resumed.)
assistant to sam beckett.
trappist monk.
the monk thing didn’t work out when he called pope john paul II a fascist
david was also masturbating too voluminously in the shared quarters, his bed boards slapping while the monks tried to say their bedtime prayers.
he had wanted to be a trappist monk
but he did much better as an existentialist
writer.
aids volunteer.
computer whiz.
a painter’s painter.
a flaneur –
a nocturnal and alienated intellectual
who strolled the city by night
and then got up and drew and painted
the first time i visited his place i saw paintings hanging from clotheslines the length of his huge apartment
i was an art critic
and i had just entered matisse’s studio
later
david lived austerely
made it on social security
on sixth & mission on section 8
dyed his own hair black
shopped out of cardboard boxes
on the steet
rode the night bus home
to his stouffer’s meatloaf dinner
and gave niggers the utter contempt
they were looking for
then his aunt died
and he inherited $120,000
he stayed on the row
where he continued to step
over murder victims
outside his front door
but he started going to bars
mostly the same bar
cassanova
where a family of hip, famous, the hoping to be famous, and those with tattoos blossomed
for him
while he drank dylan thomas
more than once below a table
he did buy a new computer
new teeth
and visited me on the east coast
and took cabs instead of buses
always asking the cabby to stop
a block before
they reached his building
we’d exchange emails 2:30 a.m. western time
and he continued sending drawings and paintings of women
david had a masculine hand, but the feminine in his models prevailed
of several thousand works
there remained about 100
and i think this is what broke
his creative heart: he had lost his life’s work
40 years worth of paintings
to a storage place
for the lack of $85
i was glad he had made
many new friends
at cassanova
but i knew these people
were drinking first
and so was he
one bartender, margarita
sucked off as many
men employees at the
bar
as she could
and a sort of rivalry developed
between them
as well as a coke addiction
but she had a liver
that put her in the hospital
routinely
she brought david ensure and cereal
after that doc cut his intestine
and sealed him
to his death
by peritonitis
david’s estranged twin sister
a republican
who was repulsed by gays like david
and knew nothing of art
wrote me to say she had removed 17 boxes from his room
(including 100 pounds of our correspondence, which she was kind enough to mail me)
and she gave his last paintings
to margarita
his sister was perplexed
that she could find no cash in his room
and asked me for help
“where did david put his money??”
she said he could not have
spent it
not the way he lived
i laughed and multiplied
the whiskey and hustlers times three years
and all i could say was
“look in his books” – all 20,000 of them
November 17, 2012
how david letterman saved my left hand
HOW DAVID LETTERMAN SAVED MY LEFT HAND
i once ate pizza every night
bought $50 books i never read
and kept the fridge stocked with packets of coke
then i quit college
got a job
in an injection molding plant
second shift
pressed the same two buttons
at the exact same time
4,000 times a night
for a buck over minimum wage
out came plastic earpieces for glasses
and those plastic thermometers
people stick in turkeys in microwaves
the buttons were overhead
and about two feet apart
you had to use two hands
you had to press them simultaneously
for the machine to work
the design was to prevent
crushed hands, skulls, law suits, workman’s comp, any bleeding
that might occur
on their $1,000,000 machine
but i figured out how
by using a pen in my mouth
and standing on my toes
i could press the left button this way
and simultaneously the right button normally
(or the other way around, but
i think you’ll find most people
would prefer to lose their left hands)
i had the time
eight hours a night
five days a week
and headed nowhere
and in need of a ferrari
but i hung on to my left hand
i’d drive home in time for letterman
mom left dinner leftovers warming in the oven
i watched lettermen with the volume down low
because my father could hear a spider plant sneeze
i sat in the dark eating chicken
mashed potatoes, stuffing, greens
laughing
at letterman’s
first episodes
and it was like a shaman
had landed in my living room
the thing i liked most about letterman
more than his jokes, his grin
how he grilled guests or his band
was how he made not knowing
what the hell he was doing
look so respectable
i once ate pizza every night
bought $50 books i never read
and kept the fridge stocked with packets of coke
then i quit college
got a job
in an injection molding plant
second shift
pressed the same two buttons
at the exact same time
4,000 times a night
for a buck over minimum wage
out came plastic earpieces for glasses
and those plastic thermometers
people stick in turkeys in microwaves
the buttons were overhead
and about two feet apart
you had to use two hands
you had to press them simultaneously
for the machine to work
the design was to prevent
crushed hands, skulls, law suits, workman’s comp, any bleeding
that might occur
on their $1,000,000 machine
but i figured out how
by using a pen in my mouth
and standing on my toes
i could press the left button this way
and simultaneously the right button normally
(or the other way around, but
i think you’ll find most people
would prefer to lose their left hands)
i had the time
eight hours a night
five days a week
and headed nowhere
and in need of a ferrari
but i hung on to my left hand
i’d drive home in time for letterman
mom left dinner leftovers warming in the oven
i watched lettermen with the volume down low
because my father could hear a spider plant sneeze
i sat in the dark eating chicken
mashed potatoes, stuffing, greens
laughing
at letterman’s
first episodes
and it was like a shaman
had landed in my living room
the thing i liked most about letterman
more than his jokes, his grin
how he grilled guests or his band
was how he made not knowing
what the hell he was doing
look so respectable
birthplace
birthplace
dazedly i look into space
take a drag
exhale
a still life of
NO THOUGHT
i’m not thinking
too much
the silence can take you down
or make you grow rings
birds & flowers
always find me
unadulterated
& the same
animals come to me
without fear
for we share a failure
to acknowledge
the predicament
i met a moth out of the night
he was bigger than some birds
with red eyes incandescent
& firm
& independent
it tolerated my curiosity and excitement
it’s name was drawn on its wings
in a language which spoke to the sun
it never saw
dazedly i look into space
take a drag
exhale
a still life of
NO THOUGHT
i’m not thinking
too much
the silence can take you down
or make you grow rings
birds & flowers
always find me
unadulterated
& the same
animals come to me
without fear
for we share a failure
to acknowledge
the predicament
i met a moth out of the night
he was bigger than some birds
with red eyes incandescent
& firm
& independent
it tolerated my curiosity and excitement
it’s name was drawn on its wings
in a language which spoke to the sun
it never saw
November 16, 2012
guns & women
guns & women
i showed derek how to pump up his bike tires. reminded me of my dad, but the memory is thin and fleeting. i am not certain my dad taught me that but he must have it’s the kind of thing he would do. he taught me to ride two wheels. momentous moments with dad, seldom and sweet. he couldn’t push through. his mother, a witch. her mother, a witch. biting and depressed, these women were unaware that youth is sacred or denied it because they were self-centered and lazy. dad never transcended his youth with that mother. he is more like his ineffective father, who i consider a good man who married the most beautiful bitch he could achieve and then became a fireman who was never at home. grandma locked dad in the basement with dangerous objects in the dark where he stayed for hours when he was two years old. i wonder if he was born an asshole or nurtured to be one or if it’s not both. he could have been better but can’t we all be but he didn’t make much of himself. an overbearing and willful wife, materialism and bible thumping, he was smart as hell and dull as a garden hose, weakened and exploited by women. there could have been a man, but could there have been? he was mislead and damaged by women. when his brothers arrived, grandma was reconciled to motherhood. dad was her first and she failed him. she ignored me because i was illegitimate. she liked my younger sister. had my father been borne of my mother, he would have been more. had my mother been borne of my father, she would have been more. how a good match works? don’t ask me; i’m just a paranoid drunk with a .380 in my pocket and a cell phone that was forced on me by a girlfriend who says control is her thing.
two craps today and it’s just two o’clock. literature on the can.
some aversion from marilyn’s father, who is in frequent contact with her mother. he was nicer to me during and after his last visit than he was when he arrived this time. i suppose his recent visit has confirmed some undesirable traits. he doesn’t start conversations with me. he’ll look and listen when i say something, though. i can start a conversation with him. he accepts me, but i know that this time i did not try to hide that i was a chain-smoking alcoholic with no money and with the hair of an anti-christ. reports are flying back and forth! i’m dreading the next time i see her mother. the situation is close to abusive. time for new tactics.
marilyn got furious about my smoking the other morning. i was outside thinking and she opened the door and let loose on me about how i did not care about her and derek. i told her i care but that it was a habit and hard addiction to beat but i will quit and we reconciled and she said she was on me because she loves me so much. my dad got me smoking, i got me smoking, and i remember when it was seven butts a day and a friend telling me “it just becomes another thing” and it has become worse than that.
the neighbor’s chickens are making noise. these suburban farmers get on my nerves, stinking up the air and attracting rats so they can save on the cost of three eggs per day. okay, perhaps dirty noisy land-bound birds in a cage bring a measure of joy to some folks. i would never want to come between them and their rodents, sunny-side-up. marilyn talks about chickens. she’s had them before when she was a kid and became friends with some of them. she had ducks follow her wherever she walked. her best friend was a rabbit named peter who was so well-trained and humanized that he was kidnapped.
revolution is the only justifiable war.
keleigh has become more consistent in her emails since i told her i might be coming to the east coast. we share a legacy of the unfinished. i haven’t told her that my latest idea is not to go east to visit john or glenny. money is tight. i hate flying. glenny is a lost cause. and john? he’s a better man than me and i hate to let him down, if that is what it would be. i think he’d like a visit if it came, but he doesn’t think about it. john has not hurt me much. his one sin is tainting my word to someone i respect. i used connections to get him into a section 8 apartment in one of the most beautiful places on earth by saying that his crimes were behind him and that i had never seen him do anything illegal. my friend believed me and they changed their minds on his rap sheet and let john move in. first thing john does is import $160,000 in marijuana (wholesale) from arizona, fronted, and use his old connections to distribute it. but he was no longer the young smuggler he was 20 years ago and the stress of the operation caused him to drink so much he fell down in street on his back and couldn’t stand up. he had little oversight and enforcement capability and his dealers ripped him off. drunken every day, he sold pot out of his apartment. the traffic caused suspicion among tenants, but my friend, who was the director, didn’t report him. i accept that john just could not change his stripes and i should have considered this before writing a recommendation. he was otherwise good to me, better than everyone else in newport. when he tells his cousin patrick that i dated his sister – me standing on the street corner strung out – patrick asks, “when was that?” i had to think about it. “about 1995.” he says, “i guess i wouldn’t know when i dated someone either.” patrick couldn’t believe his cousin would date a loser like the one standing in front of him. felicia is the most respected in the irish clan. dr. o’hara, they call her, the international whore. short and superficial is how she likes it and lives and when she broke down and told me she loved me i told her to shut up. never in her life has she ventured into vulnerability and sacrifice for more than two weeks. it’s fucking on the go tho mostly she wants to suck your cock to avoid intimacy. they have strong irish blood and their mother was gracious and loving toward me as if she believed i was the one for her daughter. when i get really delusional, i think i can beat her into a wife through tough love. i would not mind the blow-jobs as much if i knew she wasn’t collecting semen samples from every village and country she visits. she is what she is and it’s take it or leave it and i left it. i have known deeper loves. another man might hold picking fruit off a tree as an ideal, but there are trunks and leaves and stems and especially roots, which i need and she dismisses. she makes herself a memory, not a presence. “you make it sound like all i do is give head,” she tells me. why yes. her personality conspires toward sex, not companionship. by this, she is required to move on quickly, sometimes returning after months, maintaining you like a pin in her cock-juggling act, always fast and new as she likes it. i knew all of this before i kissed her and i did not allow myself to fall in love too easily. i brought fucking back into her life. her m.o. was to suck off and be sucked off. “we don’t have to fuck,” she had said. “it hurts sometimes.” i took the fucking upon myself and she screamed the joy of living for two weeks. she was a tight little athletic chick with engorged labia. she wanted to see me again, and again, and again, but she didn’t want to see me. when she started saying she loved me, i didn’t trust it and loved her less. i know now that i may have lost something, but i mostly believe the kind of thing we had and she wanted is the kind of love that doesn’t last. she wants her life to be composed of those rare moments of joy. she collects them from here, there, and everywhere, and connects them in a chain. i was a link, and it was fine, but i never deluded myself into thinking i was a treasure.
cabbage moth, my breath weighs more . . . bombs, my pen weighs more . . .
the purpose is to never fire it. it sits full of imperative and threat, urging you on to a mistake unless you can tell a deer from satan’s loyal disciples. it is always the time of the assassins. kill the killers. thou shalt not obey the tablet that insures your oppression. dear moses, everybody is wrong sometimes. sorry.
so jess quit writing after i told her marilyn kicked me out for fucking a teenager under the altar at the episcopal church. i guess i don’t sound like a guy she wants to reunite with. times change! i don’t know which bothers her more, fornication or the fact that i might need a place. i tried to retrieve her with an apology for my crassness and a story about cats, but jess has never met me halfway. the old man and the jaguar xke with the incredible 13-year-old pussy, the notch worn into the bedpost. she cried when he showed it to us – “the beavers did it” – and ran out of the house. i first thought her tears were over the divorce, but then i saw. i said something to her and she said nothing, which was the most she could say. her old man fucked his daughter because she was stunning and there. we discharged into the same pussy and i am sure we both meant it in our ways. the old man never ceased to display his infatuation with her. it was sickening to see him stare and pet her. i was in love and ceased to show it after five years. she never met me halfway. she coasted on her beauty and my first love, which was not her first love. i accepted this until i kicked her out. we urged each other to climax after climax, but the burden was always mine. that one-percent she couldn’t summon and provide left me feeling one-hundred percent alone.
i showed derek how to pump up his bike tires. reminded me of my dad, but the memory is thin and fleeting. i am not certain my dad taught me that but he must have it’s the kind of thing he would do. he taught me to ride two wheels. momentous moments with dad, seldom and sweet. he couldn’t push through. his mother, a witch. her mother, a witch. biting and depressed, these women were unaware that youth is sacred or denied it because they were self-centered and lazy. dad never transcended his youth with that mother. he is more like his ineffective father, who i consider a good man who married the most beautiful bitch he could achieve and then became a fireman who was never at home. grandma locked dad in the basement with dangerous objects in the dark where he stayed for hours when he was two years old. i wonder if he was born an asshole or nurtured to be one or if it’s not both. he could have been better but can’t we all be but he didn’t make much of himself. an overbearing and willful wife, materialism and bible thumping, he was smart as hell and dull as a garden hose, weakened and exploited by women. there could have been a man, but could there have been? he was mislead and damaged by women. when his brothers arrived, grandma was reconciled to motherhood. dad was her first and she failed him. she ignored me because i was illegitimate. she liked my younger sister. had my father been borne of my mother, he would have been more. had my mother been borne of my father, she would have been more. how a good match works? don’t ask me; i’m just a paranoid drunk with a .380 in my pocket and a cell phone that was forced on me by a girlfriend who says control is her thing.
two craps today and it’s just two o’clock. literature on the can.
some aversion from marilyn’s father, who is in frequent contact with her mother. he was nicer to me during and after his last visit than he was when he arrived this time. i suppose his recent visit has confirmed some undesirable traits. he doesn’t start conversations with me. he’ll look and listen when i say something, though. i can start a conversation with him. he accepts me, but i know that this time i did not try to hide that i was a chain-smoking alcoholic with no money and with the hair of an anti-christ. reports are flying back and forth! i’m dreading the next time i see her mother. the situation is close to abusive. time for new tactics.
marilyn got furious about my smoking the other morning. i was outside thinking and she opened the door and let loose on me about how i did not care about her and derek. i told her i care but that it was a habit and hard addiction to beat but i will quit and we reconciled and she said she was on me because she loves me so much. my dad got me smoking, i got me smoking, and i remember when it was seven butts a day and a friend telling me “it just becomes another thing” and it has become worse than that.
the neighbor’s chickens are making noise. these suburban farmers get on my nerves, stinking up the air and attracting rats so they can save on the cost of three eggs per day. okay, perhaps dirty noisy land-bound birds in a cage bring a measure of joy to some folks. i would never want to come between them and their rodents, sunny-side-up. marilyn talks about chickens. she’s had them before when she was a kid and became friends with some of them. she had ducks follow her wherever she walked. her best friend was a rabbit named peter who was so well-trained and humanized that he was kidnapped.
revolution is the only justifiable war.
keleigh has become more consistent in her emails since i told her i might be coming to the east coast. we share a legacy of the unfinished. i haven’t told her that my latest idea is not to go east to visit john or glenny. money is tight. i hate flying. glenny is a lost cause. and john? he’s a better man than me and i hate to let him down, if that is what it would be. i think he’d like a visit if it came, but he doesn’t think about it. john has not hurt me much. his one sin is tainting my word to someone i respect. i used connections to get him into a section 8 apartment in one of the most beautiful places on earth by saying that his crimes were behind him and that i had never seen him do anything illegal. my friend believed me and they changed their minds on his rap sheet and let john move in. first thing john does is import $160,000 in marijuana (wholesale) from arizona, fronted, and use his old connections to distribute it. but he was no longer the young smuggler he was 20 years ago and the stress of the operation caused him to drink so much he fell down in street on his back and couldn’t stand up. he had little oversight and enforcement capability and his dealers ripped him off. drunken every day, he sold pot out of his apartment. the traffic caused suspicion among tenants, but my friend, who was the director, didn’t report him. i accept that john just could not change his stripes and i should have considered this before writing a recommendation. he was otherwise good to me, better than everyone else in newport. when he tells his cousin patrick that i dated his sister – me standing on the street corner strung out – patrick asks, “when was that?” i had to think about it. “about 1995.” he says, “i guess i wouldn’t know when i dated someone either.” patrick couldn’t believe his cousin would date a loser like the one standing in front of him. felicia is the most respected in the irish clan. dr. o’hara, they call her, the international whore. short and superficial is how she likes it and lives and when she broke down and told me she loved me i told her to shut up. never in her life has she ventured into vulnerability and sacrifice for more than two weeks. it’s fucking on the go tho mostly she wants to suck your cock to avoid intimacy. they have strong irish blood and their mother was gracious and loving toward me as if she believed i was the one for her daughter. when i get really delusional, i think i can beat her into a wife through tough love. i would not mind the blow-jobs as much if i knew she wasn’t collecting semen samples from every village and country she visits. she is what she is and it’s take it or leave it and i left it. i have known deeper loves. another man might hold picking fruit off a tree as an ideal, but there are trunks and leaves and stems and especially roots, which i need and she dismisses. she makes herself a memory, not a presence. “you make it sound like all i do is give head,” she tells me. why yes. her personality conspires toward sex, not companionship. by this, she is required to move on quickly, sometimes returning after months, maintaining you like a pin in her cock-juggling act, always fast and new as she likes it. i knew all of this before i kissed her and i did not allow myself to fall in love too easily. i brought fucking back into her life. her m.o. was to suck off and be sucked off. “we don’t have to fuck,” she had said. “it hurts sometimes.” i took the fucking upon myself and she screamed the joy of living for two weeks. she was a tight little athletic chick with engorged labia. she wanted to see me again, and again, and again, but she didn’t want to see me. when she started saying she loved me, i didn’t trust it and loved her less. i know now that i may have lost something, but i mostly believe the kind of thing we had and she wanted is the kind of love that doesn’t last. she wants her life to be composed of those rare moments of joy. she collects them from here, there, and everywhere, and connects them in a chain. i was a link, and it was fine, but i never deluded myself into thinking i was a treasure.
cabbage moth, my breath weighs more . . . bombs, my pen weighs more . . .
the purpose is to never fire it. it sits full of imperative and threat, urging you on to a mistake unless you can tell a deer from satan’s loyal disciples. it is always the time of the assassins. kill the killers. thou shalt not obey the tablet that insures your oppression. dear moses, everybody is wrong sometimes. sorry.
so jess quit writing after i told her marilyn kicked me out for fucking a teenager under the altar at the episcopal church. i guess i don’t sound like a guy she wants to reunite with. times change! i don’t know which bothers her more, fornication or the fact that i might need a place. i tried to retrieve her with an apology for my crassness and a story about cats, but jess has never met me halfway. the old man and the jaguar xke with the incredible 13-year-old pussy, the notch worn into the bedpost. she cried when he showed it to us – “the beavers did it” – and ran out of the house. i first thought her tears were over the divorce, but then i saw. i said something to her and she said nothing, which was the most she could say. her old man fucked his daughter because she was stunning and there. we discharged into the same pussy and i am sure we both meant it in our ways. the old man never ceased to display his infatuation with her. it was sickening to see him stare and pet her. i was in love and ceased to show it after five years. she never met me halfway. she coasted on her beauty and my first love, which was not her first love. i accepted this until i kicked her out. we urged each other to climax after climax, but the burden was always mine. that one-percent she couldn’t summon and provide left me feeling one-hundred percent alone.
November 15, 2012
central highlands
central highlands
my father found this town
on the edge of civilization
while searching the internet
for a moose head
for the living room
a trout for his pool
a blizzard for the yard
a raven for the study
and a bald eagle
for control of
jehovah’s witnesses
pick-up trucks
with rods bent in the wind
as the paint falls off their houses
while above
the great herons
hoist themselves
and the hardware store
will sell you a 9 mm auto
no questions asked
no license, no permit, no test
a beaver swims toward you
on the riverbank
and says, “oh, welcome to my home.”
the café sells you bottomless coffee
for 80 cents
deer sneak through your yard
at night
and say, “what are you
gonna do?”
this may be my auvers-sur-oise
where i do my best work
fuck a few whores
strain relations
with my friends and family
and then shoot myself
i wouldn’t mind dying
here
though
it’ll never be
a tourist attraction
my father found this town
on the edge of civilization
while searching the internet
for a moose head
for the living room
a trout for his pool
a blizzard for the yard
a raven for the study
and a bald eagle
for control of
jehovah’s witnesses
pick-up trucks
with rods bent in the wind
as the paint falls off their houses
while above
the great herons
hoist themselves
and the hardware store
will sell you a 9 mm auto
no questions asked
no license, no permit, no test
a beaver swims toward you
on the riverbank
and says, “oh, welcome to my home.”
the café sells you bottomless coffee
for 80 cents
deer sneak through your yard
at night
and say, “what are you
gonna do?”
this may be my auvers-sur-oise
where i do my best work
fuck a few whores
strain relations
with my friends and family
and then shoot myself
i wouldn’t mind dying
here
though
it’ll never be
a tourist attraction
