DECEMBER
1997 CINCINNATI, OH
I was a model inmate: quiet,
humble, and amenable. After all, I simply wanted out....
That’s also why, night
after night, Ricardo would stretch both of our pillows across
his forehead and over his ears, as I reached for an emery
board. He had laughed at me early on, my cellmate had, and
the first night I remember turning to him and asking, “What?
You never saw ‘Escape from Alcatraz?’”
But that was three months ago.
And at least twice as long since my swinging out of bed to
pick patiently at the concrete made anyone but me laugh....If
only because I was getting there.
APRIL
1993 SAN FRANCISCO, CA
I had had enough. The romantic
life looked good on paper, but the reality of it I now recognized
as being a tremendous pain in the ass. I couldn't deny this
any longer, and the youthful exuberance that I had brought
with me to California had been replaced with exhaustion and
a sharp need to hibernate.
I was tired of working for five
dollars an hour while paying six hundred dollars rent. Tired
of going to college in my “spare time.” Tired,
in some sense of the word, of snorting crystal meth daily
because it was more prevalent than food, too.
Besides, regardless of how exciting
it was at times, there were indubitably some severe flaws
with our relationship. I, for one, was only twenty-two: immature,
confused, and selfish to the core. She, on the other hand,
had those issues specific to growing up too fast in California.
Either way, things were winding down between us; we knew it
without saying as much.
Nonetheless, as I drove our
sole vehicle to work, her head remained in my lap, her right
hand spiraling about my neck. “I don’t even know
where I’ll be in ten years,” she sighed at one
point. “And what’s worse, I don’t even know
where I want to be.” We sat at an intersection.
Not knowing how to respond, I did the safe thing and asked,
“Well, where do you think I will be in ten
years?”
She didn’t answer at
first, so I repeated myself....
“I heard you,”
she snapped, “just gimme’ a minute to think it
over.”
The light turned and we crossed
the intersection. Then another. Then another. My sudden restlessness
increasing with each of them.
“Okay,” she spoke
slowly, methodically, “I say you’ll end up back
in Cincinnati. Where you’ll probably marry, have a couple
‘a kids. You’re writing will go well for you,
I think, and you might even have some degree of fame. Other
than that, I’m not sure; I guess you’ll pretty
much remain a vegetarian, although you most probably will
succumb to dairy sooner or later.”
And then: “Oh yeah, and
you’ll drive a truck for your dad’s company.”
APRIL 2005
CINCINNATI, OH
I had been celebrating with
a couple of co-workers. Watered-down beers at first, but then
some Jameson chilled. After all, it was my celebration.
Still, I did have to go back
afterwards, to clean out my desk. That, and check in on my
boys one last time.
I had been working there, in
different capacities, for over a decade. And, sure, I had
left before. Once to travel Europe. Later, in a failed attempt
to move to New York. But that had been seven years back, and
in the meantime, I had gone from an eight dollar an hour warehouseman
to nightshift supervisor to, the year before, co-owner....All
this while I desired nothing more than to leave.
For a great stretch, though,
such a thing seemed impossible. Credit cards, bars, artistic
and—more truly—recreational pursuits
saw to it. All the same, the longest running joke in the joint
was about to end. My dream of a writer’s life deferred
far too long, all that remained now, really, was Goodbye....
JUNE 1990 ABOVE
THE CLOUDS
I had a few thousand dollars
but very few plans. They numbered three, to be exact.
First, I would visit my good
friend and cousin, Kevin, who had a couch I could crash on,
in Los Angeles. Following a few months there, I would then
move to San Francisco, which at the time I believed to be
a literary Mecca incapable of flourishing in full until my
arrival....This despite the fact that I had written very few
poems, and read probably even less.
Last, and most importantly,
I wouldn’t work for 365 consecutive days, regardless
of what transpired in that time. No matter what.
Like almost every other lower middle-class kid my age, I’d
been riding on the school/work treadmill since the age of
fourteen, and as such I attributed my puny literary output
to this and one other fact; namely, that I lacked resolve
and the willingness to sacrifice for my art.
Thus, I’d earmark each
day with at least one poem, again no matter what, and collect
them under the umbrella of my first full-length book, which
I tentatively (and not so creatively, I might add) titled
365. Not wasting a moment, I wrote the first of them on the
plane, even:
Above the Clouds
it is blue.
just left behind
all the pools.
don’t
know where I’m going
but sure know where I’ve been
and that wasn’t
that good.
NOVEMBER 1990
LOS ANGELES, CA
The mix of being away from home,
knowing no one other than Kevin, and being unencumbered by
work—sprinkled with a youthful hubris—allowed
me to actually see through my first resolution ever. Not to
mention the fact that, whatever its faults, one can’t
deny L. A. as a treasure chest of stories.
Besides, it was a cheap form
of entertainment. One, I noticed, I got better at the more
I practiced it. And before long, I found myself writing six
or seven poems a day! My virility increasing exponentially,
I then branched out to fiction, screenplays, novellas, even
lyrics....You name it, I did it.
Output became such that I had
to find somewhere to put the damn things....As a result, I’d
spend a couple of hours each day reading literary magazines
and sending them submissions. Then, at night, it was off to
the poetry readings....Where—a few weeks into it—I’d
pick up a local zine and be both surprised and miffed to find
that I was in it. At this rate, I began to believe, I’d
need never work a real job again!
Fact was, though, I was incredibly
lonesome. My girlfriend back home having shit-canned me, I
hadn’t so much as talked to a woman while in
Los Angeles—at least not one that wasn’t charging
me by the minute or hour—and I’d been living there
for seven plus months now. There was a moment even, while
at a bus stop, that I spied a pair of thong underwear in the
gutter at my feet....I looked around, saw no one was in ear-shot,
and actually struck up a conversation with it. That
lonely.
I would have escaped Los Angeles’
anonymity, too, if I could have. But shortly after my arrival,
Kevin, who made a living as a motorcycle messenger, broke
his wrist in an accident and was suddenly unemployable. He
couldn’t pay the rent, so I did, in exchange for living
there indefinitely, rent-free, so to speak. Until he could
pay me back, of course. At which time I could jettison to
Frisco.
To make matters worse, the bastard
got himself a girl and spent most of his time at her much
more posh of a pad. I couldn’t blame him one bit. Not
even when the phone was shut off. Nor the electricity, for
that matter. I mean, how could I? When no one knew loneliness
better than me.
Things were rough, no doubt,
but the poems and stories kept coming unabated, saw me through.
I remember one particular night, while sitting under candlelight
no less, I opened my mail to find that two of my poems had
been accepted into The Quarterly, which at the time had the
highest circulation of any literary publication, not to mention
the fact that I actually liked that damn rag. Every
plague fell away immediately, then, as I did a thanksgiving
dance around the darkened kitchen table. Goddamn,
I thought, there’s no stopping this train now!
Enter Aundré.
I knew her, barely, as the girl
next door. Not by sight, or name even, as I had merely listened
to her—and her boyfriend—fuck in the complex next
to me on occasion. At first, there was a lot of spanking and
things of that ilk, which excited me immensely, and so for
a few months my sex life consisted of jerking off on the balcony
whenever those sounds would be kind enough to drift in and
beckon me. There was just the slightest of tears in their
shade, too, so that one could see a spot of flesh every now
and then. But, mostly it was a purely aural form of stimulation....
For a while, anyway. Because
not long after this introduction, things began to change.
The woman’s moans turned into something much less arousing:
shrieks, and screams. This while the man’s sweet nothings
dipped down to, “I’ll kill you, you cunt!”
Soon, what was at first a rare occurrence began to happen
weekly, and even at that age I wasn’t too naive to guess
what would be next: 24/7, the ante and concomitant violence
escalating rapidly.
I felt helpless, of course,
but at this point I had yet to so much as lay eyes on either
of them, not truly. And, anyway, after a few months of this
crap, I wished that they’d just get it the hell over
with and kill each other, you know? I mean, I’d be sitting
there with my pen, trying to concentrate over the din, or
forget what I had just heard, and even if I was successful,
I couldn’t help but be confronted by my art’s
sheer impotence. Suddenly, I had nothing. No heat, no friends,
no light, no food, no fire.
A few nights later, while sitting
at the kitchen table, I happened to look over and realize
that I wasn’t alone, that someone was watching me from
their kitchen window: a woman, with dirty blonde hair, and
a prettiness buried beneath her obvious distress.
“Isn’t this the
funniest?” she asked, smiling and tossing something
onto my balcony. “I picked them up at the store, without
looking at ‘em,” she explained, walking away from
the window and out of view. I went to the balcony and picked
it up. Was confused to discover it was just a roll of paper
towels....I looked at them more closely and understood once
I read the fine print: “Home Sweet Home,” they
read.
And that night, when the fighting
started, I didn’t hesitate to pick up a large glass
vase and chuck it through their kitchen window. With no idea
of—or care for—the consequences, I stood on the
balcony and listened. Was surprised to hear something approaching
silence. And even more shocked by the sight, a few moments
later, of a stringy-haired beanpole of a man charging out
of his garage and speeding away on his Harley.
We moved her in that night.
And, as luck would have it, things didn’t work out between
Kevin and his girl, so just like that there were three of
us....He didn’t blame me, either. Even when, in retaliation,
his windows got busted out.
Besides, that was small potatoes
compared to the number he did on Aundré’s car.
He smashed her windshield in and slashed all four tires, effectively
immobilizing her and solidifying her status as my new roommate.
I implored her to fill out a police report and force some
resolution. Once there, we found out that he had threatened
to kill a cop while arguing on the phone; as a result, they
wanted him, bad....They had me fill out a report
as well, for the busted windows and as a witness to his abuse.
And a few weeks later, exhausted by both his persistent knocks
at the door and his ability to avoid the police,
I had the honor of serving him up to them after pretending
that I was his friend. He deserved it.
The days dragged by and, just
when you thought it would never happen, the night before his
day in court arrived. Aundré, inexplicably, was experiencing
a change in heart. She didn’t want to see him in jail,
and thus was refusing to testify. Problem was, I still could.
And, as such, while attempting to sweet talk me into letting
bygones be bygones, I hit upon a compromise that I thought
would satisfy all involved parties: I won’t testify,
I told her, provided he pays me a thousand dollars before
I board the bus tomorrow, in cash. Which he did,
promptly.
That next morning, in lieu of
bus fare I bought a four hundred dollar car instead, off Kevin’s
ex, no less. Then, I informed Aundré I was leaving
for Frisco, after the weekend, as per my original intent.
Hell or high water. My plan, if you could call it that, was
to get a rooming house for as long as possible and finish
my goddamn book. It was May, two months of my personal contract
remained unfulfilled, and thus a job was still out of the
question. An American in California,
as I was now calling it, weighed in at a measly six hundred
pages but was still in need of an ending. I’d do it
from inside my new car, if need be.
MAY
1992 SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Aundré, at first, seemed
to understand. She had never lived, as an adult, ten miles
from Venice Beach, and her friends, whom of late she had made
a point of seeing again, would be hard to replace. Then, as
the day approached, she suggested that she come. Flattered,
I nonetheless said no, reminding her that although I did care
for her deeply, I wanted above all to see this thing through.
The night before, she insisted.
She could make it happen, comfortably, for both of us, she
said. Her grandparents, who had raised her for much of her
life and who were somewhat wealthy, would help her come up
with the three months’ rent required, as well as the
fourth that would be necessary for a dog deposit.
We packed the car. Stayed at
a hotel until we found a place....A beautiful—albeit
expensive—place, on Blake St., just off Geary. Sure
as shit, Aundré and her grandparents came through with
the $3200 as advertised, and suddenly my book was heading
in an altogether more fashionable direction. After June 21st,
a year from the day I arrived in California, it was understood
that I’d look for a job. A fact I did not mind one bit,
especially if it meant keeping this, the most perfect apartment
I had—then, as now—ever occupied....
Perfect, I say, except for one
nuance. Shortly after moving in, Aundré and I noticed
that every few days there seemed to be a dead bird at our
doorstep. A strange thing, really, as we never could find
a nest anywhere nearby. It was if they just fell from the
sky overhead. One by one, we’d sweep them up, often
enough that soon it merely became part of our routine.
One such time, after maybe two
weeks of this, I had a broom and trash receptacle in hand
ready to dispose of another carcass, only to glance down and
see that the thing was attempting to move away from me. My
heart jumpstarted with the realization of it! And the blood
pumping through my veins bore testament to the fact that I
had no idea what to do. Aundré was out looking for
work, I thought of the neighbors but I didn’t know any
of them yet. All I could think to do was sweep it up after
all, closing the lid as I ran up the steps....
Once inside, I lamented the
fact that we didn’t have a phone. And putting the receptacle
in our bedroom, away from the dog, I ran down the street to
a pay phone. From there I called vet after vet until one,
finally, suggested I visit the library.
By the time Aundré returned
home, I had already cleaned its wound, a puncture just under
its right wing, with soap and water. That, and I had torn
a pocket off a flannel shirt and wrapped it up. The poor thing
moved only sluggishly, wiggling on its belly, while its heart
raced at what must have been an unnatural rate. Aundré
went out in search of worms, none of which it ate. That night,
I couldn’t sleep; I just kept looking to my left at
the strange box in the corner, wondering if it would still
be alive come morning.
Nor did I mind, once there,
being awakened by the sound of its muffled mew of a chirp.
I stayed with it while Aundré took off to the pet store,
bringing back a birdcage. We hung it in the front window and
hoped for the best.
In the meantime, Aundré
hunted for a job while I continued to concentrate on my poems.
I had the better luck of the two. Frisco’s job market
was fierce, apparently, and not having a phone probably didn’t
help any. To make matters worse, Aundré, it seemed,
had the propensity to drown her sorrows in either shopping
or drugs....In fact, for her they usually went hand in hand,
and as such, she always seemed to walk through the door with
both.
Truth be told, things were less
than stellar between us. She had no friends besides me, and
that guy was busy with his books. A fact that I felt
little remorse about, as I thought that point had
been made abundantly clear in advance....One day, as I stood
marveling at our bird’s rapid recovery, she cried, “We’re
not going to make it.”
“What do you mean?”
I asked.
“ The rent’s due
in a week. We don’t have it.”
“You don’t?
Well, how short are you?”
“ All of it.”
“What about my six hundred
bucks?”
“It’s gone. Look,
I thought I’d have a job by now....”
“I thought you didn’t
need a job by now.”
“It’s that goddamn
dog’s fault, you know....800 bucks, don’t you
find that fuckin’ ridiculous?”
That next morning I bought a
paper. Looking at the want ads, there seemed to be plenty
of work to go around. In fact, by the end of the day I had
filled out no less than twenty applications. And, by pawning
my stereo, secured a phone. None of which, of course, excited
me one bit. But our landlord was proving to be something of
a loon, actually—Aundré had caught him peering
through one of our windows and berated him for it, and shortly
after that there seemed to be something amiss with our lease.
No payment on this, just the second month of rent, would most
certainly sink the ship.
The phone didn’t prove
to be too hot of an investment, either. So, out I went again,
this time to the only cab company that would hire someone
young as me. But sadly, I failed my written test, and thus
it was on to various and sundry male strip clubs. I mean,
men were hitting on me all the time, so I thought I’d
have half of chance there....Insult added to injury, I didn’t
get so much as an audition.
Nor did I write much. And the
few poems I did spit out were in a much different spirit than
that which was wanted or anticipated. It was around this time
that I decided to change the title, to Wrong-Way
Poems For One-Way Streets.
The only good thing going, really,
was my feathered friend, whose health continued on its upward
trajectory. To such an extent that, it became increasingly
obvious, the thing resented being in its cage. At certain
times, especially at night, you could hear it fluttering its
wings wildly and darting at the cage. Truth was, regardless
of the experience of having nursed something presumed dead
back to health, there really was no rapport between the two
of us. Thus, maybe, no need to give it a name.
Finally, the phone did ring.
For me. It was the Kabuki Hot Springs, wanting to know if
I was still available. It was a bathhouse and massage parlor
in need of someone to fold their towels. Pay was five dollars
an hour, the lowest of all the jobs I had applied for, in
fact. I would start my training tomorrow.
That night, I wrote my first
poem in some time:
A Prelude to Silence
winding down the
lullaby warped the
children stirring the
adults drifting the
badge revoked the
mirror empty the
night morning the
bird hoarse the
tenor without voice the
pen out of ink the
wick in wet wax the
music fading the
jack-in-the-box poised the
end of the beginning the
beginning of the
end
June
17, 1992
San
Francisco, CA
An unworthy one, at that, this
last poem of my book, and the first in some time....The next
wouldn’t arrive until much, much later.
That following morning, I walked
into the front room and stood in front of the bird’s
cage. It spun, fluttering, and watched as I opened the window
behind it. Standing on the couch, I held the cage with my
left hand and, spinning it, I opened the door with my right.
Held it like that in front of the open window. The only thing
that moved on the bird was its head, questioningly.
We remained like this for what
seemed an interminable time. Then, I hung the cage back up,
grabbed a shirt and gingerly covered him. As I brought him
out, you could feel him fighting in there, the slight force
of his wings testing my strength. I walked down the steps
and, opening the door, I stood in the doorway, not two feet
from where I had found him....
I unwrapped the shirt and, voom,
he darted off, up! Losing sight of him instantly,
I stepped out onto the sidewalk and fought the sun off with
my hand. Lord, there he was, flying like a goddamn
daredevil mad man....Circle after circle after circle, each
more joyful than the last! From the far side of the street,
obscured a bit by a nearby tree, then back into view and cutting
it close to the house, over and over....I watched through
tears, hard-pressed to believe the sight. It was as if the
little shit was thanking me, I tell you! I stood there, my
hand shielding my eyes from the sun, and watched as it started
yet another circle by the tree and, then, suddenly, disappeared....
I ventured further out into
street to see which direction he had gone, but with no luck.
In any event, I was going to be late for my orientation if
I didn’t hurry. The dog hadn’t been fed yet, so
I went back inside, still mildly depressed despite everything.
I mean, what in the hell could be so difficult about folding
towels that I would need training? That’s what I was
thinking, anyway, when I saw my dog sitting beneath the birdcage,
and above her, the bird.
I closed that door, first. And
then the one behind me.
Our lease, nullified, two weeks
later.
DECEMBER
1997 CINCINNATI, OH
....When I finally broke free,
to the plumbing beneath, I thought it strange there was no
stench. I hugged the concave pipe with eyes closed and traversed
the maze through memory. And, coming to the sewer plate that
my father had someone loosen for me, I crawled aboveground
and lay there waiting for my eyes to adjust to this, a lesser
brand of darkness. I blinked them rapidly, giving them only
as much light as they could handle, thus simultaneously easing
and rushing them to sight.
That accomplished, I put down
the urge to run, choosing instead to walk quickly from bush
to bush, stopping at each. At about the fifth one, though,
I no longer moved any further. I bent down merely, and therein
rubbed my fingers through the mulch at the base of the tree,
searching for something....
Finding it, I raised it up towards
the night sky. Then watched, from my dream, as I clutched
the baggie in one hand, turned around, then started that agonizing
walk back to prison....As ever, out of the nest and straight
into a cage.
APRIL
2005 CINCINNATI, OH
Yes, all that remained was Goodbye....
Would that I hadn’t gotten
quite so drunk before having to say it. For, when I opened
the walk-in door to the warehouse, the blinding lights caused
me to take quick inventory: clammy hands, dry mouth, parched
lips. I high-tailed it to the bathroom in a vain attempt to
freshen-up.
Afterwards, I called for the
four men that I was leaving behind, four men with mouths to
feed, hobbies to indulge, dreams of their very own. And thinking
of that fact, for the first time perhaps, I grasped just how
much they probably hated me at this moment, if only because
I was leaving them behind for reasons that they didn’t
understand.
When I began to speak, the drink
and my emotions started to overwhelm me. As a result, I figured
it best to keep it brief. “Well guys,” I told
them, “take pride in what you do. Here, and everywhere
else.”
Then I shook their hands, turned
around and walked out the door....In typical fashion, having
forgotten to clean out my desk.
So, with five grand in the bank,
an income check on the way, and whatever I might get from
my unemployment, I was officially retired from the family
business....Without once, mind you, ever driving a truck.
Count on it. This time, things
will be different. This time you won’t know where
to find me....
MAY
2005 ABOVE THE CLOUDS
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