Sanity

I

In desperation, once, I traded my every passion for one shred of sanity,

And gripping that shred with both hands
Passionless I did wander.

One night the rain woke me sleeping.

I cannot hold both my sanity and your hair with one hand;
So madness overtakes me.

II

As I wander mad
My kingdom thrives.

All the pale yellow hills glow green again.
As do I.

At night that green flame swells to rival the void expanding above.
As do I.

And in the morning the oak tree stretches towards the sun.
As do I.

And the beating of a thousand wings overwhelms your senses.
As do I.

And the pulsing river is eager to fill the empty lakebed.
As am I.

And the ardent white pollen that permeates all else fills you.
As do I.

And the snowcap Sierras shine at a distance.
As do I.

And all the pale dead things that have rotted are new again.
As am I.

III

You would not leave the city with me
To chase the mountains east.

I did not understand what you said before I left.

But I saw the hysterical terror in you face
When I raved of the fire that consumes all.

Perhaps I am mad.

The fire you wince at half blinded
Is the same flame that binds us all.

And if you fear that pure heat;
There is no mercy from fear.

The Firing Squad

He concedes his feelings of yesterday. Stealing time for congealing real dream. The Dreamer is trapped by his own schemes. Preened in the sand. Beaming ecstasy sunshine.

“I’se striding the night divine,” is the last thing he says, “with moonlight homicide. Hiding in the sides, lines, and paradigms,
Then
playing the fated caged against their prison gates."

Braying wasted on just a taste of sedation.

Termination

He did not see for all the caution,
and went crumbling asunder
with machine guns
and dust.

Atrophy

Stagnant summer heat encompasses  me where I lay half-blanketed by shade.  The breeze brings with it the ease of opium smoke.  I grow ever heavier watching as the sidewalk procession before me passes as endlessly as a river, my eyes level with their ankles.  I name each one with the emotion they evoke on their way passed.

This woman's name is Desire.  The spikes on her shoes announce her arrival like a drumroll in staccato slowmotion.  Her smile echos her white clothes and her yellow hair billows in the wind like flames.  I sink into the ground.  She is a walking reverie.  Even music would fail to describe her.  Helpless, I do not deign to make her real by speaking.  When she smiles everything, even the very daylight, is irrelevant. I do not look away until she disappears.

This man's name is Paranoid Mechanophobia. Noticing the stiffness of his gait I can hear the pistons whirring in his head and the gears grinding their teeth in his clenched jaws.  He wears a steel-wool grey sweater and his slacks are blacker than a mechanics hands.  Not a corner contorts in his rigid mask, the android's stare is vacant of reaction to the street life he passes. He does not look toward the park but his head finally swivels to check for traffic before he disappears across the block.

This woman's name is Haughtily Discriminate.  Her dress looks like it was sewn from the drapes at her mothers house. She does not wear shoes on her black feet.  She has a face like a pink bullfrog whose bulbous eyes frown at the people hurrying past.  As a breeze lifts the thought of the wind on her slimy complexion makes me shiver in the sun light.  She drags a bulging bag at her shoulder that anyone can guess is stuffed with the sins of her past and future.  I can still hear the din from her toothless mouth long after she disappears.

This man's name is Stoic Respect.  His old leather shoes are as soft and worn as his aged body.  Kinky hair sprawls over his head like a mess of tarnished copper wire, here red, there silver, there black.  He wears a shabby wool blazer and faded slacks.  I strain to imagine the nature of the thoughts that streaked his face with such deep creases and of the irreconcilable disillusionment that has so exaggerated his tired eyes.  What books are in the small stack he carries and what myriad had he carried before. What unholy miracles and righteous crimes does he remember, while the rest of our race has chosen to forget. I miss him when he disappears.

This man's name is Pensive Boredom.  I recognize his shoes, they are the same black and white canvass shoes every passing schoolboy is wearing.  On his white shirt is an advertisement for its designer.  His eyes are as dull as his military haircut.  He walks with stiff motions of an automaton.  The conversation between him and his small group of clones has no rhythm to it. Not even a marching cadence, it is only a monotone droning.  Nothing is said in their sentences. Through their constant efforts to shock each other, their word lose meaning.  I don't even notice when they have disappeared.

This man's name is Pious Disgust.  His skin and clothes are greasier than the parking lot asphalt   He reeks at a distance.  Dirt crusted toes poke out from large holes in the side of his shoes.  He fills his dingy mailbag with parcels pilfered from the garbage can.  His skin is the same grey hue as his hair.  It is sagging leather that he has worn for too long. And I relax a little bit when I notice he has disappeared.

This woman's name is Lust.  From the hoof-like points of her shoes, her legs stand taller than me.  They vanish into a dress the color of freshly spilled blood.  Her breasts hang riper than any fruit could hope to be and even silk would offend her bronze skin with it's envy.  Her stride is submissively violent.  Devastating. Had she not tied her hair back, I'm sure that it would block out the sun.  And her delicately pointed eyes, the night is not so black.  I was so enrapt, I didn't think to call to her until after she had disappeared.

It will be late soon.
I slowly stand, stretching the atrophy from my limbs.
I am delighted when I see my friend the professor.
I call to him, rushing to relate all the lives
I witnessed today.
I tell him the names of the men and women who
I have seen this afternoon.

He retorts: "All these people live lives deeper than the shallow observations you've made in the few moments as they pass.  Some might seem grotesquely terrible and terribly ordinary but you  have watched them in vegetative stillness.  And after they disappeared from your sight they arrived at some destination with an anticipated aim or chance experience waiting for them. You have experienced only their passing.  Your only aim has been to lie in the grass like a corpse, dead on the war-field of a battle you didn't fight."

We stood staring at each other in silence for a little while both of us wearing guilty expressions on our face.  He apologizes for speaking harshly and invites me someplace that I do not go. We part in feigned politeness. And I go home to sink into a deep, tedious insomnia.

"I'm Gonna Fuck You Til You Love Me" at the iHOP Poetry Slam, at the Arlene Francis Center in Santa Rosa, California

This is actually three co-related poems strung together to make an entry into the iHOP Slam Poetry Contest. The first poem is Girlies, one of the very first I wrote.  The second is an untitled fragment I wrote about five years ago and the last is also an untitled poem that appears on this blog in January, 2011.

This is a Bad Poem

My original sin in presenting this piece is to speak it with a man’s voice, that

lacks both the music of a women’s

and the thunder of God’s.

Tonight I will bite and murder slam poet’s entire style at the same time.

I will say things just because they sound cool when they rhyme.

I’m a chrome-lightning, multi-paradigm wind-chime.

I’m the macho borracho that curb-stomped the Gestapo.

I’m a well hung, sprung-out, punk-ass bungalow-junkie.

I’m a man of the world and I’m a man of other worlds

And I’ve only been doing this rhyme-thing so I can have sex with girls.

Depicting a conflict which is self inflicted.

I spin my fiction out of vindictive friction.

I’m spraying clichés faster than gamma rays.

I’m braying inane, more of the same.

I stay extra lame, like a human brain.

But I might win the slam tonight, if I spit a sound-byte

So tight that the light-bulbs blow like your mind

I might be untrue, but kind.

I grind like a finey on a cocaine high

when Ride the Lightning comes on KMFY.

But don’t you see? That flow was weak.

I didn’t say anything, all I did was speak.

I embellish my pretenses at the

expense of making sense.

My words spew like light refracted.

I’m tactless, the wack-ness.

If these lines were meant to impact kids

And the revolution is back then

We need leaders to enact this

So that the poetry slam would just

be soap-box practice. 

This is how I make a slam poem:

I retrace my steps to something real

And I degrade it. 

I make it my rude answer to any unasked questions.

I only wanted to tell the truth for once.

But the truth is, this poem is so trifling it is stifling.

The subject matter is far too self involved and

My rephrased clichés are less fresh than a whore’s bath.

The vulgar word play is my ego masturbating.

"This is a Bad Poem" at the iHOP Poetry Slam, at the Arlene Francis Center in Santa Rosa, CA.

This is my parody of slam poetry. This is a Bad Poem.

"Three Regrets" live at the iHOP Poetry Slam, at the Arlene Francis Center in Santa Rosa, CA.

"We are the Orphans of the Dying King" at the iHOP Poetry Slam, at the Arlene Francis Center in Santa Rosa, CA.

Perfect

A perfect coin sun shone upon
the highest leaves and trickled
all the way down onto the grass
and our faces.

The river below was the cloudy
hue of water in a cup that a
painter has been cleaning his
brushes in. Aloft all the birds
chased each other. Squirrels
grabbed acorns and dragged
them into the trees that they
had recently fallen from. The
stretching flowers were politely
vain.
A spring breeze pushed the only
cloud away.

And then
the girl with the pretty, long hair
told me she loves me!

She Doesn’t Know

It is silent.

Her voice---like music resounding
Greatly---is gentle smoke in the air.
Yet it devastates me. She says,
“I don’t know.”
Airs of disdain point her nose.
Her eyes sharpen,
Lashes rigid.
Derision raises her eyebrows several
Degrees.
So I say something clever quick like,
“I think you’re going to miss me!”
Her lips are red-flower-petal coals that
Burn and lacerate my soul.

“I’ve no control,” I confess; pressing
Against velvet flesh.

Trapped for months and
Her limbs are pleasurable fetters.

Her hair---the scent of yellow summer
At its purest---reaches down long
Vines in which I contemplate inevitable
submission to entanglement.
Facing her, as I feared she is not smiling;
However stolidly feigning self-assurance.

But even still the dark points in her eyes rival
The mystery of the void at its deepest.

What she doesn’t know is that her face glows
So that I’ve grown slightly blinded to those other
Duller faces.

I lay down at her feet
In abject devotion
And she is cunningly aloof as she steps over me
And continues to walk away.

Label Murder

I am a masochist,
A pacifist.
I'm worthless.

I am a misogynist,
A chauvinist.
I'm flawless!

I am in disillusionment,
Full of lament.
The discontent.

I am a communist,
A socialist.
The arsonist.

I am the dillatante
That people want.
An idiot savante.

I am machizmo,
Pure libido,
A dildo.

I am a narcissist,
A nihilist.
Depressed.

More So

The ankle-high grass is a softer sand between their toes.

He wears white and she a brighter shade of red.

To her, as he expounds, his words are a plainer song
That he sings beneath the shadows of blacker clouds.

They can hear the river from here, but they cannot
See it.

To himself, he thinks her hair seems longer as he presses
The strands between his fingertips.

An infinitesimally small gap closes
Violently.

Trees rise higher around them.
The very chill of the air is sustenance.

She struggles not to imagine him
More so a hulking devil trying to
Disguise himself.

And passing that moment of first
Humble embrace on the unfurling
Trail:

He strains to not relate her more so
To a razor in silk.

Untitled

She has a waterpistol tattooed at the top of her hip

like a cum-target.

But I'm always overshooting.

I was aiming for her heart

when I came on her tits.

Running my hand through her hair

a hank falls out like

strands of her beauty in my hand.

Disgusted

I hit her in the nose with the hard part of my

forehead

until she told me to stop.

She didn't cry but she bled a lot,

Peering at me out of two perfect round sapphires.

And I even admired the way

that she ran away.

5150

I take a long pull off of my watery beer. Then, as I loosen my necktie, I wordlessly curse my boss and coworkers. There is no music playing on the jukebox. John the bartender just finished hosing off the thick plastic mats from behind the bar and is dragging them back inside from the alleyway.

I stare into my beer and I try to think of someplace I'd rather be, but my thoughts dwell on neighborhood trifles and my pensive outrage toward my draconian employer. I sink into my own lonely helplessness. There is not another person in the bar. To me, John might as well be a robot. We never talk and I don't think he likes me.

I nod to John as I walk outside groping for my pack of Newports. Placing a cigarette in my mouth I notice someone near the alley, leaning against the bar's brownstone facade. She's wearing tight bluejeans and a black sweatshirt with the hood up. Long blond hair pours from the left side of her neck down almost reaching her hips. She plays her fingers through it and I notice a white paper bracelet on her wrist.

I light my cigarette and feigning nonchalance say, "Hello."

She swiftly lifts her head but her startled gaze never seems to focus on me. I hesitate, worrying for a moment I had frightened her until she smiles showing all of her teeth still looking all about. She giggles, "Come here," then she turns into he alleyway. The black sweatshirt flies in a high arc into the street.

I follow eagerly after her. Looking down the dimly lit sidestreet I can see this strange girls head showing over the other side of the dumpster. Her arms stretching up she pulls all her hair behind her. As I step quickly to meet her I toss my freshly lit smoke into a puddle. I come around the side of the dumpster and stop short.

She looks directly at me now and her demeanor has turned angry and searching. She wears a men's white tank-top and her pale skin is speckled black and brown where it is caked with dried blood. Covering her are long lacerations that have only recently been treated. The flesh is pinched up and protruding a little where the deep gashes have been closed. They don't look like stitches so much as staples; identical, in sight, to the staples that we use at the office.

Gawking for several moments, I mutter repeatedly, "Oh, I'm sorry," in a very pathetic whimper.

She lunges toward me, a light flickering on her hand as she thrusts it toward my torso. The knife hesitates an instant against the resistance of my abs, just before slipping into me. The pain is more intense than anything I have felt in my life. In agony and rage I desperately grab her small cranium with both of my hands and I dig my thumbs into each of her eye sockets. She cries out and trying to stab me again, slices my right flank. Still holding her head tight between my palms, I use all my strength to smash her skull against the brick wall behind her. I do it again and I don't stop until she is slack and unconscious. And I stagger out of the alleyway.

Hookers and Blow

I have no idea where to go now. I readjust my duffel bag tight under my right arm and take a long look up at L Street. I look up and down wondering what bar is closest to the Greyhound station in Sacramento. And I start to think, the Capitol Garage is only a few blocks from here, maybe they'll have music later.

As I pass the sterile-white, palatial hotels along 'L' heading towards the Capitol Building I push my neck far back on my shoulders and exaggerate my posture. Affecting a stoic pose as if supposing there are people of class looking down on me a hundred feet from high inside one of the hotels, I imagine out-of-towners finding it impossible to find their hotel building among all of the others. Each one of them was enormous and white; with a sky blue pool lit up in the front and a hundred windows. The Capitol Building is as scary as a church and several times more imposing.

About half a block from the Garage I hear, "Leo, Hey. Yo. LEO!" I turn around and see my old friend Buddy Truman sitting down in the fenced-off smoking area and waving his beer at me. I walk over and give him five and a fistpound. Buddy is a lush. I met him at the junior college. Buddy always had some weed in his pocket and was always looking for somebody to smoke with, so we would hang out all the time. Half the time I would run into him he'd be like a half pint deep in Wild Turkey, and he would be discretely pointing at a paper bag softly mumbling, "You want some Turkey?" or "C'mon, hit that shit. You don't want me taking that whole pint to the face."

Buddy looks pretty drunk for the early afternoon. He is wearing the same type of eccentric clothing I always have seen him in. He's got black boots, pegged in khakis and a red shirt with pearl snaps half unbuttoned and with big roses printed on it. His black belt has a large buckle with a gold hammer and sickle on it. His hair was longer than ever and made him seem really enormous for such a waif. I tell him hold on while I go inside to get a beer.

I dropped my duffel-bag under the table as I sat down and took a long drink from my beer. "So whats new man?" I ask mechanically.

"Well, did you hear about Bobby and KC?" Buddy asks with unmasked enthusiasm in his voice.

"How would I have?" I answered, half-trying to sound interested at all, "I've been mostly down in the desert for the last year."

Buddy only registers that I, in fact, have not heard the news. It is only 5pm but he is already so drunk he is rocking slowly from side to side. A bartender ignites the pylon-shaped propane heater behind me. I light a cigarette as he begins to expound on the highly personal details of a relationship between two people I can't care less about.

"So you know Bobby and KC have been together since highschool. Right? And they been together longer than most married couples. And you've seen KC. She's, like, insanely smokin' hot. Well, being 23 or 24 and still younger than Bobby, but well, she got the slightest little belly above her couchie. A FUPA if you will. And Bobby, he gets more insecure than her about it. So we never let him hear the end of it. Right? And the whole time he's all like, 'Fuck you guys. Whatever. Fuck you!'

"So he goes to KC all like, 'Damn girl, you got a little pooch. You should do some fuckin' sit-ups or push-ups, something.'

"She gets so worried he's gonna dump her that she starts working out at the Sierra College weight room. I mean obsessively. And over a few months she got this really manly build. She got these big shoulders and shit. And Bobby can't take it anymore and he dumps her. Right? But he can't think of any good excuse to dump her, and she's asking him all these questions until he's so overwhelmed he tells her exactly why he's no longer attracted to her. And she fuckin' loses it. She's like blaming him, right, but he gets confused and says, 'Naw but that won't bring back your pretty little shoulders.'

"KC goes fucking crazy. She just starts beating the shit out of him. Kicking him and shit with her stilettos. He's still in the ICU. They took the tube out of his throat but the doctor say he won't ever be able to see out of his right eye ever again."

I am laughing uncontrollably at this point. Bobby is notorious for being a dick and the fact that he's very athletic makes it even funnier that his ex-girlfriend beat him so bad.

I get some fresh beers and come back outside still laughing. Buddy says in that one-of-a-kind dopey tone of his, "So where have you been man? I havn't seen you in days. You just fell off."

"I told you," and I repeat again, "I spent most of the last year in Arizona."

"No way." Buddy says with a profound sense of wonder. He meditates a moment and thoughtfully asks, "So how are the bitches down there?"

"Crazy!" I answer without a thought. My mind is overflowing with things I want to relate all at once. "Check this out. So I was in Reno and I met this dude who is running around with a ton of coke." Buddy's eye's light up at the word. "I asked this dude in the bar if he wants to smoke out and next thing I know I'm eyeballs deep in the biggest pile I've ever seen. He was kinda shady about it the whole time I was running around with him. Always saying shit like, 'Don't worry where it came from,' and 'Don't worry how much I have.' He was a crazy mack though. You should've seen this motherfucker run game. I became like his wingman, we cruised all the way past Vegas before we went our ways. He swore to me, 'Bitches love whitepowder drugs.' I wasn't so sure that was true but there was no arguing the point with him. He'd be all like, 'No, I'll show you.' But like, it seemed like only a certain type of chick was into that shit, I dunno."

Buddy blinks his glassy eyes twice and says, "Naw man, bitches love bleezo."

"You shoulda seen him negotiate with these hookers. He gets to selling them blow and he books them for the whole night. But by the end of the night these stupid bitches packed their faces so full of yo, they owed him a couple bucks when they settled up."

As Buddy struggles to stop laughing he keeps muttering melodicly to himself, "Hookers and Blow. Hookers and Blow." He uses the sole of his shoe to put out his cigarette and says, "Hey man...wanna go down to The Shady Lady and try and find some breezies?"
"I don't know man, I been thinking about Crystal a lot on my way back up here. You know, I like miss her and whatever. She's so decent. Honestly I don't even remember why I dumped her."
Buddy sits across from me staring blankly out of his bright red eyes. So I continue, nervously accelerating my speech with each word, "You know if she is at the same place? She changed her number, do you have her new one?"
Several moments passed tensely as I waited for Buddy to answer. I knew I wasn't going to like whatever he had to say. Eventually he managed to softly mumble, "Naw man. I mean, I think she might still be staying at the West House in Placer County."
I picture Crystal at the West House as I lean back and light a fresh cigarette. The bars in that part of Roseville where notorious dive bars, full of tweakers and dirty thirties. The West House was the very worst. It is the kind of place a hobo goes after an unexpected windfall to spend a week smoking crack in the hundred dollar a week hotel rooms above the barroom. I quickly drain my beer.
"Look man," I say, "I'm gonna get outta here, get my shit together. I'll see you around though Buddy."
............................................

After three hours and three buses into Placer County my head is a mess of tangled nerves. Why the West House? Will someone be there with her? Has she started drinking heavily? I shake my head as I swing the door open. A surge of anxiety rises in my guts. She's here I think to myself, or maybe she's not. I order a beer to calm my nerves. The bartender is a haggard woman who is probably ten years younger than the roadmap of wrinkles and purple veins on her face make her look.
"Whats-a-matter cutie? Trouble with your girlfriend?" She giggles showing lipstick smeared on her grey front teeth.
I smile wide back at her and say "No ma'am, I'm just tired. Say I have a friend who was staying here. Do you know if Crystal Prigg is still here?"
The bartender's eyebrows droop into a frown and immediately drops her cordial inflection, "Yeah she's up in room 4 right now I think." She turns and walks to the other side of the bar without saying another word. I drain my beer quickly and head for the stairs.
I stand in front of the room 4 door for several minutes trying to sort through all the things I have been planning to say when I finally get here, I can't settle on any. I decide to wing it and knock at the door. It opens slowly and Crystal stands in the doorway wearing a spaghetti strap shirt and thong underwear. Her face looks dirty and her cheeks are sunken in. Her hair stands six inches high in greasy, nappy clumps and one of them looks burned to a frizzy stump. She has a lighter and a light bulb with a black splotch in her left hand. Something inside the room reeks of burning plastic. "Oh Leo," she screams.
I take a step backward in horror. I look at her panties thinking of the frumpy, baggy clothes she used to wear when we dated. Feeling dizzy I can't bring myself to look directly into her wild, meth-addled eyes. I ran. My legs feel like they where made of butter and I almost fall as I sprint down the stairs. I can hear her calling after me but can't make out the words. I don't stop running until I'm on the other side of the railroad tracks. Starting toward the next bar, I mutter with my head bent to the cement, "My fault. All my fault."

Fuck Your Computer

I

FUCK YOUR COMPUTER!
Fuck all your electric eccentricities,
Vanities,
Virtual humanities,
And secret online cocktease.

Go fuck your computer and ask if it will hold you afterwards.

Wonder if it will feel jealous while you are on holiday,
And fuck the television while you are away.

Conspired through these wires,
With a satellite choir;
It's a dire seminal connection.
An unexpected injection.

The cyber-syphilitic critic
Prates faceless editorial,
Another incorporeal hack
On file with everyone else.

II

Do you hear the marching of the automatons?
Their twisted piston beats like a great war drum.

They come to no semblance of resistance as you're
Up-loaded, down-graded, sedated and mutated.

The half-man android has a hole the size of a soul
Where he's been fitted with pedantic mechanics.

And where his brain had been is a gray stain
And a CPU. And where his dick was there is a
Three pronged cord.

Prose Pt 2

It is so godamn easy to ignore everything outside my job, commute and home. At home I tell myself, my job doesn't really define me. At work I tell myself, my small apartment does not define me. It is too modest, I was never that. And I remind myself that these dualities carry no bearing on reality.

...so stagnant, is it dead? Or is it festering with life?

So I define myself on a special set of prejudices, that keep me smirking. She doesn't define me. And I doubt she would try. She is plied by the finest diversions. I am muttering these things out loud to myself. To myself because no one is listening.
And there are plenty of people around.
In fact, I think, there are too many people here.

They are a patchwork of gorged bellies and soft faces. And so horribly pink. They are as uninterested in me as I am in them. But they all love her; for the way she takes you breathlessly...screaming. So effortlessly, I wonder if she is aware how she effects them.

A kiss blown across the room misses its target.

Forget it, I tell myself, forget her.
Let the whole scene go.
Leave the party!

So I crack open a pack of smokes and walk out behind the house. There are five of her friends out back. As I approach they stop braying their inane nonsense, to walk quickly past me inside. Single file, all tight-lipped and fish-eyed. Who knew girls with such nice legs could make such ugly faces.

Then she comes out asking for a lighter. Remember her? She's got nice legs too. And loves to show them off.
She smiles wide batting her eyes and rubbing her thighs. I tell her, "I think we should split up."

"But I never..." she starts, so I stiffle her.

"I know. But I'm worried I never will."

"I'll move out tomorrow."

Prose Pt 1

At least she keeps the place clean. And looks so pretty preening herself, for me. And sometimes even by artificial means that go wasted on me. My taste was never so pervasive. I tell her I need that unbearable reality. That beauty requires no paraphernalia. And I've told her before, but I still suspect she doesn't believe me.

She looks down on me from her stool scowling as she brushes her perfect hair. She is still angry that I set her, very expensive, hair extensions on fire and then tried to flush them down the toilet.

She says, "You ought to think more of how people define you. You reject the most natural vanities out of some absurd spite. Yours is the greater depravity in nonsense...and pretense against any obvious social cadence. And from you, who scowls presumption with the gumption of pure justice."

I tell her the make-up that she just finished painting on makes her look like a whore--then we make love. Later, as she rest her head in my lap, she plays with my hair and chest and pressed her other hand under my thighs. The while she's been staring intently at me, cooing intamately something I don't bother to hear.

Looking at the oak tree out the window as the sun is setting I speak, "I might not go to that party tonight. No. I am in the mood for wine and the brooding seclusion of the waterfront."

"But everyone is going to be there!" She persisted.

Mendocino Ave

The pavement is damp but it is not raining. I pass a lit cigarette between my fingers, dropping ashes. The air thickens with springtime. It is difficult to move.

My beer is cold in my hand and the sun is so nice, I don't hear the crescendo-ing drone next to me. He does not distract me from the girls passing by; darkly dressed, and looking like shadows against the green horizon. They are like a younger variation of the three drinking wine, sitting two tables down. The trees here remind me of a room I used to rent.

There is a mound of manure on the south side of town that is 30 yards tall and can be smelled for miles.

I turn to my new friend to catch him spitting in the face of a psychology student as he shouts louder, gesticulating wildly between a textbook and his head.

"No kraut can read my thoughts!"

He returned my gaze as I replied, "...smells like shit, man."

So We Dance

I wipe the sweat zealously from my face.
She draws nearer.
I bend at the knees to bring us eye to eye.
And I grip her as she becomes meerly a thing that clings to me,
as I dance.
She hovers upon the floor moving everyway that I do. She has been staring at me forever. I do not know her.
As my thighs begin to ache I swing my hips lower, broader, slower, and move my legs faster. As I pretend that I'm comfortable, I wonder if she is fatigued at all. I will outlast her though. This has become a contest between us.
So we dance...

"I'm thirsty!" she yells over the music.
I wipe the sweat zealously from my face.