Do you have the time?
10
Once, in the now-defunct Sanctum, I leafed through a book of birthdays. Seems I shared mine with Alfred Nobel and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. If that wasn't a sign, I don't know what is.
9
Tonight I am sitting two feet away from a man hanging by his fingertips on the wrong side of the railing, cleaning glass. He made my tummy jump and quiver. I don't know which I wanted more: grab and hold on to him, or push him off, then puke on his mangled corpse a few feet down.
8
A secret: One dream job is to be a window cleaner of a skyscraper, scaffolding and all. Or, or!--the coolest thing I've ever seen--hanging from a harness.
7
I prefer this to re-writing an awful poem: getting off on these short bursts of... what? what is it, exactly?
6
That man has now climbed over the rail and into the safe side, once again on solid ground--his hands free to do whatever he wants. Oh, how I detest him now.
5
In science, there is no such thing as cold: only temperatures not in equilibrium, heat moving the direction of least resistance.
4
"I could be having sex back there. And what better way to exorcise rejection demons than to sleep with the person who rejected you?"
aaaaaaaaaaaa-- Rob Gordon in High Fidelity
3
See how my lips wrap around this cigarette, how my eyes close in pleasure, how the tip glows a bright red, like something swollen, ready to burst.
2
The girls in the next table are relishing a loud argument. How, exactly, do you say it? ANdrea, or anDREa? Who gives a fuck? I tell you, I won't remember your name either.
1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm beautiful when I'm angry. Wanna fuck?
It's a yes or no, honey. Not life or death.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Monday, January 08, 2007
New Year Blues
In a U-Haul North of Damascus
David Bottoms
1
Lord, what are the sins
I have tried to leave behind me? The bad checks,
the workless days, the scotch bottles thrown across the fence
and into the woods, the cruelty of silence,
the cruelty of lies, the jealousy,
the indifference?
What are these on the scale of sin
or failure
that they should follow me through the streets of Columbus,
the moon-streaked fields between Benevolence
and Cuthbert where dwarfed cotton sparkles like pearls
on the shoulders of the road. What are these
that they should find me half-lost,
sick and sleepless
behind the wheel of this U-Haul truck parked in a field on Georgia 45
a few miles north of Damascus,
some makeshift rest stop for eighteen wheelers
where the long white arms of oak slap across trailers
and headlights glare all night through a wall of pines?
2
What was I thinking Lord?
That for once I'd be in the driver's seat, a firm grip on direction?
So the jon boat muscled up the ramp,
the Johnson outboard, the bent frame of the wrecked Harley
chained for so long to the back fence,
the scarred desk, the bookcases and books,
the mattress and box springs,
a broken turntable, a Pioneer amp, a pair
of three-way speakers, everything mine
I intended to keep. Everything else abandon.
But on the road from one state
to another, what is left behind nags back through the distance,
a last word rising to a scream, a salad bowl
shattering against a kitchen cabinet, china barbs
spiking my heel, blood trailed across the cream linoleum
like the bedsheet that morning long ago
just before I watched the future miscarried.
Jesus, could the irony be
that suffering forms a stronger bond than love?
3
Now the sun
streaks the windshield with yellow and orange, heavy beads
of light drawing highways in the dew-cover.
I roll down the window and breathe the pine-air,
the after-scent of rain, and the far-off smell
of asphalt and diesel fumes.
But mostly pine and rain
as through the world really could be clean again.
Somewhere behind me,
miles behind me on a two-lane that streaks across
west Georgia, light is falling
through the windows of my half-empty house.
Lord, why am I thinking about all this? And why should I care
so long after everything has fallen
to pain that the woman sleeping there should be sleeping alone?
Could I be just another sinner who needs to be blinded
before he can see? Lord, is it possible to fall
toward grace? Could I be moved
to believe in new beginnings? Could I be moved?
David Bottoms
1
Lord, what are the sins
I have tried to leave behind me? The bad checks,
the workless days, the scotch bottles thrown across the fence
and into the woods, the cruelty of silence,
the cruelty of lies, the jealousy,
the indifference?
What are these on the scale of sin
or failure
that they should follow me through the streets of Columbus,
the moon-streaked fields between Benevolence
and Cuthbert where dwarfed cotton sparkles like pearls
on the shoulders of the road. What are these
that they should find me half-lost,
sick and sleepless
behind the wheel of this U-Haul truck parked in a field on Georgia 45
a few miles north of Damascus,
some makeshift rest stop for eighteen wheelers
where the long white arms of oak slap across trailers
and headlights glare all night through a wall of pines?
2
What was I thinking Lord?
That for once I'd be in the driver's seat, a firm grip on direction?
So the jon boat muscled up the ramp,
the Johnson outboard, the bent frame of the wrecked Harley
chained for so long to the back fence,
the scarred desk, the bookcases and books,
the mattress and box springs,
a broken turntable, a Pioneer amp, a pair
of three-way speakers, everything mine
I intended to keep. Everything else abandon.
But on the road from one state
to another, what is left behind nags back through the distance,
a last word rising to a scream, a salad bowl
shattering against a kitchen cabinet, china barbs
spiking my heel, blood trailed across the cream linoleum
like the bedsheet that morning long ago
just before I watched the future miscarried.
Jesus, could the irony be
that suffering forms a stronger bond than love?
3
Now the sun
streaks the windshield with yellow and orange, heavy beads
of light drawing highways in the dew-cover.
I roll down the window and breathe the pine-air,
the after-scent of rain, and the far-off smell
of asphalt and diesel fumes.
But mostly pine and rain
as through the world really could be clean again.
Somewhere behind me,
miles behind me on a two-lane that streaks across
west Georgia, light is falling
through the windows of my half-empty house.
Lord, why am I thinking about all this? And why should I care
so long after everything has fallen
to pain that the woman sleeping there should be sleeping alone?
Could I be just another sinner who needs to be blinded
before he can see? Lord, is it possible to fall
toward grace? Could I be moved
to believe in new beginnings? Could I be moved?
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