|
Ron Androla |
|
i'm not i'm not in jail. i'm not totally insane. i'm not currently drunk. i'm not sick, i'm not dead. i'm not unemployed. i'm not hounded by creditors, well, some- times, yes, but i'm not utterly broke. i'm not writing anything relevant to a reader 300 years from now. i'm not delusional. of course i'm delusional. i'm not without love. i'm not without food. i'm not lucky. i'm not dreaming. i'm not free of nicotine. i'm not leaving my writing-room except to piss or eat or check the mail. i'm not on the train whistling thru the center of erie this late sunny summer morning. i'm not a barking dog. i'm not a bunch of beeping birds. i'm not driving a jeep. i'm not watching tv. i'm not listening to music. i'm not an abrasive poet. i'm not a young man. you will not you will not meet ol' grandfather-faced god at the golden gates of foggy heaven. you will not float into no intense light, no, brain-chemicals coagulate into dark spots. you will not disappear into air, nor be a ghost. you will not reincarnate into a wild goat on a slope in nepal. you will not be remembered forever, no amerikan lit course will study yr writing, you will not be a poet who spans centuries of human history. you will not be a cat. you will not ever have yr face on cnn or the cover of the rolling stone. you will not be here in fleshy noise consciousness. you will not drop like superman on the surface of the moon. you will not kneel. you will not fly. you will not meet jesus christ, or those you love who died before you. you will not have a voice. you will not have a body. you will not be you. you will you will walk without legs you will talk without tongue without throat you will drink no can of beer you will smoke oh buddy you will smoke cremate my ass burn me to ash & i don't care where the fuck i'm scattered you will not care you will not feel you will not formulate situational reality you will dream you will dream in color & dazzle then you will fizzle you will not be enough you will evaporate from the minds of the living half a fish sub at 3:30 a.m. i wake after sleeping a few hours, famished. ann is slicing air, teeth like a shredder, dream-breath is loud. warm black cat is curled over the back of my crossed ankles -- kick him up, & i see the curved shadow of him rise, stretch, yawn. dog's in the other room, but follows me down stairs like a heavy grandpa, plops on kitchen floor, sighing. half a fish sub wrapped in silver foil is in the fridge. i ate the other half for supper 10 hours ago. i place it in our toaster-oven, cut a few hunks of sharp cheddar cheese, get some chips on the plate, pop open a sprite, wait, channel- surfing at 3:30 a.m., my hairy stomach growls on the couch. gravity i crush the last of a cigarette into a knob of wood in the middle of my wooden ashtray. sitting here upstairs on the second-floor over an alley 24 blocks from lake erie, i'm like a big monkey in a tree on a sunny afternoon at the zoo. cages, houses, same blue sky, biped mammal at edges of a jungle, suspended over most predators. downstairs door's locked & i rock in this chair, chew leaves, shit down from fifteen feet up. flies with eyes the color of gold pearls skim freshly-mowed lawns of the city. on july 4th a sky-diver who has sky-dived 2,000 times sky-dived into a telephone pole cracking it in half on pine avenue. he died. freedom norman has just flamed his crack-pipe. he feels his eyes bulging like huge tits. he wonders if that unmarked cop-car is still across his street, so he rises to peek thru newspaper curtains. fuckers, norman mutters. he slides to the dirty floor, slumped like half-dead christ. his hair is a crown of thorns thinking sweat is really blood, it drips red, it's on his hands, he's bleeding & his cat is a shark, a mutated killing-machine of an animal. norman wants to kick it away but his legs won't move, his throat won't throw up even a little whisper. the hairy, 4-legged shark is growing as it approaches norman's face. double-knock on his door & he's right there peeking out the peep-hole with his cat weaving around his ankles mewing. norman yanks his pistol from underwear elastic- band. sun-glassed undercover cops stand outside in the texas sun, waiting. norman, ever so slowly, retreats, back-stepping, gun raised, into the back kitchen. he plops a spoon of cat-food on sticky linoleum. later he'll help the shark eat the cops floating face-down on his watery sofa. under under objects under houses under birds under water meanings under words designs under designs under layers of rainbow color under white cotton under flesh-tone fish under water & air under eyes unlike human eyes under stars under moons under crushing time under maple trees under blue sky under blackness under bottoms under skulls we walk under one roof adding subtractions norman spills round orange pills from a ripped baggie onto his kitchen table. dealer says there are 50. norman slips him fresh cash taking him at his word. one on norman's tongue, two pills, three. throws his head back, swallows them with spit. four, five, norman counts each circle into a pile, six, ten. he convinces himself he shld eat another one. twelve. fifteen. sees that bottle of four queens whiskey he guzzled last night, just a pint, a little has dripped into a puddle at the bottom -- reason enough to pop another pill into his mouth, & he does, & he feels the burn of the liquor-drip. seventeen or eighteen, maybe twenty. he lights a cigarette. he watches his thin cat paw at ants in a corner of the kitchen. twenty-five. pleased he's counted half way he rewards his effort with another xanax. twenty-seven. thirty. his cat is eating ants. his cig smoke is a low halo. forty or so. fifty, maybe. he doesn't care. with the side of his hand norman slides the pills off the edge of the table into an old cigar box among blue pills, white tablets, tin-foil scraps. kitty-kitty, he calls all falsetto. norman is packed for mexico drug-guy just out of prison offers norman $1,000 upfront to accompany him to mexico, transport mexicans back up into the dust of texas do it again again it's a good business norman's nose is like a white powder clown nose sneezing on a prone mirror what's that above me? norman jerks his back back into the back of the shit-brown couch back of his head has been blown out drug-guy shakes his head, what the fuck you flappin' about boy. with courage norman walks his eyes up to corner of the ceiling. a flash of deep blue light. there! that! norman yells. drug-guy says fuck it you're nuts & leaves. norman sees a fast talon'd- eagle flying in behind him after snorting more coke, & he topples to the beer-can littered floor laughing. |