The Birds Will All Fly From My Head

readin out loud

i cross the yellow snow of streetlight fantasies
passion plays of late night winter
and i try to remember clever alliterative lines
from late last night as i saw them running
to get home together
to fall into bed faster
to be closer that much sooner
but they were only running to catch the bus

late night transit before bars and boys and taxicabs home
a night out on straight streets
grid locked, land locked except for a dead lake
and too many legs of the same damn river
"this winter shit has got to go" she said with such conviction
but go where?
this winter shit was here before any of us
and is most likely gonna be here long after

it's simply the acception we gotta do to live
in this downtownish concrete kinda city
and $30 for a gallon of caramelcorn?
fuck that hot corn and burnt sugar
enough to fill a milk jug
no i can't i'm a man of principle
even if i am wearing a dr. pepper hoodie (a woman's, an ex's)
over a ravaged gap sweater (discounted, 8 years old)
and under a track jacket (polyester)
i still have principles

i step outside for my legal break and i wonder what's become of mehrdad and his american dream - well let's be honest his american dream home because isn't that what it's all about? i mean he could be sellin crystal meth to nine year olds but it's really about the house you live in - when my train of thought gets derailed by a leather jacket twice my size vocal exhalin the beer or maybe just the outdoors climate that seems to have settled in so i do a semi-sidewalk street flick and out and stumble step back in to my snifter of beer, beer so strong they serve it like brandy and i'm thankful for such cause anything more and i'd be on my ass sooner than i could stumble home and then a skirt steps in front of my window all dark haired tattoed and gum spittin sexy, probably turns her vowels into diphthongs and her men into assholes but damn if i don't want to get to know that fleur di lis on her forearm a little better, but wool coat over steps her and its probably for the best cause i got me a lady damn fine one at that and my own personal lydia-the-tattooed-lady steps back into the insides pullin heels like this were a airport check in and i can't even imagine the face i'd pull bein out on a social occasion with that, fleur di lis be damned, i'll get my own before i get to know that one any better.

and this seems like a time for tellin: i'm still a sucker for curly hair and red hair and boots knee high, for pencil skirts, for accents un-american and eyeglasses, my god talk about spectacle, but then again i'm just a man and i s'pose this makes me a sucker just on general account cause those of us at least what are the decent ones are decently enough well and awares to know that ain't what makes a something into a some kinda thing like and whoa. that takes a little more and not too little after. and if we're lucky there are still surprises - a day called in sick to spend in bed with our own lazy selves, underpants smaller than expected, an extra bottle of wine purse hidden and secret - but that ain't never what makes it some kinda thing worth havin because that is something undefinable, something unknown until you're in the very midst of, until you've washed up on the shore and realizin that you're no longer drownin, no longer lost at sea.

The Gift - Part ?

we walked in to a cash in hand beer and a shot sit down but in the meanwhile passin,
- somma dees guys couldn sell life insurance tuh duh Kennedys.

which seemed a hard foreshadow to what i'd been waitin to tell her my own self. my very own life insurance policy if that's what you could ever really in good conscience call it.

and so i did. did that which i'd been plannin for but with poor less than a plan.

and she shot back a quicker draw than i coulda ever gave her credit
- how can you give the gift a Death? what the hell even is it?

i said nothin but a shot sip and stare but she with a shot swig and stare down,
- a gift is somethin but Death that ain't but a nothin and that's the why we the livin have so much trouble understandin. people adapt, learn to cope, learn to deal, learn to live with all the things that happen but Death... Death is a no-thing and when someone goes off into the never quite it of it we lose with them all ability to adapt and we lose that pocket of every thing that was them and that cain't be a gift. can it? sure you can give the gift a life it's the most meaninful of which is why Death is the least of, an approaching negative infinity a boom, no, anti-boom a sucking sound and done and done. it ain't a somethin i can appreciate and it ain't a somethin i can thank you for and it ain't even hell a some thing but a no thing. a less than every kinda thing. it is only that which i can accept because that's all and only what Death is, a that which we accept cause in the face a it there ain't no response.

and then in that staredown the tamale guy showed up. rurnt everythin. makin life beautiful again,
- hot tamales! ¡pollo! ¡puerco! ¡y queso tambien!

six for five and another round. her tab.

we eventually walked out into what we'd been hearin on the jukebox weather forecast,
- well the winds in Chicago... have torn me to shreds.

------------------

we walked into the buildin with it smellin all a steak frites at the bottom and cheap vanilla candle at the top and we still went to bed that night and we still went together. an undress a teeth brush a customary fuck but how could it be anythin more than just bodies when somethin like this had come up? and in certainly less than casual conversation.

- there's some kinda things... you never can... kill.

and then in those late night hours, after what two such as ourselves often do in those hours the very same, there came quiet like and straightforward a simplest of sayings,
- i loathe your methods but hell if'n i don't admire your ideals.

and somehow we fell asleep with limbs all a tangle soon to be numb in later night hours when you wake up just enough and only to realize why it is you're wakin up.