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.