excerpt

...let's get together, you and I, in a place not far away; there's a train ride we can take and it only goes one-way.  I'll pick you up in my brand-new truck and we'll write the greatest novel without the fluff or all the awful words.  Imagine me in a fantastic world just being me; it's not so super if you really think about it, but I'll take it either way.  Imagine you in a comedy of tragic proportions: would you laugh or wear sheep's clothing in the background?  I think you'd crack up; I think your face'd tell the story from a mile away...

The Chicago Typewriter

I had a revelation, one day

Between black coffee and unlit Camel Reds,

Under rusted coils and wires

Piping heat and muzak into listless hearts,

To bless this empty husk of loose-leaf with life.

I made up a world, one rich in dreams

Rich in sadness and desires, in which

Animals begat animals, in which

The sea parted and Vikings conquered.

Lands were stolen under sleepless stars,

And

Characters crashed cars,

Burned down buildings

Scraping red skies, emptied hearts

With Wild Turkeys and Tommy guns.

Two souls found love and loss.

...and one day i decided to make it disappear,

and i could hear imaginary people

crying for their imaginary lives-

spark*

how sad it is

feeling alone, trying

to find structure, to

live by rules, live

in shadow making up

dreams, shadowing

idols, collecting pictures.

how sad it is

to know yourself

too much-

to stare at the falling moon and

not savor the bottle of chardonnay.

to look at fingernails and veins and

three meeting creases in

a closing palm.

how sad it is

to be awake in

the winter time

6 a.m.- stumbling

through plowed city streets

Richard Carlson in your tape deck

mirrors laughing at

insides laughing at

a beautiful finished exterior laughing at

how sad it is to be alone.

how sad it is

when Frank O'Hara touches you like

exciting happy cold chills on

a sad, cold Tuesday when

you're in that room with

twenty twenty-something strangers who

are discussing- no,

ripping to shit

Mr. Frank O'Hara the poet who

tried and tried to make things new and

funny and died trying as

"The Day Lady Died" stops and

speeds and pauses and

goes, ripped to shit when the

woman in front of you stops singing Billie Holiday.

Telephones

This coffee, cold and thin, is sipped, but not in a very convinced way.

He says, "Cell phones have really fucked things up for writers- and is it still 'cell phones'? I keep hearing about this... wireless?... bidniz, and I want to be clear that it's the same thing."

And when I look at him and groan, "It's about the same," I wonder if writers really do all that research for themselves or if they are all full of spit. Or if they just talk a lot.

"There used to be such great symbolism behind real telephones," he persists, his nose in his mug, circling the rim for what seems to be sugar crystals. "Wires and groundedness and uncontrollable distance mixed with faux-connectivity. The Seinfeld syndrome. You just can't write about shit like that anymore. Nobody uses telephones anymore. I can't convince a kid from Willburg that a character's depression correlates directly to his physical sense of aloneness. It's unreal in today's modern-day hybrid of a world."

"Maybe you need a different audience." I sip in the scalding coffee and the blackness tastes different when the waitress smiles as she tops you off.

"It's cell phones, man. Nobody is alone anymore. Everyone is in a network."

"You can say the same thing about the internet."

"Don't get me started on the internet."

A man at the counter drowns in his crossword puzzle and his scrambled eggs. The woman with three kids texts her boyfriend across the booth, "r u o k." A teenage couple feels horrible for leaving an eight percent tip.

My coffee scolds me because he isn't sweet.

the turn

no thing less grounded, abrupt or unsettled 

as dirt skirted on gravel 

by a foot turned around or caught on its heel,

taken aback by dusty trails left by its mettle, lingering

footprints in circles, hints of paces unhinged

like the toll of a handless clock-face

reaching... for hours!

disarmed and forgotten across binary plains

digital landscapes whose green lies in neon

or kneels at the feet of ungodly trust funds

where was i when the great shift eroded the simplest of mortar to pestilence?