THE LONG POEM FROM TAOS

Now I’m grilling.

Now I’m avoiding a text from my friend.

Now I’m leaning over my legal pad to write.

Now I feel my lower back is full of kinked muscles.

Now the pen is making its scratching sounds on the paper.

Now my neighbor drives her car past the window, but the curtains are shut and I’m in the dark during the middle of the day.

Now I taste salt on my teeth.

Now I drink water.

Now I have a hard time deciding what I’m even doing.

Now I want to eat. I look at the triscuits. I have cheese in the fridge.

Now instead I type “5 minute abs” into my phone and tap the first one.

Now I roll out my mat on the wood floor, prop my phone horizontal against the bottom of the wall and start doing russian twists. Instrumental pop music plays.

Now I feel strong for one minute.

Now I am in pain.

Now I let the guy in the video go on without me for 12 seconds.

Now I put my feet out hovering over the ground and let them stay there and look at the ceiling and wait.

Now I lose track of time.

Now I am sweating.

Now I lay on my back and relax.

Now my breathing hurts and feels good both.

Now I sit on a cold barstool with my sweat dried and the cold metal presses through my shorts onto my skin I have no underwear on.

Now I hesitate—I’ve ordered an espresso.

Now I pay 2 dollars and 50 cents in cash with a fifty.

Now I feel a little rock has slipped into my birks.

Now I get called creepy by a newly recovered meth addict who is my best friend in New Mexico and I met her two days ago.

Now I ask her for a cigarette.

Now I finish it.

Now I scrape it out on gravel with my shoe. But I don’t want to leave it there.

Now I look at a war memorial with a huge green plastic tank in the middle of the dry wind desert with no one around and no houses in the distance only desert and pick up my crushed cigarette butt and put it in my back pocket and start walking back toward town in the distance with her and listen to her talk about murderers she’s heard of.

Now I try my espresso while it's hot.

Now, in between drinks of espresso, I look at a memorial of a dead man, his portrait in black and white (but it’s clearly taken from this century) is framed on the wall of the coffee house and he’s young and bald (by choice) with a cup full of black coffee (although it’s probably an americano because this place is entirely espresso-based) and he’s got four buttons unbuttoned on his white short sleeve shirt and with his chest hair out and with his smile so calm and easy he seems like a pretty relaxed guy. There are dead flowers everywhere, probably fifty. Some on a string that’s hung in a big “U” over the picture. Only two are fresh and they’re yellow... At the base of the picture, centered in front of the flowers, there’s an empty-but-stained espresso cup that the workers replace daily. Who drinks it? Do they pour it down the industrial size sink? By his face there’s a quote written on the wall by Gertrude Stein that reads: “Coffee is a lot more than a drink; it’s something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be yourself, and have a second cup,”—this gibberish by the face of a dead man with lots of dead flowers. His name isn’t written anywhere.

Now I take another sip of espresso but it’s cooled down and doesn’t feel so good to drink anymore. I don’t touch the little spoon on the plate.

Now I see random rorschach gradients of black and brown painted in physical layers inside my cup from the espresso that used to be there.

Now my bare chest is on the concrete.

Now I smell the gross smell of puddled rain water pooled up from days ago with rotten leaves on the bottom. Murky water. It’s a few inches from my face as I do my push-ups. A thick earth smell rises.

Now I pop up and run down the gravel road.

Now I listen to my feet crunch the gravel.

Now I am breathing so painfully that I can’t hear the gravel.

Now I open the grill and see my pork tenderloin is overcooked but I have to eat the whole thing. It’s dry and its skin is peeling black and red.

Now I drink water every morning first thing because of the elevation.

Now a flower looks like a huge pink bowl balanced on top of a stem so dark and green with life I can’t believe it.

Now the pink flower stands up still on the table and out on the street a tree gets blown viciously around in the window behind the flower sitting still.

Now the flower doesn’t move.

Now the flower stays perfectly still. The tree is getting whipped around in the storm. And it’s happening just beyond the flower. But it stands still. Two different pictures right in front of each other.

Now on the pink flower I see the edges of its petals have taken to dying and are brown and crispy but it doesn’t ruin the flower at all.

Now the sun comes in through the window and hits the flower.

Now the pink petals are white with sun, almost white.

Now the flower starts to look normal to me.

It’s in a tiny glass vase half-filled with water.

Now I’m uncomfortable on the cheap stool.

Now my legs feel bare when the wind blows in the door and under my shorts without underwear.

Now I’m back in my house and my energy is pouring out of my chest and into my phone or just onto the floor I’m not sure except I feel myself get weaker every second—and the energy takes a lot to come back.

Now I’m keeping slow even though coffee is boiling my brains somewhere just below my thoughts.

Now I thought of something to say to the barista (it’s: “Someone just told me that only 6.2% of people in Taos are between 18 and 25 years old”) fifteen minutes ago but the feelings behind that thought have expired so I can’t say it now.

Now the dead man in the picture keeps smiling.

Now my feelings of balance and low-to-the-groundness are gone.

Now I open my fridge and see a paper plate with one tortilla rolled up and sad and dry on the middle rack.

Now the edges of the tortilla crunch when I eat it but the blueberry jelly is delicious and cold.

Now I walk down the sidewalks of Taos uncomfortable and self conscious wishing I had underwear on.

Now I pick a leaf out of my hair and place it on my legal pad because the barista swept up 5 minutes ago.

Now I hear the espresso machine stirring from inside — wanting to shoot something hot and fast.

Now I feel gentle.

Now I relax into the singer’s voice on the radio.

Now I never want to watch porn again but I’ll do nothing about it.

Now I remember the look in the mirror after I’d shaved my head bald and my facial features came to life and my eyes were fifty times brighter and clumps of blonde hair hit the floor and scattered dust.

Now it’s time to watch the Celtics.

Now the wind went so easily over the skin on my bald head and gave me a thrill.

Now it’s pool time. 

Now it’s bar time to relax for pool.

Now I want to write songs that somebody else wants to sing in their head walking down the street. But I have that expectation too big in my mind and stare at my page and write crap.

Now I have drank and I have slept — the sun is tanning my skin.

Now it’s a little before midnight last night and I’m at a bar tucked away off a gravel road that snakes high into the hills. It’s cash only. It feels like somebody’s basement in high school. There are red solo cups turned upside down and a few bottles of tequila and whisky scattered around and nothing else.

Now an old, old Mexican woman shuffles to a man leaning over the bar with a baseball hat on. He’s also Mexican. He nods at his phone. There’s actually no one who’s not Latino here besides me and I am sitting on the last stool on the short part of an L-shaped bar.

Now the baseball hat asks her for 3 Dos Equis.

Now she bends over a lemon and cuts it in half, and then half again.

Now she pours me the bad tequila (Hornitos) because I didn’t specify but not in a mean way, I think, cause I’m only white… and it’s just cheaper.

Now I’m back in the sun, amazed there are so many birds in the high desert.

Now I think: I’m hardly hungover from all that drinking.

Now I think: that drinking kinda refreshed me.

Now I feel down. I wasted a whole day sleeping again.

Now I’m drinking a double espresso hot back at the World Cup Espresso House, and I kindly remind someone the name of that movie Easy Rider. They’re looking at a black and white postcard that has Dennis Hopper’s face on it and he’s in hippyish cowboy garb. He lived here. In Taos.

Now I’m catching back up to myself.

Now I am on my knees scrubbing the floors of my mind.

Now I avoid eyes and grab up my greasy hair and pull on it and think.

Now the old Mexican lady shakes my hand as I’m leaving her bar, last person remaining, and she says to me: “Now don’t become a stranger,” and it felt like she meant it and didn’t only want my business in the future.

Now I gave up on my dream of driving to the mouth of the canyon and hiking down into the face of Rio Grande to watch its water hit rocks and turn white and crazy and fall off into the distances of the canyon afternoon—like some snake slithering away and getting small into the sky.

Now I need to invent.

Now I trace; now I trace, now I trace

Now the clouds are ballooning and… Just now they pass over and cover the sun.

Now I’d like someone to grab me on my shoulders and just stand close and look at me.

Now my hair grows sideways out of my hand.

Now I push my fingers between my hair.

Now I trace, trying to recover—remember anything.

Now I lean and fold backwards over my chair with my arms out torqued open spider like and face towards that ceiling until my sternum bone ruptures and cracks in the place exactly between both my nipples.

Now my thoughts are being horribly interrupted by a “regular… and a regular smoker!~” yelling four feet from the barista’s face.

Now I’m off topic; it’s like my life has stopped and I feel sick with the inability to feel anything important. My eyes don’t catch as I scan around.

Now I wonder what the bottom of the long Rio Grande river is like—can you see into it? Little fish magically staying still in the current?

Now, or soon, I’ll have to leave here—I’ve made a faux paus—I misunderstood how espresso was made, apparently, and was vocal about it. I feel smaller than my body.

Now, and now again, I grow weaker and dream of throwing a death punch.

Now my body feels loose and useless.

Now I sit on my bed, twist and lay on my bed, and the day passes in long minutes.

Now I can’t remember doing anything good in my life ever.

Now I draw faces of women sleeping.

Now rain is blowing over little Taos town tucked under the chin of a few huge mountains that haze and loom in the tired high desert of skinny wandering gloomy horses.

Now I’d like to be drawn—somebody reveal something about me, but only in black and white.

Now the rain is just waiting to fall.

Now is as far back as I can remember.

Now I’ll walk into the windy streets to watch the clouds like stomachs expand over me.

Now I’ll go and get myself wet for a little before I shower.

Now is a lot like never.

Where do all the moments go after they end?

Now why can’t I be erased like my memories?

Now as the dry, green mountain gets lower to the ground and the mountain range ends it tapers off thin like the long neck of a monster whose head is resting in the flat valley of dust starting here and going through all of America.

Now cars rumble around the square.

Now people walk in record-breaking heat so hot they’re trapped in their bodies.

Now cars rumble through space, kicking up dust.

Now my handwriting curves around new feelings.

Now I get scared from the noise of the loud, ground-scraping cars… with their engines telling me to go away.

Now the certain strings of a guitar go everywhere, go miles and miles of sound-distance and I sit lost unable to speak in any of its movements.

Now a break between songs.

Now another car is moving slow but so loud.

Now I get out of the Taos Cantina.

Now a sweeter rhythm repeats over and over in the sound and, inexplicably, the trance actually works on me and the music is in deep feelings like I haven’t felt since I was 17.

Now I have espresso in a tiny cup. I vow never to get drunk again—it’s just a hole that nothing really comes out of.

Now a girl turns around and stares at me with her shoulders—but has her head bent, talking to her friend—her eyes flash over to me when I look.

Now I want to go to the bar tonight, Sunday, to have girls look at me and me at them. Time to rewrite the world through hints… received from dreams… memories that never happened.

Now I can put a brick on top of a brick and look at the sky and just see clouds and their sharp edges and their gentle floating.

Now I can tell you what’s real and what’s fear.

Now I can look at the metal coffee makers and feel human hands working to create them.

Now I see our tools are beautiful and we build them so they build us.

Now I have stopped running my fingers through my own hair.

Now I see an angry mutant with a mustache making insane coffee demands of the barista and I smile to myself in my tiny coffee shop counter but I’m not happy; I silently hope that he will be released.

Now I’m unscared forever but if there’s violence I will go.

Now I run toward a face until it’s big enough to fill up a movie screen.

Now the human is made of more fat, more bone to me—and there is very little skin.

Now the storms have changed direction.

Now the wind blows them to rain on the mountain.

Now the rivers have stopped gurgling and even the birds have have given themselves up to the quiet.

Now they sing slowly enough, and with enough of a gap between calls that I can hear them and listen.

Now I can see their little beaks open and I wonder if there’s a tongue in there moving around.

Now it's a guitar sitting alone and aimed towards your ear. With one hand a string is plucked that plays a sound that never ends until you mess with it and ruin it.

Now it’s a movie that stays on one scene and never gets boring.

Now it’s coffee that never loses its hot freshness.

Now it’s a hidden swimming pond that never lets the wind put a ripple in it but allows two naked children to swim.

Now it’s a man’s thick fingers that get dirtier and dirtier and can’t be cleaned fully.

Now it’s a face that won’t react until you’re done talking to it.

Now you look into an eye and see an ocean.

Now when you smoke too much and grow silent nobody minds.

Now we get a silent moment to create our own language and leave behind many decades of bullshit talk and maybe find a few honest sentences to start our revolution (first thoughts).

Now we can look into a person and forget their skin and their put-on clothing and listen for the hum inside of their words and maybe the hum that they’re trying to hide that’s coming from their bones.

Now we can talk like we sing. Now the singing starts again.

Now Eve and I will sit together fully clothed in a sauna and instead of trying not to be angry about it we’ll forget the whole thing and examine the stream coming up from the coals and our hallucinations of cities.

Now I’ve been backed into my starving corner of words and have been forced to take up movies.

And because of that I’ll have to retranslate my words back into the images of their first and seminal feeling—like terror—like the savage desire when I feel skin—like the movement of a stream.

Now I’ll make my face legible for the world to see because every button has been pushed and nobody really wants to be toyed with anymore.

Now, if I cling to my intelligence, I will stammer and twitch in the sad dance of fear until I die.

Every button has already been pushed.

Now we think — “we” being the artists of voice — we have to find more buttons to press.

And it’s not true—we have to take our 300 fingers off the buttons and find the one or two that make sense to us now.

Now I have to venture into topics that I’m not sure about, push my hand through my hair, to try to say and believe and actualize what I see and only that: we must not work in the complex to approach the complex.

Now I wish to walk in front of the camera and get naked and unconceal my worries.

Now the hidden riverbank where we once could hide in America is gone and all we have are cameras.

Now we need every 20 year old to remember how it felt to felt to be a child and fall off your bike really hard and scrape off your skin; now I need you to remember laughing on your back in the grass or the wood chips of the playground after wiping out and all of your friends stand around in fear, quiet listening—waiting to see how badly you’re hurt. But you’re just laying there laughing.

Now we can’t make a single wrong move if we are in passion.

Now a tree that blocks out the sun.

Now we can move as still-silent as its trunk as as flashy as its sharp jawline leaves.

Now we’ve earned our long hair again.

Now we must study the old and the fear-paralyzed but forget them when we are working.

Now instead of smashing every mirror we must fix them with oily hands and extreme, warping heat.

Now every day, when we appear to be lounging around, we must remark to the businessmen that we meet in shops and coffee houses and daybars that it happens to be our day off, so can connect, so they can see us as they see themselves, but every night we’ll pick up their stories off the moonlit streets and steal their world and never sleep until we’ve made our strange imitation of daylight.

Now we have to make art for the saved—the damned are never satisfied and always searching in blood for us. And it will end up being for them too.

Now we must find different ways to be loved and love our friends. The body is failing.

Now I say that love is the most important thing and we are lost without it and should just be dead.

And we must do our sit-ups and planks if we want to throw a punch that’s worth anything.

Now take your friend to the nearest water and sit there sad and sink into the blue, slow, calm water-talk for hours until you’ve reconnected and feel like you haven’t felt for months. We can’t be honest until we find that. It takes water and sadness and sitting and talking. Thinking won’t do the trick again. Never again. You must boil until the true language can come back into a conversation.

Now show at least half your face whenever you talk.

Now study a nose, because the eyes have no beauty without it.

Now—we are allowed to stray from the bassline but how long should we? A few strange notes hold more than minutes of that off-key gibberish—keep the melody close—the further away you go the more impossible it is to return.

Now constant questions overwhelm—to ask the hard question is easy.

Now take them one question per day.

Now find a friend you can trade blows with—powerful, serious blows—with your fists, take them with your core.

Now take down the posters from your bedroom wall and replace them all with mirrors.

Now forget the shit that pops into your mind and quickly passes—don’t waste your words on it.

Now let the rain fall on your tomato plants and do not water them otherwise.

Now do not use too much ink when you fill in the faces that you sketch when you’re bored and just please try to trust the first lines that you draw.

Now eat your food the second it is done — and scream your friends into the room to stop jacking off and taste the hot food — before it loses anything.

Now keep drinking coffee until you’re paralyzed in your chair.

Now please god don’t get a dog unless you plan on handling that thing.

Now get up out of bed every time you are woken up by a hum and creep around naked until you find what’s making the noise in the dead of night when you’re the only person alive.

Now don’t ever try to remember advice that you can’t remember the feeling of.

Now there are times when it’s easy to make—and you should spend them making stuff.

Now I am completely out of money.

Now I’ve gotten joy out of being a jerky wreck of a machine and I’ve gotten joy out of doing something slow and right.

Now it’s hard for me to tell if I should let someone push me around with advice — because they could have a point—or if I should ignore them and lock myself away from the corruption of other people. It depends how fragile my feelings are. Can I handle cooperation or will I fall apart.

Now I breathe as loud as I can and the wind feels good on me.

Now rocks with many colors are beautiful to me and rocks with gold flakes trapped in them are beautiful and all the others I don’t notice —unless they’re a cool shape.

Now too many colors can ruin.

Now maybe things are over with someone when time drags. 

   —or maybe time drags when you lose the thread. How to know when it’s over?

Now I’m going to force myself through every line. Even if it ruins my good feeling.

Now I’ll trace; I’ll be a mirror.

Now sugar cubes stare at me from a shelf behind the barista — five o’clock storm clouds are rolling into Taos and the tourists look nervous, the locals serene and smiling as they roam the shadowy pavement, my espresso hotter. It never gets that hot in Taos and sweat whisks off your skin and I feel the sex must be different in this dry climate.

Now every day I wake up and am confused and catatonic until I go walk on the asphalt and I have to focus where to step.

Now everybody seems mildly disappointed walking around Taos that they have not become an Indian living off the River and breathing that wind that’s swirling around the Mountain and have a heart full of land-blood and instead they have to pass by 30 very expensive stores and shop inside of every one of them.

Now all these people are old.

Now, if they have brought their kids, grandkids, the kids are excited by the pierced coffee shop workers and the paintings in the gallery windows and the clean adobe and the Natives in loud trucks and Mexicans in bouncing Cadillacs and the kids wonder if this is the real hub of the world and if they should be painting instead. But all the Painters live out of town now.

Now the only locals wear ratty clothes and love other locals, are lonely, and do hard jobs and have no money.

Now most of the locals are Chicano, Indigenous or heavily sunburnt with unkept beards and hats.

Now the nicest are the Chicanos and Indigenous, at least to me because I’m not very loud when I drink and I play pool well and without pride. At least excessive pride.

Now, in Taos, like everywhere, how you dress affiliates with your group.—those who dress simply, those who dress down or who dress in incredibly showy faux-native garb: these are all locals.

Tourists have this bad look to them. And are too clean.

Now I listen, I listen.

And since I’m out of words I’ll borrow them.

Now I am back in the bar with all the locals and the Mexican birthday party is raging, me in the last chair at the end of the bar Drunk and it’s pleasant although everyone is suspicious of me alone and drunk and silent but it’s no big deal because it’s a family place. The old Mexican bartender with a curly ‘fro is the aunt of four of the customers in the bar, only tequila and Dos Equis, and my worst quality here is my good looks and my best is that I’m quiet and composed when I’m drunk. Maybe nonthreatening too—I smile a lot.

Now the rainwater washes the dirty bricks on mainstreet, puddling in the crevices. Grey-brown spit cut up and flung by car tires, stepped on by boots—it comes down looking for my hair, for my light-washed Levi jeans, looking for the fibers close to my skin to keep me wet.

Now a customer says “ooo-uh” when my friend asks “What could I get for ya?”

Now her husband talks over.

Now he says “Could I have a chai tea latte—HOT.”

Now his wife says “oooh yeah let’s have two of those.”

Now the baby wiggles and squirms and makes ridiculous upside down noises in her chest carrier.

Now the husband backs away and goes to the sugar, milk, straw, postcards and finds one of Dennis Hopper and gets taken away to Hopper Land—where he can put away his loud baby for a while and ride horses with men who don’t show off or smile and be dressed in white without ridiculous feelings and be white without having to explain themselves or their drugs or their drinking or their women-looking or their mountain-looking.

Now his wife taps him on his shoulder. The pain has stopped—sun’s almost out—and she hands him his chai tea latte while she’s holding her own and making silly faces at her child to soothe those crazy sounds.

Now the husband thinks about stealing the Hopper postcard, thinks about buying it, which makes no sense since he’s already seen it and can’t see it again and anyways already paid for the coffee and 6 bucks! So he sets it down where it was on the counter and follows his wife who’s already walked out the door, into the vast desert sunlight where the baby is warm and quiet and lost in the large feeling of being outside.

Now the inside of my empty tiny espresso cup looks like a brown beehive—all these solid bubbles have appeared that are perfect white holes among the splattered brown.

Now the time for talking is over.

Now the store is completely empty except for 3 people and me sitting alone.

—which is almost max capacity for this coffee stand that shouldn’t even have places to sit down but it squeezed in a couple of stools right on the coffee counter so that people who are ordering are also breathing down my back, but I’m glad for the places to sit.

Now the melody won’t be sung by a voice but by an ancient instrument of the body.

Now the melody is the tight posture of a suburbanite unsure of what to order.

Now the melody is the tension inside of my muscular body because I haven’t used it hard and worn it down.

Now I hear a tense lady say “I’m still window shopping” when asked “What could I get for you?” inside of a coffee shop and I turn around to face this craziness and notice an under-pressure look in her eyes and recognize clearly that she is the melody.

Now she leaves — no coffee… that is the melody. Way too much pressure.

Now he—the barista—the orchestrator with long hair never quite comfortable but always honest and almost-nice gives me a red sticker that yells HAPPY TUESDAY and it is Tuesday. He’s playing beautiful Japanese-Hawaiian music where the melody, and all the singing, is played by a hollow slide-guitar, tone as hollow and woodland curved as a ukulele, and the crying sliding around wood voice turns the air around me into slow moving water, into melting glass that plays with the light.

Now the guitar-crying sound is over and there are sharp drums and the water in the air is ice and I’m unrelated to this music and everything ends this meanly.

Now the line of thoughts in my head becomes long with a backpile of half finished ideas that I never come to understand because there are too many. Now just to focus on one — that’s the hardest thing and I must do it.

Now a car swerves sickeningly onto the sidewalk and nearly misses an old couple walking—the car slams to a stop cutting a line of stunned pedestrians in half and the driver bursts out the door and runs around the car and straight to a man who has appeared from seemingly nowhere, out of the crowds of window shoppers,   and that man and the driver are suddenly in a tight, tight bear hug of people who haven’t seen each other in a while—the look on their faces is so bright and there’s so much love on display naked that even the rich old woman who almost had both her knees turned to dust by the wheeling Suburban seconds ago, even that old lady can’t argue or complain today, at least not in public.

And now the friends have left each other and disappeared but not inside me.

Now a slow song plays and weed smoke blows into the shop from the porch outside.

Now there’s a different mood with the marijuana—not like it gets any of us high—but we half remember the feelings of getting high in high school.

Now the collector is in here talking about how bad of shape his paperbacks are in.

Now “How have you been Miles?” and light rain becomes heavier and soon nine people crowding the coffee shack and stinking it up with wet animal clothing drying off into the air.

Now I sit facing a mirror and look to see if the new customers are young (I ignore the Old) but only see myself miserable and underslept.

Now the cold has gotten inside my skin so I throw on my jean jacket—blue.

Now I trace. Now I must trace again.

Now single cookies sit in plastic bags.

Now the door stays open letting in street noises.

Now people are sad with rain.

Now the windows are full of silver beads.

Now the interior lights take over ‘cause dark clouds.

Now “Cash, Venmo, or Check only.”

Now every brunette girl in her 20’s has a hat and braided hair.

Now the rubber tires of cars on the wet streets sound like waves pulling back from the sand.

Now the barista tilts his head back and tosses coffee cake into his mouth, wipes his hand on jeans and goes back to whistling Hawaiian melody.

Now I’m outside under the charcoal puffed-up clouds; rains stopped but there are these pure tiny patches of blue in the sky which let light through like an old oil painting and on the edges of these ripped-open places of sky the cloud-lines are so clear, so stunning and sharp and clear and the cloud comes to me like I’m 6 inches away from her hair again, this German girl I loved watching TV on my couch who let me kiss behind her hair on her neck, and I saw her black hair was glowing secretly red at its base, and it grew and twisted in three hundred different ways from her warm neck, and so too did the wisps come off this lonesome cloud like hair as it floated through the miserable sky and I said to myself Dylan go back onto the tired spot on the Coffee counter, go back inside and go trace the small events you see because that German girl is gone and it’s always better to leave things while they’re good—and the wispy cloud is passing and changing shape and won’t look the same again ever as it tears apart in the sky.

I no longer want to eat food today.

Now the day is coming down on top of me.

Now it’s old streets and sand houses.

Now everybody walks around in brown shoes—is this the new time?

Now we’re all sad and low until we’re listened to and then maybe we can start listening on accident.

Now, you—draw my face from reading me.

Now the water is drying off the street.

Now a man’s calves never stop quivering because he balances without noticing.

Now everything gets faster and faster and speeds up until I can’t handle it so I leave or get drunk.

Now raw throat breath.

Now I ride the breaths because although I seem like many big things, these breaths are all I have and any quality you notice about me is invisible to myself and I suffer the pain of being nothing and seeming like so much more.

Now I’m going to walk home and not let my coffee jitters show in my strides.

Now I feel bad and like a criminal who everyone looks at right when they walk in the room but not once again until they leave.

Now my fresh eyes (A Day has passed since the last line) are in jeopardy because I’m revising the previous stuff, lines are being dragged down by thought and misunderstanding and over-understanding and I should have just left them all in yesterday's thoughts and not be dragged back into them.

Now they’re finally singing on the radio… instruments mean less and less to me.

Now an old person coughs hard leaned against the ordering counter.

Now is the first time over the 8 hours of this poem that my phone has distracted me but I quickly refocused because two pretty girls walked in chatting with ugly voices—you know the California accent—and a man either looks serious or like a ridiculous loser scribbling \ meanly into a legal pad — but there is clear commitment…

Now there’s a dazed look on the man behind me in the mirror—it’s like he’s been in a dark room all day until now 3 PM.

Now the flowers draped over the dead man’s photo dry out every day but I’m not sure how that makes me feel. They lose color. But there’s a few new flowers today and they’re pale yellow and they’re as soft as a girl’s cheek.

Now everyone’s face is rotting grey but mine is red from filling with blood.

Now the sunlight beaming into my eyes has turned them to opals drying on the side of the riverbed.

Now the number twelve pops in my head all the time when I’m writing and I don’t know why.

Now there’s this game being played on me and every time somebody asks me “What do you do?” I lose and have to restart.

Now I see the faces of The Smart are so ugly I wonder if they’ve tricked themselves to forget about beauty and walking into crowded bars full of people who all look at you and wanting them to be drawn across the room floating towards you and even the feeling of somebody gently staring at you.

Now my crusade against The Smart officially begins.

Now if I see something being played up I’ll show my disgust and sorrow without turning away and if they are Smart I’ll be extra sad because they know better.

Now I see I’m closed off when I’m sad.

Now social cheeriness is about over in its stand-in role for joy.

Now it’s all in the fools’s hands—become a fool…

Now a cup of espresso hot.

Now a warm drink that must be taken sitting down or else perverted for machine energy.

Now I must work myself up and never unwind.

Now the time for healing is here… but not through vague kindness—that is the meanest thing you can give someone… not a sunset and not taking time to relax two hours and thirty minutes on the phone and passing out for ten hours…  not thinking… not appearing smart by giving thoughtful comments to others that wins you favor… nothing resembling a game, no scoring points or losing them. All that intentional talking is performed in the worst blackout of the soul known to Humans as Intelligence and nothing will be revealed like that.

Now I will say something nobody’s ever heard before. And if I can’t I must go.

There’s nothing simpler than an argument.

Now every word of the schitzophrenic’s speech that you listen to closely makes things feel a lot more dangerous… they become closer and closer to being your friend and closer to making sense.

Now I shudder at a knife that’s pulled on me — and let me say intelligence is no different.

Now I’m too sick to write; I’ve worked myself up too much and feel fevered.

Now I can scribble but everything inside me is too messed up so I’ll go retreat and read and heavily salt my chicken and grill it until it’s both crispy and melted fat and perfectly hot and soft and tender to eat and that may just reset me.

Now it’s quiet in my house and I turn on the gas on the stove and let everything build up before it lights in a quick woosh of exploding flame blue orange, too near to my face so it makes me jump and think I’m glad my eyebrows weren’t burnt off.

Now a car’s muffler tries to blow up my ears. A low and shiny camaro as black and smooth as water at night. In the front passenger's seat—the teenage son, shyly avoiding the eye contact of pedestrians walking by… especially the girls. The light stays red for a long time. Wind goes through the trees without a sound. A dog pulls someone down mainstreet. Cross country motorcyclers are in town. The camaro blasts off, shaking the art inside the stores on mainstreet. Everyone has their doors propped open.

Now when I pass everyone who’s younger and ignore them because their life is unimportant to me, Now — what are you talking about little kids — what have you figured out yet? Let me hear. Have you seen your own patterns — have you found out how low you can feel? Do you see the children inside of your parents? How about time getting shorter — Now, and have you noticed how everybody either loves you or hates you for your youngness? Why are we, we the young (including me) the only ones who gather so tightly in the crowds — what about OLD spreads people out? How many times this summer have you run out of things to talk about with your friends? Do other people plan to ruin you yet? For some reason, music sounds much better to you than anybody else. For some reason, most of my nights don’t have magic anymore and I fall asleep in boredom and disappointment that my life isn’t full of big feelings that make me dream anymore. I pass you on the streets, 3 high schoolers. You walk into a coffee shop, order soberly, go to your own distorted corner and laugh a little in a way no one else understands or feels comfortable with — then leave the second you get your order. Giggling plot, unable to blend into public places. Yet, when one of you is alone in the coffee shop, you sit with your computer stone silent, hardly sip your sweet latte, and act more serious than anyone in the joint. You don’t even look around, young face high schooler. You stare into your computer like your trance will make you seem older. It will—

END