It’s never how you think it’s going to be.
Working From Home
All my life I’ve wanted a porch; but I’ll happily settle for a window I can crawl out of.
For other visual reasons I love property and possessions, see also: my fancy pencil.
Formalities
The night before I left I
entered an elevator.
I.
Flying upwards into space or
pitching downwards, it’s all the same
Midway each dream the doors open:
Everything stops.
Suddenly the decision must be made: do I get out? Step freely
into nothingness?
Or remain, blind to the rushing air
the elevator / my protector
and casket?
I know, right.
The subconscious is sophomoric
in its metaphor.
II.
Before I left you I thought it was impossible.
I’d heard
that if you slept through some fatal, nonexistent accident
you’d simply never awaken —
Just die like that,
however you’d
inadvertently imagined.
Always wake up before you land. Always.
Or else.
Well.
Each night, my life ends in elevators
The body contracting
bones splintering,
goring some regal floor / ceiling
(depending on direction of force)
Lungs jammed between lips, liver lapping spleen, everything thick, wet
tonguey and lolling, skin bursting
a fractal of fractures, my
china plate ribs
And I wake up calmly, without a start, I am splayed like a starfish in our old sheets
heart all exposed.
III.
It is a dark wood, simply engraved
the buttons crackling white
And I press 8, because 8 was where I wanted to go but as soon as the doors chime shut,
I have a sinking feeling about the whole thing, and
sure enough we begin plummeting
down deep into the earth
the elevator and I
until
there is no earth left at all:
mantles, cores,
everything shredded around the edges, obliterated
Ladies and gentlemen we are approaching maximum height, in fact we are
now entering the thermosphere,
now entering the exosphere, oh heavens
we are
completely outtasphere, ha ha
darkness, and infinity
my elevator and I.
IV.
The other night I didn’t dream about anything.
The other night I was sleeping under the Milky Way
This was Rockport, Maine:
Insects rubbed their arthritic legs
in the tall fading grass
And across the way, a giant wooly dog slowly kicked a curved paw behind his giant wooly ear,
his faded collar swinging,
ringing
sweetly into the night
Somewhere, in all of this space
I lay sleeping
A satellite soared
brightly overhead.
And You’ll Be Mine!
The giddiness began in the dressing rooms: tucked away in the aqua-lime basement of the Somerville Theatre, framed in a flicker of half-functioning makeup lights. We had paled our faces with white cream, painted heavy circles around our lids with black, green, purple and blue, and slicked our hair into tight, glossy ponytails. We wore black satin corsets, mini-skirts and fishnet thigh-highs, and carefully dripped fake blood down lipsticked mouths.
Sugar was our Robert Palmer, and for this act we would be Addicted To Blood.
Undeading. (Larger and full album.)
Ginger Rita and I had acquired the more realistic, cap-style fangs, but Pamela had purchased what were actually labeled as “vampire dentures”: yellowed, old-man monster teeth, which required to be boiled in hot water before being stuck in the wearer’s mouth, where they would allegedly mold to your mouth and stay put. But we didn’t have any boiling water in the basement. So she just ran the water as hot as she could and let her teeth float in that for a while, and then she stuck them in, and smiled at us nervously. “BWAHAHAHAHA!” I cried for the first time in years. I wheezed and choked with glee, rolled on the couch, gasping for breath. “Nonono! Put them back in! Seriously! They, uh, they look great!”
“Screw you guys,” Pamela said. “I’m going to CVS and getting new teeth.”
“Hold up, let me get my iPhone,” Sugar said. “Could you smile again? This is going on Facebook.”
“BWAHAHAHAHA!”
Outside it was a cold, misting rain: inside we were two acts, serving to break up a vampire movie marathon that ran from 7pm to 7am; the crowd was sparse but tipsy on whatever they brought in their flasks, huddled in the theater seats under blankets, occasionally sleeping, occasionally cheering. “No one is going to like the Scarborough Fair number,” Sugar announced. “We may get some boos.” “Well . . . it’s pretty weird,” Pixy agreed. “Anyone want some rum?” Ginger Rita asked. We all looked at each other dubiously. “Is it coconut?” Pause. “Well, yeah!” “Ew NO!”
So it was only natural, really, when 2am rolled around and we found ourselves lined up backstage as J. Cannibal announced our number, that we would pop the blood capsules in our mouth and find that they began dissolving and breaking with saliva, whether you bit them or not, that Ginger Rita would run gagging to the garbage can. “Just FYI,” she whispered, “they taste awful!” Only natural that when my turn came to stagger forward and attack and devour Robert Palmer on stage, the foam guitar prop I tried to wrap around her neck would wind up smashing me in between the eyes (new scar!) and I would shout “ow!” and then “ha!”
And as the four of us descended for the final assault, writhing sexily on the stage floor and chomping down on the by-then barely-stable blood capsules which would burst and ooze in our mouths like old grapes, only natural that instead of slurping and licking the blood off our fingertips as planned, all of us would begin gagging and spitting on stage, eyes bulging with disgust. I wound up hunched over Sugar in some kind of frog position, legs bent and splayed, horking into her armpit. And then the laughter returned. For a moment, none of us could even stand.
The audience stared on, perplexed.
Full album: here (with some flagged as “moderate”, so you’ll need to be logged into Flickr with pervy preferences set to see those).
This Is Not My Beautiful House
Last night I dreamt I was throwing a large dinner party. Everyone was there: casseroles and warm bread piled upon the table, dishes clattered, the apartment was a mess. Suddenly I realized I didn’t live here any more with you, and had no right to all of this; furthermore, all you wanted right now was to come home from work and be still for a moment.
But I had locked you out. You were standing at the foot of the stairs, searching for your key. How could I have taken this from you? How would I possibly explain, when you came in the door?