M*A*T*H

Long division is the devil's breast milk

it's a calculator world
and we're just living in it.

"they used to cook up a little food and throw a little party"

It kills me that your mom
the woman I've bought Mother's Day cards
for the past seven years
who held my head and petted my hair
while the doctor snipped
the necrosis out
hasn't bothered to reach out to touch me
with words.
Does no one care if we work it out?
Did they not want me all along?
You're the one that left me, ya know?
And I'm not a mother, so I can't say
but I'd like to think that if my son
left a woman who was always there
for him
that I might pick up the phone and
ask her
if she needed anything.

"Truly sorry, Baby"

Woke up with a 4 a.m. heartache
reached out and you weren't there
Domino effect since then
when I decided to text you and ask
how you were doing
And it's like my life just turned into
a country song
I just want to scream:
Why didn't you try for us?
Why didn't you fight for me?
How come for me it would be easier
for us to stay together but it's
easier for you to walk away?
Growing pains used to keep me up at night
I'd reach out to her and she'd say
"These'll pass, Mamasita, and then
then you'll have beautiful long legs
and be a beautiful woman," as
she held me, patting my back.
Growing pains wake me up now
but there's no one there to
tell me anything.

no shirtsky no shoeskys

I'm eating lunch by myself at
Scholtzky's
Something I equate to a slow suicide
and can't not think how depressing that this was my
chosen option
Well, I wanted a veggie burger but
traffic was bad, so here I am
with a personal veggie pizza and for
some reason, a pickle
Thankful the drive thru filled up and
the silver Tahoe is blocking
my view of Home Depot
cos right now I feel like seeing it would
just make me think of you
and I've been doing too much of that
already today
Remember all those plans we had?
Or were they just mine?
Everyone used to always tell me if
you worked at a marriage it was really
worth it.
Guess they only say those things to
girls.

Summer Scent & The Silent Twins (for Rachel)

Found an almost used up perfume bottle
tossed near the bus stop
by the third grass fence we improved-
mentally-adding Christmas lights and candy canes.
multi-colored. all-white. confused.
like those phantom flavored skittles.
She tried to teach us to spit colors, but
we just spit brown, the color of
Averna.
Sister, cousin, baby, filly
Crazy Stallion malt liquor that we drank
under the boardwalk
where we named the sleeping homeless
and all the transient cats.
I didn't know if I liked you at first.
By the end of the night you were
slapping my ear.
The next morning you were asking me to
stay. It's August, but you're June.

"Same"

text message conversations
about divorce
are weird.

apparently this could be
over in as little as 30 days

so easy on paper and yet
somehow knowing that seven years
can be flushed in thirty days
makes me feel hollow.
but also...free?

god bless america.

one foot in front of the (2011)

"That foot. You've gotta do something with that foot. I can't be married to that foot."

He pouts.

It's not any fun to tease with someone who pouts.

It is fun to watch people trip though, like the fat guy who just tripped the curb at the Shell station we're parked at.

Well, you know fun as long as they don't get paralyzed or nothing.

Another Friday morning hung over (2010)

Bartender last night started crying to me,
his 15 year old cat died.
A guy dressed as a Juggalo was sitting beside me.
Too many things wrong with this picture.

Texas circa 1992

11.24.2010

We were at Corpus Christi beach when he decided that he wanted to swim. He'd already had three heart attacks by then and the scars on his chest looked like a treasure map. X marked the heart.
I was in the shallow water, partially because I was scared to go out any further but mostly because she wouldn't let me. And when his big oafish back swam over the second set of waves, she started screaming his name. "Ji-yim! Ji-yim!" She was somehow always able to turn the one syllable into two.

He probably couldn't hear her, but even if he could he would have pretended not to anyway. His selective hearing was commented on more often than not during my childhood. Instead, he flipped over to backstroke, revealing his giant belly. He was a good swimmer, I'll give him that, but she wouldn't. She was nervously pacing, frantically calling his name every few minutes or so. I stood up to pace with, her nerves now affecting me, even though I was positive at this point that he was doing this just to irritate her. I placed my hand over my eyes to peer across the water. He was out pretty far. "Aye, you call him," she partially said, partially asked. "Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!" I screamed. I wanted to scream "Quit being such a dipshit! Mom is freaking out!" I still called her Mom back then. I called my real mom Mommy. But Dad was never Daddy. Neither of my dads were ever Daddy.

He was swimming back now. Maybe because I called? I'd undoubtedly get blamed for it later in an argument. "You wouldn't come for me, Cabron." He swam all the way up to the shallow, letting his gut get covered with sand. He laid there for too long, like a beached whale. Thinking back now, I realize he was probably tired. But then it seemed like an act of rebellion, like he was saying "I'm back, now what?"

I don't remember anything else about that day. I don't remember what I wore. I don't remember what we ate. I don't remember which relative we were visiting. Corpus Christi beach was nasty, and Mom wore Bermuda shorts, and Dad almost gave her one of those heart attacks he was so fond of having, that's all I remember from that day. But just that little sliver of a memory is enough to make me miss back then, when my biggest worry was sunburning my scalp. I didn't know yet that he'd be gone soon. Didn't realize how much I'd miss something as stupid as their arguments, the smell of his undershirts, that assured feeling of knowing myself.

hardwood to concrete, concrete to sand

 

hurry up and go

traffic on the way to the beach
& that's the way it always goes.

I just want to get to the fruit market.

I've counted him say "fuckin'" for the past 17 minutes. He got a whopping 4 times in one sentence. Color me unimpressed with his vocabulary.

I always like the way I look in side view mirrors. Probably because I can't see that much. Skewed visions.

Traffic picks up.

the

the full moon's made everybody crazy
a summer so out of character that
the phone calls became less & less shocking
but the guilt began to stack itself up by
the doors of the house, hoping to inch its way onto our
shoulders and burrow into our hearts
the minute we should decide to leave. and here I
am again, searching for some deviant soul to pass
the blame onto. longing to rewind the predicaments
and one particularly embarrassing drunken night.
the situations one finds themselves in surely
don't dictate the character of a person, do they?
the only thing that I know to be forever true is that
she's gone for good but that is by no means an acceptable excuse.
the action we take is our own.

that lack of inquisition

and then there's the girls that
sit next to over priced record players and think
about family that's gone now, family that was gone
really, the moment they left for the city
but how bad can you feel when you're out making new memories?

how alone can you feel in the company of someone
whose supposed to know you backwards and forwards?
how can you feel together when you're all alone?
how come nothing ever makes sense these days and what
ever happened to that manual for life I thought they doled out
with light pink and blue fake cigars?

and all the things that should be on my mind
aren't. instead I'm in this pasture, the one I made you pull over near
I was reeling on orange sunshine but you didn't ask any questions,
no, instead
you helped me cross the barbwire, sat with me in an ant bed
 in the blistering sun.
all the while my pupils contracted deals with the devil
and I mean, worst case scenario, I guess we could have been shot
for trespassing?

and thinking how it never really made that much sense to me
why you wouldn't say bye to me when you left
parties. but now, I guess it does.

When I closed my eyes, we were in the ocean
a little more than hip deep
and the waves kept lapping up against us, hitting our
bare chests, no one there but us
and the pale full moon lit up the purple sky
but it didn't discount the stars which normally
I'd find prosaic but here, tonight, behind my lids
the stars were giant, twinkling orbs, bigger than you'd
see from earth, usually. Bigger than a geo metro, maybe.
Just dancing up there above us. We weren't touching or
really even looking at each other. With no hardwoods, I
stare at the ocean floor. I think you like it when I look
down.