Bill fixated on her profile and dried his eyes. He made no adjustments. He snapped out of it but into something far worse: Bill rode down the road fixin' his vocals to the tune of something pleasant. Got grey right quick. The dawn in an instant left for the coast and in it's place a kingdom of ironbelt blue. Smoke stacks and rusty water bins disdained the tracks. Their stubby legs flexed and Bill swiped a cigarette from his pocket, sparked'er 'n' took'er for a drag. The orange flame swelled in the morning's hellborne grey - Bill's train inbound through the fog - ring electricity. He toyed with his cigarette and right then he shuffled half a short one and a lit, second stick. He squinted and drew his chin high and tight.
Shining lights grew tight. Without a thought but with a hearty serving of self, he flicked the cigarettes onto the track. A chunk of shale quelled the short one. The long one sparked wildly as it fluttered to a flame, a once-contained inferno that spread to the farms past the hills past the country line. A large hunk of crosstie caught it. The air above the rails boiled. A fire war raged out of control. Who's side are you on Bill asked himself. He panicked a little because after all it was his long one that started the mess. The fire danced on soulfree. The train had arrived and boarding began. Some drones missed the sparks. Others evacuated. Smoke piped all around. Bill leaned against a post.
The steel composite crisped and charred...undocumented, unregulated fluids ignited...compressed gas combusted...the platform was alive. Several bells rang, drones crawled, pigeons flapped their wings up and shot their faces into puddles and sucked up dirty water, some folks figured doom and began to climb up and out of melting metal window frames (the doors hadn't slid shut). The flames, with gusto, kept on. The heat barreled beyond "intense." Bill watched it all unfold, imagining her.
The day failed to break. The sun wandered off, dusk settled in. Poor men and women had wiggled partially out of the burning train through windows rimmed in fire. Fragments of aluminum poles began melding into their skin. Their faces disfigured slowly, slow enough for Bill's heart to begin racing. He saw a woman with short hair and a shiny black pocketbook with gold buckles lose her left cheek to the pole. She could scream through her distended, disfigured mouth. She screamed. Bill jumped to the top of the burning train and leaped towards the front car, he couldn't feel the slightest warmth.
At the head car, Bill fell on his stomach and took his palm to the conductor's tinted window. He rapped. Bill got really desperate, he hung over the side and pounded wildly at it. He yelled louder than the sodered masses behind him. At once through the tinted chamber the man at the train's helm faded up into view. His back was turned to the wheel and he looked directly at Bill. An old, white-haired, bleak man with fiery eyes stared intensely at him. Through the dense air, Bill's horror overflowed as he gazed a haunting scene deep inside eyes identical to his.
Please turn to Side A.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Norfolk Banks Rag, Side A
Despite the discomfort Bill was all blissed out, porker chasing turkeys down a hill 'top Slider Island. Beef and creamy bunsy, night to dawn, short a shirt, breathin' hard for minimum wage, developing wrist tendinitis, thick guitar chords oozing out strong, quickly surrendering - sidestepping to the carefully-delineated shoulder, near tall, skinny birch trees.
That afternoon, Bill drove through sunlit ivy-covered underpasses. Shadows angled down the highway, and as he peeked the rear-view, his heart sunk as his city retreated. Driving down Kingsley (quarter-mile), thinking about getting off early, really turning the thing on its head, leaving it legs up in the sun. Bill pictured the scene:
An endless drive in a storm of stories, nuisances with wings, headed down east. Billy sighed 'n' rolled his eyes, affirming the family of clouds banded together over their heads, blindly approving of the historian's "analysis" of his ancestry. Maybe drugs would make this trip better. This was truly as comfortable as Bill's bear's lair: neatly organized war novels on the top shelf; pristine non-fiction par with his bloody eyes; cookbooks, transcriptions, and folk tales on the next two shelves. A green crusty old-taled sofa, figurin' for a drink, ridges deep and dark, pronounced "oh-no oh-no." A thick maple kitchen table with two refurbished, sturdy benches that could comfortably seat four, beneath fruit-stained stained glass with dark dirty black lines tracing the shapes of strawberries, pickles, and pears.
Endless driving all afternoon, weaving left turning right weathering the storm's onslaught. As for hope, as for the tunnel's exit light, Bill blinked morosely, took a drag of wild fantasy, and puffed some tumbling white cloth, tan skin, and human touches out the window. The road opened with the tenderness of a pregnant embrace. As if seasoned by the intricate coast and the unfracked Western springs, the signage smiled, the road ricocheted warmth, and inbound chromejets soared in silence. All this was undeniable. Bill had absorbed these violent fistfuls of shackled action before. He'd walked away with his hands in his pockets, and he knew he was headed down that same highway.
They arrived at the old bay house. Bill exhaled to erase the vision of a four-sided dungeon on the cove. She appeared. She wasn't wearing red shoes or a red ribbon in her long strawberry-blond hair. The house lacked a rickety, shingled water tower on its roof. Bill swallowed meekly, and the storm's comedy commenced. Laughs labored as they evaporated into the clean crisp air. Tales flowed as her tumbling white cloth vanquished the crappy little waves in the bay. Seconds later, more plastic planks like the ones on the recliners stirred the scene and punctuated Bill's uphill struggle.
Please turn to Side B.
That afternoon, Bill drove through sunlit ivy-covered underpasses. Shadows angled down the highway, and as he peeked the rear-view, his heart sunk as his city retreated. Driving down Kingsley (quarter-mile), thinking about getting off early, really turning the thing on its head, leaving it legs up in the sun. Bill pictured the scene:
An endless drive in a storm of stories, nuisances with wings, headed down east. Billy sighed 'n' rolled his eyes, affirming the family of clouds banded together over their heads, blindly approving of the historian's "analysis" of his ancestry. Maybe drugs would make this trip better. This was truly as comfortable as Bill's bear's lair: neatly organized war novels on the top shelf; pristine non-fiction par with his bloody eyes; cookbooks, transcriptions, and folk tales on the next two shelves. A green crusty old-taled sofa, figurin' for a drink, ridges deep and dark, pronounced "oh-no oh-no." A thick maple kitchen table with two refurbished, sturdy benches that could comfortably seat four, beneath fruit-stained stained glass with dark dirty black lines tracing the shapes of strawberries, pickles, and pears.
Endless driving all afternoon, weaving left turning right weathering the storm's onslaught. As for hope, as for the tunnel's exit light, Bill blinked morosely, took a drag of wild fantasy, and puffed some tumbling white cloth, tan skin, and human touches out the window. The road opened with the tenderness of a pregnant embrace. As if seasoned by the intricate coast and the unfracked Western springs, the signage smiled, the road ricocheted warmth, and inbound chromejets soared in silence. All this was undeniable. Bill had absorbed these violent fistfuls of shackled action before. He'd walked away with his hands in his pockets, and he knew he was headed down that same highway.
They arrived at the old bay house. Bill exhaled to erase the vision of a four-sided dungeon on the cove. She appeared. She wasn't wearing red shoes or a red ribbon in her long strawberry-blond hair. The house lacked a rickety, shingled water tower on its roof. Bill swallowed meekly, and the storm's comedy commenced. Laughs labored as they evaporated into the clean crisp air. Tales flowed as her tumbling white cloth vanquished the crappy little waves in the bay. Seconds later, more plastic planks like the ones on the recliners stirred the scene and punctuated Bill's uphill struggle.
Please turn to Side B.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Lushy Noodles
Lushy noodles (Bucatini and Bacon)
If you have 20 minutes to spare and a functional attention span, give this Serious Eats Food Lab article a read. I'd love to know what it says. I have a feeling it's relevant to this post though, because cooking pasta may be the most challenging part of this recipe. It's easily the most critical component of the dish.
Here's the premise: make a tomato sauce, saute some bacon, combine the two, and then cook the pasta for its last two minutes in the tomato-bacon juice. You'll end up with succulent noodles, drunk with rich, fragrant, tomato flavor, stumbling through a maze of slightly crispy, but equally inebriated, chunks of pork.
The wholly non-tragic tragedy of using Oscar Meyer bacon.
Ideally, you'd use a pork product that isn't as in-your-face as Oscar Meyer Thick-Cut Bacon. I'll admit bacon hogs the spotlight pretty obnoxiously, but who are we kidding, we keep buying tickets to the show. If you can get your hands on good imported pancetta, the kind you'd ask the deliman to slice a single, 1/2 lb. ring off for you, that's what you're in the market for - well, actually what you really want is guanciale (ie. "face bacon") - an apparently prevalent cut of pig outside the northeast US.
Chunked guanciale from Buon Italia.
Guanciale is cured pork meat from the cheeks or jowls of the pig. People go nuts for this stuff for good reason, each little bite packs a haymaker punch of porkiness, it's like concentrating a 500 pound pig's worth of porkiness into a couple ounces of meat. I find the Italian Market at Chelsea Markets to be the best place to purchase it, as chunks of vacuum-sealed guanciale chill out unassumingly in easy-access baskets. If you're forced to pronounce it, go with "gwan-cha-lay."
Once it hits your lips! It's so good! It's so good!
So about this lushy noodle bit: your goal is to create a thin tomato juice that your pasta can be immersed in right before serving. The noodles will chug the tomato sauce without abandon, the pasta equivalent of shotgunning a beer, the fratboy equivalent of doing a fully-clothed swan dive off a balcony into your neighbor's new pond. In just a couple minutes, the pasta will glow deep orange, infused with flavor, studded with decadent little bubbles of pork fat and deeply-concentrated tomato essence. You don't need cheese with this pasta, you don't need a swig of olive oil, you don't even need a drink - because you'll finish this plate in no time, and by all earthly measures, you will have died. Enjoy!
Bucatini with Bacon
Serves 2
4 cloves garlic
Fresh basil
1 large sweet onion (like Vidalia)
4 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
28 oz. can peeled tomatoes (Nina, San Marzano, Luigi Vitelli, etc.)
Kosher salt
Cracked black pepper
1 tbsp. sugar
1/2 lb. thick cut bacon (about 12 oz pancetta/guanciale)
1/2 lb. bucatini (or thick spaghetti)
Peel the garlic cloves, squash them a little, chop the onion roughly, and tear up some basil leaves. These ingredients won't appear in the final dish, they're only flavoring the sauce (so they don't have to be cut perfectly). Heat up a medium sauce pot, add the extra virgin olive oil followed by the garlic, onions, and basil. Add about a tbsp of salt to the mixture and mix well. Cook the ingredients over medium-high heat until translucent and reduced, about ten minutes.
Meanwhile, pour the peeled tomatoes into a bowl and gently break them apart with your hands (watch for squirters!), discarding anything unusually tough or discolored. After the vegetables cook down, add the tomatoes to the sauce pot. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add the sugar. Cook the sauce, uncovered, for 30 minutes at a very slow simmer.
Slice your pork about half an inch wide. Heat up a saute pan and add the pork. Cook over medium heat until the edges crisp, then turn the heat down to its lowest setting.
After 30 minutes, place a strainer over a different sauce pot (you may want to do this step over a sink). Pour the tomato sauce into the strainer, and with the back of a spoon, press as much of the liquid out of the sauce as you can, through the strainer, and into the bottom pot. Put the clear tomato juice on the stove over high heat and bring to a vigorous boil.
Bring aggressively-salted water to a boil for your pasta. Add the pasta. After five minutes, begin checking the pasta for tenderness every 30 seconds. Once it's just tender, but still essentially inedible, it's go-time. Pour the tomato juice into the bacon saute pan, and turn the heat up to medium. Using tongs, transfer the noodles from the pot to the saute pan and stir well. Cook the noodles about 2 minutes, stirring.
Transfer the pasta to serving bowls with a circular flourish (it's all in the wrist), make sure to distribute the pork evenly, and garnish with a hearty sprig of pretty basil leaves.
They're all wasted.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Modern Is Now
Through a glut of "conditioned behavior," as the conservatives call it, we realize that the autumn beach offers an escape. That is to say, standing there in wind-whipped flannel, you have a chance to think not about societal pressures, seemingly hard-wired desires, but to escape to the beauty of the natural interface. I stood alone. My sandy metal bucket handle clanked against its side as its base settled down. I was taught that folding your arms is body language for "I'm not listening," but I was listening to the waves and the water on the shore.
A meaty white hand dimly lit (how appropriate) pounded down on the maple bar. The lights were out and a few haphazardly strewn trails of Christmas lights backlit a leather jacket and pair of brothers. Some smoke filtered in and out of view, some beer flushed through the camcorder lens. Hoarsely and repentant I said something neither profound nor comforting. If the constellation of red cans lent any cosmic insight, it hadn't reached my person. Distracted by anything shiny and/or voluptuous, I saw a leather-laced Spaniard disappear into the arched medieval walkway that led to the hexagonal washroom.
If our home proved unwelcoming, our guests would not realize it until they left. So gray rain fell and we opened the door to our golden passageway. I'll diagram the situation now. On the ground floor's exterior, a lifeless fragment of derivative architecture looked back with hostility - an indigenous aspect (at least). Carried away, rolled up, slammed shut, our central corridor boasted an odd combination of crap and a spartan aesthetic. We beamed with pride and paid off a new car in rent.
And this is how it went for awhile.
A meaty white hand dimly lit (how appropriate) pounded down on the maple bar. The lights were out and a few haphazardly strewn trails of Christmas lights backlit a leather jacket and pair of brothers. Some smoke filtered in and out of view, some beer flushed through the camcorder lens. Hoarsely and repentant I said something neither profound nor comforting. If the constellation of red cans lent any cosmic insight, it hadn't reached my person. Distracted by anything shiny and/or voluptuous, I saw a leather-laced Spaniard disappear into the arched medieval walkway that led to the hexagonal washroom.
If our home proved unwelcoming, our guests would not realize it until they left. So gray rain fell and we opened the door to our golden passageway. I'll diagram the situation now. On the ground floor's exterior, a lifeless fragment of derivative architecture looked back with hostility - an indigenous aspect (at least). Carried away, rolled up, slammed shut, our central corridor boasted an odd combination of crap and a spartan aesthetic. We beamed with pride and paid off a new car in rent.
And this is how it went for awhile.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Just South
We walked up the hill together, not sure-footedly but dignified nonetheless (I guess). It was our time, the world had been paused and we were about to shock it to speed. As the hill in front of us receded, the gigantic Carolina colonial crested on the horizon as the back of a young man's head emerges from the bottom of a young lady's dress. Simple brown birds chirped and from the gang's view, all was symmetrical, which is a vital detail. Two of us were like me, and the other two were girls. There is odd symmetricality around odd numbers of things, you get a whole median. We stood in front of the large white house and chewed on some dehydrated fungi.
I thought about my new gadgets. She thought about her long-lost love. He dreamt of the day it would be ok. Four eyes followed a purple bug. Great lengths of rope will burn more quickly if they're all bundled together. So we entered the house and marched to the living room. Joanna saw all these little ants on the ground so she ran to the kitchen. Bill put his fingers between his belt and his trousers and wiggled them around. I walked to the window and tried to lie down on the sill but I was too long or something. Anyway the view of the Caribbean was magnificent. I saw all these exotic fruits and a man wearing a bumblebee costume trying to pollenate the flowers (but they had already been pollenated! that's like using a magnifying glass on a tray of grilled cheese sandwiches, Jessie thought.) And speaking of reproduction, Robert forgot about his taxes and started thinking about taking deep breaths of magic vapor. As Jessie was pinning her socks to the hardwood floor, Joanna came back from the kitchen and poured out several gallons of frozen peas. One of the peas rolled into Jessie's sock so I said, "Hey guys, do you think I could get my face on Mount Rushmore?"
And no one seemed to answer me. The day grew warm, the planets moved and the Earth spun. Robert rubbed the back of his arm against Jessie's side, trying to get rich quick, and I jumped awkwardly from the armchair to the coffee table. They decorated this house really nicely, Joanna observed as she chewed on some peas and some frost collected on the sides of her mouth. Bill's wrists red, he said "sing song about the freedom and how nice things are." So we all gathered in the center of the room, socks greened with pea shells, and put our arms around each other, but Robert accidentally punched me in the mouth but I laughed really hard and told him that when the fridge door closes, the light goes off, but I'll always love you, Joanna. Joanna looked at me intensely and thought, "wait, bald eagles aren't actually bald." For a brief minute we all pondered what had just happened, and shrugged it all off, chalking it up to the beautiful day and all the books on the shelves in the living room.
Jessie started taking those books off the shelves to read all of them. I wished Robert hadn't started throwing those mints as hard as he could against the wall. I made Bill and Joanna some Hawaiian punch but Bill looked down and showed me that he had already fixed himself a glass. Joanna walked to the record player, picked it up, and carried it over to Jessie. She reciprocated by placing a book entitled "On Another Chance" on top of the record player. Robert apologized for accidentally punching me in the mouth, I said, "Listen man, we're all from different backgrounds. We are all unique, every footprint and fingerprint is unique. We are so unique. The differences between us and other usses are so big. I am unique from Bill, and Bill is unique from everyone. Do you guys see what I mean?"
I think Joanna fell asleep. I took some curtain and rendered a red inkblot drawing of her sleeping, sometimes I caressed her forehead and hair. Bill looked at me and said, "all the Blackhawks! all the Blackhawks!" and Robert agreed. Jessie put one pea in the bookshelves for each book she had removed, it was beautiful. When Joanna came to we were all sleeping, so she stepped out onto that beautiful front porch. The grass on the hill sat still and these simple brown birds flew back and forth slowly. I had a dream with so much cheese in it and I remember that, in the dream, I was so grateful it wasn't Swiss because of the holes! Joanna had found a basket and now it was covered with leaves. She woke me and Bill up and asked for help. We obliged.
Things really took a turn for the worst when Robert started fighting with Jessie. He called her a "cunt" at one point and we stopped scalping the hummingbirds and offered to help. Jessie said it was too late and that something might be burning in the kitchen. We all walked into the kitchen and stared at Robert on the way. She was right, Bill had turned the oven on when he was tying rope around all the knobs in the house, we didn't want to see what had burnt so we just turned the dial and exhaled deeply. Robert hadn't followed us into the kitchen, in fact, we didn't see him when we returned to the living room. I cleared my throat.
"I've never been a pretzel, and I've never gone para-sailing, does that make me a criminal?" Jessie and Bill shook their heads. Joanna looked down. "Which is why, since you only live once, and since Robert is gone now, we should maybe get to know each other a little better." I don't know where I found the courage to suggest such a thing, but I did, and thankfully (I guess), it mostly blew over.
I thought about my new gadgets. She thought about her long-lost love. He dreamt of the day it would be ok. Four eyes followed a purple bug. Great lengths of rope will burn more quickly if they're all bundled together. So we entered the house and marched to the living room. Joanna saw all these little ants on the ground so she ran to the kitchen. Bill put his fingers between his belt and his trousers and wiggled them around. I walked to the window and tried to lie down on the sill but I was too long or something. Anyway the view of the Caribbean was magnificent. I saw all these exotic fruits and a man wearing a bumblebee costume trying to pollenate the flowers (but they had already been pollenated! that's like using a magnifying glass on a tray of grilled cheese sandwiches, Jessie thought.) And speaking of reproduction, Robert forgot about his taxes and started thinking about taking deep breaths of magic vapor. As Jessie was pinning her socks to the hardwood floor, Joanna came back from the kitchen and poured out several gallons of frozen peas. One of the peas rolled into Jessie's sock so I said, "Hey guys, do you think I could get my face on Mount Rushmore?"
And no one seemed to answer me. The day grew warm, the planets moved and the Earth spun. Robert rubbed the back of his arm against Jessie's side, trying to get rich quick, and I jumped awkwardly from the armchair to the coffee table. They decorated this house really nicely, Joanna observed as she chewed on some peas and some frost collected on the sides of her mouth. Bill's wrists red, he said "sing song about the freedom and how nice things are." So we all gathered in the center of the room, socks greened with pea shells, and put our arms around each other, but Robert accidentally punched me in the mouth but I laughed really hard and told him that when the fridge door closes, the light goes off, but I'll always love you, Joanna. Joanna looked at me intensely and thought, "wait, bald eagles aren't actually bald." For a brief minute we all pondered what had just happened, and shrugged it all off, chalking it up to the beautiful day and all the books on the shelves in the living room.
Jessie started taking those books off the shelves to read all of them. I wished Robert hadn't started throwing those mints as hard as he could against the wall. I made Bill and Joanna some Hawaiian punch but Bill looked down and showed me that he had already fixed himself a glass. Joanna walked to the record player, picked it up, and carried it over to Jessie. She reciprocated by placing a book entitled "On Another Chance" on top of the record player. Robert apologized for accidentally punching me in the mouth, I said, "Listen man, we're all from different backgrounds. We are all unique, every footprint and fingerprint is unique. We are so unique. The differences between us and other usses are so big. I am unique from Bill, and Bill is unique from everyone. Do you guys see what I mean?"
I think Joanna fell asleep. I took some curtain and rendered a red inkblot drawing of her sleeping, sometimes I caressed her forehead and hair. Bill looked at me and said, "all the Blackhawks! all the Blackhawks!" and Robert agreed. Jessie put one pea in the bookshelves for each book she had removed, it was beautiful. When Joanna came to we were all sleeping, so she stepped out onto that beautiful front porch. The grass on the hill sat still and these simple brown birds flew back and forth slowly. I had a dream with so much cheese in it and I remember that, in the dream, I was so grateful it wasn't Swiss because of the holes! Joanna had found a basket and now it was covered with leaves. She woke me and Bill up and asked for help. We obliged.
Things really took a turn for the worst when Robert started fighting with Jessie. He called her a "cunt" at one point and we stopped scalping the hummingbirds and offered to help. Jessie said it was too late and that something might be burning in the kitchen. We all walked into the kitchen and stared at Robert on the way. She was right, Bill had turned the oven on when he was tying rope around all the knobs in the house, we didn't want to see what had burnt so we just turned the dial and exhaled deeply. Robert hadn't followed us into the kitchen, in fact, we didn't see him when we returned to the living room. I cleared my throat.
"I've never been a pretzel, and I've never gone para-sailing, does that make me a criminal?" Jessie and Bill shook their heads. Joanna looked down. "Which is why, since you only live once, and since Robert is gone now, we should maybe get to know each other a little better." I don't know where I found the courage to suggest such a thing, but I did, and thankfully (I guess), it mostly blew over.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Ghostplank
Two slips dunked up and down in the harborwater. I hadn't touched either of them. Dark, greenish, black-and-blue water - poisoned by billions of journeys over the top - foamed white as my clipper cut through. Tiny pink capsules of seawater scattered at wake's edge. Once fully absorbed, there are brief periods of hypomanic calm. Warm sunbeams reflected earnestly off the harbor surface. The shimmering waves weren't close to as majestic as the battery skyline, which boasted a mosaic of horizon-stamped windows framed by dull limestone and oxidized copper. From my vantage I gazed down the barrel of Manhattan and eastdrifted. My socks were a little damp so I took them off - feet seeking fuzzy shelter.
Although man has relentlessly girded this landscape, carving deep into the ground to thrust higher into the sky, the encasing harbor remains a furious showcase of nature. My sail dug in, windwhipped to tears but stubbornly-driven and earnest - an authenticity at odds with the sunbeams, for my sail travels singly at sea. We don't rely on Friends.
Windwhipped to frenzy, I had no tac[t]. My spirit sunk low, faceplanting the deck. I thought of your dog face and wholly derivative life. You're right! There is cause for alarm!
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Rance
My heart gurgled to a boil and I exhaled. I gawked oddly, in an odd eyeball configuration. I sat there and I saw him. I saw him and him and him and her. Thinking, the castle is built, swing around back. Fill the void and do so iron-clad. Do so with dumbbells and without oil. The mistake's been made. He said, "I ain't gonna fuck it up this time." The gauntlet has been thrown. How does that go? I sit and listen. A man and some dirt and a stylus.
The man sat up on a rainy urban day. He checked around. A mirror he found looked back at him. He saw the street and heard brakes and sat. "I remember how foreign it sounded to them, how they couldn't believe yuppies lived down there now." I mean, where did they think yuppies lived? Maybe they hadn't given it much thought. Maybe they had no need to. They had no need to. I saw twirling my thoughts like overcooked noodles. In the sense, in the season, I try and you falter. Which is an odd combination?
And then I realized I didn't care. I looked to the north and realized I didn't care, and the beat played on, and I oriented on myself, and I hatched a plan. I cracked through and lived differently thereafter for a time. And then I found myself awash in reluctance and regret. And then I found myself back. My cells flavorless and meek. Maybe the answer is a fresh start, a new beginning. So the log came back, as it always does. The torpedo drove towards my ship and I watched it panicked. I didn't care. The slanted eyes both drove me away and magnetized my heart, and the irony couldn't be more humorous. I slammed that dream on its head long before it mattered. I am embarrassed to be associated with certain correspondence; I am embarrassed to be associated with the Catholic faith, and with suburbia.
When the summer dresses you, you win. When the winter dresses you, I win, and in this balance, time flies. And such soaring, buzzing time passage makes me wonder, and it makes me downright symptomatic. I see a yellow tank and a, now I'm just giving up, I've surrendered. I saw a yellow tank with bum wheels. And this is just perfect: "Walk softly tonight, little stranger, into these shadows we're passing through, talk softly tonight little angel, you make all my dreams come true." Didn't even plan it. One of those mental/coincidental crossroads.
I stood there watching boat after boat embark up or out of the Hudson. It was raining and draining me and the city's spirit. I stood there at the base of the Manhattan Bridge. I stood and watched everyone disappear. I watched softly, and I talked lonely. I saw them leave and boats don't move very quickly. It's heart-wrenching, and it made the liquid in my heart boil. It boiled unapologetically. I saw the wind bully the rain procession on its side. The greyness was overpowering. There she goes with the clan: a toddler and a Queen. The boats went on and some had there own. I smoked a blunt. They're headed to the Caribbean. He's headed to save the world. She's headed somewhere she doesn't want to go. And then, in a most surprising twists, they're headed to heaven.
The window closed, now housekeeping began. The process hadn't been particulrly democratic, but that's not reality. Ya know what else isn't reality? All the shit in the periphery, and my lovely herb garden. And my lovely spread out in the country. All the details hardly made a difference. All the darkness and coziness counted so much more than the adornments and craftsmanship, and the boat, and the riverboat, and the pocketknife stuffed slickly into a leather holster, correction, self-correction, regulation. Slap slap slap slap across the face such that the hand lands where it started, backhand to the right side of the face, my mirror gawked back. I lowered my head and smiled into the summer breeze. The warehouses passed by me, the planets past me. The zip code changed twice.
And I stood there like a dolt.
The man sat up on a rainy urban day. He checked around. A mirror he found looked back at him. He saw the street and heard brakes and sat. "I remember how foreign it sounded to them, how they couldn't believe yuppies lived down there now." I mean, where did they think yuppies lived? Maybe they hadn't given it much thought. Maybe they had no need to. They had no need to. I saw twirling my thoughts like overcooked noodles. In the sense, in the season, I try and you falter. Which is an odd combination?
And then I realized I didn't care. I looked to the north and realized I didn't care, and the beat played on, and I oriented on myself, and I hatched a plan. I cracked through and lived differently thereafter for a time. And then I found myself awash in reluctance and regret. And then I found myself back. My cells flavorless and meek. Maybe the answer is a fresh start, a new beginning. So the log came back, as it always does. The torpedo drove towards my ship and I watched it panicked. I didn't care. The slanted eyes both drove me away and magnetized my heart, and the irony couldn't be more humorous. I slammed that dream on its head long before it mattered. I am embarrassed to be associated with certain correspondence; I am embarrassed to be associated with the Catholic faith, and with suburbia.
When the summer dresses you, you win. When the winter dresses you, I win, and in this balance, time flies. And such soaring, buzzing time passage makes me wonder, and it makes me downright symptomatic. I see a yellow tank and a, now I'm just giving up, I've surrendered. I saw a yellow tank with bum wheels. And this is just perfect: "Walk softly tonight, little stranger, into these shadows we're passing through, talk softly tonight little angel, you make all my dreams come true." Didn't even plan it. One of those mental/coincidental crossroads.
I stood there watching boat after boat embark up or out of the Hudson. It was raining and draining me and the city's spirit. I stood there at the base of the Manhattan Bridge. I stood and watched everyone disappear. I watched softly, and I talked lonely. I saw them leave and boats don't move very quickly. It's heart-wrenching, and it made the liquid in my heart boil. It boiled unapologetically. I saw the wind bully the rain procession on its side. The greyness was overpowering. There she goes with the clan: a toddler and a Queen. The boats went on and some had there own. I smoked a blunt. They're headed to the Caribbean. He's headed to save the world. She's headed somewhere she doesn't want to go. And then, in a most surprising twists, they're headed to heaven.
The window closed, now housekeeping began. The process hadn't been particulrly democratic, but that's not reality. Ya know what else isn't reality? All the shit in the periphery, and my lovely herb garden. And my lovely spread out in the country. All the details hardly made a difference. All the darkness and coziness counted so much more than the adornments and craftsmanship, and the boat, and the riverboat, and the pocketknife stuffed slickly into a leather holster, correction, self-correction, regulation. Slap slap slap slap across the face such that the hand lands where it started, backhand to the right side of the face, my mirror gawked back. I lowered my head and smiled into the summer breeze. The warehouses passed by me, the planets past me. The zip code changed twice.
And I stood there like a dolt.
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