The Worst Betrayal

the poop

was lying there,

still and steaming.

when Stella,

with obvious intention,

kicked it.

all over the leg of the one,

who gave her so much.

but i guess it wasn't enough.

if she was trying

to cover something up,

she was unsuccessful.

Exterminator

I've never read Remembrance of Things Past. Things pass. Things are remembered. But it is the book I've used on the cockroaches in the house. Early mornings, there they are, lazy and unafraid, or maybe surfacing because they know I will drop the book on them. Vol. I. And they've committed to dying. I give them a chance. I say, "Run for it," and put my foot close by, to give it a reason it can see, maybe even feel. Can it feel the displaced air from my footfalls? Maybe I should read Remembrance of Things Past so that it is less of a weapon and more of a literary device, so that I do not crush the cockroaches with it, or I do, but with more of a purpose. That I've killed them with some device I despise. Vague pronouns, everywhere, I don't like them too much.

After I've done the deed, it looks like I've just dropped a book on the floor. It is there, on the floor, and I am looking at it. I lift it up, anticipating or hoping that the cockroach will run behind the refrigerator, but that is never the case. I turn the book over, and there it is, crushed and juicy, a leg dangling and certainly dead. I wipe it off with a paper towel but there is some remnant it leaves behind--it is a silvery patch on the navy blue cover. It is one of many.

The sound of a book falling in the morning and hitting the ground is louder than you'd think. But the sound is abbreviated. Then it is replaced with the sound of coffee brewing. But early in the morning, the sound sticks with you like a sore, when it is in that empty space before coffee it carves a notch in your skull.

Today, I returned Remembrance of Things Past to the library. I will never read that book. I look for a bigger book, one with a spine as thick as the width of the book. It is Atlas Shrugged. This book, when it lands on a bug, I bet it will open up to a gray page with closely knitted text and I bet it will sound less...heavy. Less...despairing. Then I can go on with my day. Then I can remember the page I read in Atlas Shrugged as I picked up the book. Then I can feel more productive and less guilty. Then I can feel less guilty. Yes.

Elsie May

We took acid, and we went to the cemetery.

I remember the statue, and I remember how she was young and old and beautiful and wise.

We circled her, Tony and I. We said, "She is young and old, beautiful and wise. If you are standing here, she appears to be one thing, and over there, another." We said, "here is something profound, something bigger than anything we have known before." We talked in circles, convinced that we were wise. That is what you do when you take acid. You figure it out, and then it disappears.

If I was by myself, I imagine I would have been scared. The voices in your head can grow too loud if you are by yourself. I found that out later. At times you need to talk to someone to keep them quiet.

Elsie May was the name of the woman memorialized with the statue. I wonder now, as we wondered then, what kind of wife she was. What kind of mother she was. If, when everyone left for the day, she was sad. If she cried out audibly, or suffered in silence. Or if she felt free in a way she only felt when she was alone.

We wondered if she died in childbirth, or of some terrible disease we don't even think of now. It is sad to think of people dying young. We talked about that.

It is sad to remember.

Werner! Herzog!

In 1982, I killed someone and Werner Herzog had a steamship dragged across and over a mountain for a film he was directing. The ship weighed 300 tons, or something like that, heavy. Why am I writing about Werner Herzog? I'm not sure. Why not? He ate a shoe because he keeps his word:



He ate his shoe in 1980. In 1980, I was getting high with Tony. I don't remember 1980. Except, there was Tony, and getting high. I was not eating a shoe. I did not own a gun.

In 2006, Werner Herzog was shot during an interview.

He did not stop the interview. I was in prison and there is not much to this story, except in 2006, Homes asked me if I'd heard of Werner Herzog. I said, "No."
"He's a ridiculous man," Homes said.

Now it's 2011 and Werner Herzog has a new film in 3-D, about something very old, ancient. I have a new life. Werner Herzog says there is nothing glorious about filmmaking. It is an endless sequence of banalitites, and sometimes, I feel that way about life. Then, Werner Herzog says:

However, there's very rare moments where I get the feeling sometimes I'm like the little girl in the fairy tale who steps out into the night, in the stars, and she holds her apron open, and the stars are raining into her apron. Those moments I have seen and I have had. But they are very rare.

On Bicycles and Darkness

Here is a dream I will tell you about. I thought about not saying anything about it, because it seems very personally and very painful--kind of--but then I looked at it again and I thought it was meaningless, so I wondered, what? Is this the inspiration I have been looking for?

Here is the dream. I am at home, lying in bed, and I have left my bicycle somewhere public. It is locked up, and the place seemed as though it would be a fine place to leave my bicycle for a day or a few days. There are nice people that walk by this place, and there are trees and flowers and things you associate with places that are okay places to leave your bicycle.

Let me tell you about this bicycle. Tony gave it to me. It was a gift from Tony, for some reason. It is an okay bike, not a really nice bike, but a very decent bike. Tony did not give me very much, so to have something from Tony made me, and it, feel very special. So in that, it is very valuable.

This was a very long dream. In a sense, a dream 30 years in the making with characters from the past who have become different people in my head through 30 years of daydreaming and them changing and becoming more complete in my imagination, in my subconscious, in my dreams that have worked together to build this new dream. The real people in the dream are probably not real people at all, if you want to know the truth.

Tony never gave me a bicycle. In real life, I gave Tony a bicycle. I built a bicycle for Tony from a frame and parts that I stole from nice suburban kids who didn't deserve to have their bikes molested by some drugged out 16 year old. But that's what happened in real life. That is not something that goes away when I wake up. But I gave Tony a bike, which is nice too. It's complicated.

But what happened in this new oddly constructed dream thing is that Curt, who didn't do anything wrong really, in the dream at least, he left this gift bicycle in some reasonable place, and now it's gone, and Tony who wasn't in the dream but who I guess was more of just an idea in the dream--a force if you will--is deeply injured because of it. The idea of Tony, you see?? The bicycle is gone. Tony, the big force, the dark cloud looming over my entire existence, turns darker. As if he didn't already have everything to be angry about. I cannot see the increasing darkness, but I can feel it. Very deeply and clearly, even in waking life.

Can you imagine? A horrible nightmare about a stolen bicycle?

Is that a song? Jesus.

Running

What's gotten into me? There is a song inside my head. But it won't come out. Arrr, it's driving me nuts!
September, and the heat's broken. What happened last September?
So I run today because I put on my shoes and there are leaves on the ground and they are brown and dead and make a sound and I run. Yes, I do.
If the song will not run to me, I will run to it, and if we are running in opposite directions, eventually, we will run into each other, but it will take a much longer time, so I hope this isn't the case. I am feeling myself move and I am hurting, but I run. My skin is floppy because I am old. Or, older. My feet thud. People run past me who are walking very fast. So I run harder.
How hard is the song running. Inside my head, it is running away from me. Very hard. Very fast.
How long will I run? Until I stop running.
A child waves to me from a car. It passes, and I do not wave because I think that a child cannot be nice.
I run harder. A dog barks. A squirrel runs away from me. I run home. I run into the house. I run past Dad. I run into my bedroom. I run around my bedroom. I run on my bed. I run, into the wall.