trippingfingers

Have you ever been so happy, like I have: I was at the graveyard all by myself and I just wanted to be an undertaker move into that little cube at the edge of the lot and tell jokes and pray and bury people's dead friends, because someone has to do it for everyone else, I felt like a happiness hero. Have you ever felt so happy, like I have, that childhood memories were like half-remembered previews of the feeling that you were having right there? Have you ever peeled back the sugar coating of euphoria and memories and stood there laughing at your own black vacuous history, knowing just how good the bitter tastes in bittersweet and how good

details all the details like sharp light and shadow texture and little spots on windows. like drips, sugary drips from apples, like the slide of the key in the car door, and how it chignks right in. Are the street signs off-white? every parking spot has a dull black pad in it, from all the dripping engines. The smell of rain, does it go away completely past this wall, or is there a space in this airlock, between the automatic doors, where it has time to rest and turn back? LIttle settlements of grit in the corners and cracks; the sound of fluorescents. I'll be glad for all these distractions tonight.

Even if we had something to talk about, in the car you just look at the warp-speed lines anyway, and especially with the blackness receding from the brave headlights, the vacuous night that swallows conversation with sleepy dread, I just wasn't in the mood for talking. You smelled like a melody, like the voice of Jeff Buckley on cassette. I remember it well-- these sorts of memories lodge themselves in-between flavors and regrets. So, anyway, we had the stereo up, and you and your hair were slouching into the driver's seat, and I kept watching your lips in case you wanted to talk, but you were stitched up tight, like yo

eighty seven more memories left: bob marley hours of silence sorries chocolate muffins bruised ankles curbside picnics words about college and graduation capri-suns complaints about math homework brand-new running shoes excitement and accomplishment buttered upside-down bread christmas-lit political idealism letters and dry stamps packing for college take this cd broken window roadtrips volume all the way up call me bibles and prayer desperate lonely prayer sticks of incense midnight cold over windowsills thought i felt my cellphone buzz listening it was nothing ok, sixty one more memories left

In places like these the dust doesn't settle, it gets rolled up in zigzag papers and filtered through the bodies of day-time state workers. I come for the jazz not the coffee and all I leave with is poetry. I tip but mostly conspicuously, I want to give them the feeling and it's worth losing the money, funny how you feel when its sunny for the first day in a month of rain. The trombone is narrating my grandparents first date fence hopping with wet socks through the sweat-dusted stock yard after dark started lifting, but-- the drums cut him off in a prelude to a kiss, missed the connection of lips around 6 am, just to trade four

silent kisses and rustling plastic Thank You bags, underneath the static of dust, which is underneath the coarse grumble of the engine, which is underneath the squeal of the air-brakes, sometimes, which is above the buzzy intercom. bouquets held carefully by their stems in a bubble of space above rivulets of brown water exploring angular paths between feet and awkward shoelaces. posters and the spaces where they ought to be above smiles of missing teeth and glances that claim no memory, pretending to study the crease in the cowboy hat of the man on the other end of the row. blue chairs, and keychain pictures of grandchildren ba

Outer space falls on us, on our t-shirted shoulders, on breezy hair, curling into the wind under the giant needle of sunlight, by the bright white lake of ice, by the matted hair of the tide-flats soggy with saltwater, outer space falls on us all, and it weighs so much. And we don't say anything      we don't say anything at all in between the bunches of needle trees,     all green and brown and frost,             because the bridge is so high, and the universe so very heavy dead, rubbery bodies unsent letters (made of lead) lost phone numbers plane tickets unworn dresses engagement rings haircuts forgetfulness an

Dear Grandchild, if there is one Truth that I want to share with you, its that you were created to be loved and that the God of the universe is slowly romancing us all. Don't believe the hype, whether it comes from sparkling Colgate televangelists, pretty religious liars full of rotting meat, or the TV or your friends or your teachers or the government. If there is one truth that I want to share with you, its this: stick it to the man, dude. Work hard and never mind the bullocks.

If someone wanted to make a movie out of us, sitting over the water in our garden colors, I'd be played by Michael Cera, and she would have to be the ghost of Edie Sedgwick, Smoking an invisible hand-rolled cigarette, swinging invisible pearls, singing inaudible tunes with a haunting flourish. only squares have a checkered past, she says, through puffs of obsidian dust. Her past is paisley, painted daisy patterns radiating psychedelia, painted over dark glass, painted over secrets and you can just feel the skeletons of them if you close your eyes and look with your fingertips. hmm. I'll always remember this, she says,

You're the evermore You're the paramour You're the less-is-more Kind of girl. The drop of blood in my glass That I sell off for rosewater, The odd one out in my class, You're a Class act of anarchy Either the world is upside-down Or you've been standing on your head for too long; As long as the wind-swept wilds have lain, The sand they carved your ankles from, As long as dry rock has stood Lonely in the desert night, As long as waves have been knocking knocking at the fisherman's door, you've stood framing it all in your delicate words: "Wicked cool, man. Wicked cool."