two knots

the sick sauce of the sunlight

on the mustard of the ocean

was tempered by the twilight

of their heavy hanging minds

"deny the feeling

in your sockets

and the lightness

in your pockets

don't forget

to drink the water

with the wine.

don't deny

the looping juices

of her nectar

don't destroy

the secret chamber

in her breast

please give in

to her entreaties

and take her to the

smallest cities...

but never ever ever

deny her any treasure

for your pleasure

is forever her's to test."

***

two knots knotted

sat facing the horizon.

foam licked

the edges of their fingertips

while birds,

so white & grey,

flew overhead.

Poems Written on Adderall - 5/21/10

feels like i should just do what i used to do because i was smarter then

*

really want to write some poetry

just keep thinking of rap songs that don't exist yet

*

the armpit of my brain is sweaty

hairs needs trimming

visible deodorant becoming hard

and falling off

*

the hard cock of my brain is

ready for

the virginal vagina of life

*

the bi polar old clown of my brain

is quitting it's job at the circus

after thirty-six years -

sixty-eight years of life,

and starting over again

it's never too late to start over again

*

we are perpetually 'starting over' and

perpetually ignorant

*

never felt as good as

i feel now

or maybe i have but can't remember

*

sophomore male in pokemon shirt is not as ironic as he thinks, i guess

*

i'm the best rapper alive

i just haven't harnessed it yet

*

thought/wrote 'harnessed' in the previous poem

maybe meaning 'harvest'

or 'harvested'

keep thinking of a band maybe called 'blue moon' or like, 'october sky' and they had a song that was played on the radio maybe four years ago

not 'i hate everything about you'

but another song kind of similar that was just at a slower tempo i guess

*

gonna keep writing

gonna endure the study hall of life...

*

i got the lean connect

*

going to go help my mom set up for after prom

love my mom

---

video of me reading one of the above poems after drinking promethazine with 7up, ice, and a blue raspberry flavored jolly rancher

each day's work and activities brings a renewed sense of accomplishment
but nothing was really accomplished
and i become lazy
and i am discontent with the contentment i feel

One lousy soap poem on the mirror

is all he never wrote,

and me,

look at his face through the hyperventilation,

documentary of his suicide slowly blooming,

how they made their applause!

How the they’s encourage the booze and the pain

to medicate their hypocritical contempt,

to numb for moments the lack of feeling in their lives.

Fuck off, seriously, fuck off.

I will toil the fields of language for you until my hands are blistered

And the puss fills my brain.

Seriously, fuck off.

You don’t want any of this,

you can applause from your velvet balconies and return to your homes

and fuck your lovers and use the emotion we paid for in teeth.

The early mornings are the worst, when the black of the night

sticks around until the afternoon, sometimes for days,

and the raccoon mask I wear is not some left over disguise from an orgy.

The only orgy I have ever attended involved me weeping and puking

and shaking the life out of me into my hands holding premature stars.

You ever been there?

I didn’t think so

These words, like all my words, will become your thoughts, for free.

And I give them to you.

And I hate you for it.

And I thank you.

And I weep for you.

And I pray for you.

Pray for me.

Seriously, fuck off. 

bad day in february

today his car died, forever
so i emailed him sexy pictures
i hope he gets home from work
looks at me grinning,
jumping topless in bed
and thinks "she really cares about me."

Into Nova

Into Nova

remember

there are the sneaks left at the door

of the wingless

                                    aero planes

            fleets of college kids

collecting pennies in dirty delight

American steampunk promises

captured

roar in the legs of boredom

grown into clothes too small

stuffed in the bells

of the great stone fries

silencing our steps

into nova

one future to lose

just wanting to be that someone

who

can eat the dandelions

like butterscotch bottle caps who

thinks back and

cries

because the tree rings

                        in our limbs

don’t show how starved we are

by the dominion

of compliance

Neon, Fish Tank Rocks

I’ve seen the men, alike, ragged breasts on a beautiful rib cage

I’ve seen the women, like broken camel knees

I’ve seen these bent backs of these creatures

shave sheets of grass from the city parks

and wear the worms as their veins,

the sheets as their skin

These creatures cross their arms and hold bouquets

of bottles with aluminum can tabs over their eyes,

some with parched tongues still

prairie dogging for milk from the sky

I don’t know death the way these lives know

the dirty hell of this heaven—

not a child’s mind where all the chutes

and ladders end when we are done

If, and these creatures know, heaven is the

return to a child’s mind, (head nod)

then I’ll join the ranks of them

wearing the filthy earth like hell

I’ll dig all of their graves when

I’m tired of talk about death,

wombs in the soil and blankets of flesh,

every hole I’ll fill with the neon fish tank rocks

because their coals in this heaven

are hot as fuck. 

I don't want to write of the stars no more

i don't want to write of the stars no more
they don't crave the stars
the howls are tied to lead

i've made too many cry in the night

Machine Gun Moments

He said over a few beers:

‘My name is Malakai Vacey

I have never been myself

for more than four minutes.’

‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘he feared

his self out of Easter dress

Out of relationships with dying women

Out of books and the boots of

Bukowski’s Eliot’s Ellison’s

Characters. Out of the faces

and skins of those who died

and left their drabby suits

under the Christmas trees

Out of the living moments

Out of the slow rides in

autos full of white niggers

chinks fags and spicks

across the states and frontiers

and hills that whistle right up under the clouds.’

‘Out of innocence too much like a cherry

Out of a pruned boy only at 22,’

when he did say he could be his self,

‘A dick, with a liver full of spit—

ungrateful pair of eyes hyper juiced

on dull spirits and soiled lungs,

sucking pollen from the lips of angels.’

‘A lip, plugged with black tobacco slugs—

a smile that makes heroes kneel in

cracked dirt and cry;

an ugly dick, so full of distorted love

the only way to live is to burn and fight.’

the tugboat

guilt
the cargo weighing down the boat

hate
hawks flying in circles above, lurking, waiting to eat their prey

hope
the crack in wood, water seeking in

fear
land is far away

desolation
the oars cannot defeat the waves

anxiety
sinking ship, fish jumping in the boat

suffering
the fish weighing down the boat (along with the cargo)

despair
the boat is sinking

opportunity
letting go of the cargo and learning how to swim

Moments of Salt

Here we go:

What will they accept when the mail is dead?

How will my fingerless hands communicate to them?

Why will I continue to eat?

If I am three quarters full of shit

that means I at one point had three quarters worth

of fine wine, food, and swallowed time.

There is no depression that tastes like

t. will’s ice cream

all the girls I meet talk much of ice cream

they talk of their travels and the small parlors

that served them and told them how cute they looked

and added to the baby fat around the bone of the hip

which fingers

melt like ice cream on the nyc july sidewalk

leaves the hands sticky and sweet

I wonder why they don’t crave corn on the cob instead

By the winter fires when their hips deflate

When im at their side wishing I was naked

a puddle of colored milk spreading in front

of the fireplace like it was july

smell the buttered corn trying to understand

and think of ice cream

so the girls think when their confidence falls

the worry creeps and the desire for ice cream

the small parlors and memories in past suns

line up behind the eyes

flutter, dip their chins and hide their faces in hands

mouths circled in superman blue

moose tracks, mint chocolate chip

sheepish little girls with full breasts

hips at a V

thinking a good fuck will cure the flask

of gender kept distilled and away

come that dip in strength when memories

of ice cream take the place of sons and lovers

taste tests and sugar fantasies

The most fashionable lesbian couple of Gramercy Park

They started off as roommates, and one said,
“Oh yeah my girlfriend is really like, weird,”
A police car sped vrooming down the block,
“I wanted to talk to her but I got fucked up.”
Brain so up and down, options like windows,
The scarf looked like baby, or animal.
I wanted to say, “C’mon, petite abeille,
feel confident and confidential,” you do not
have to give your name, but rattle your chains.
Say, “oh-kay, this is, over.” Sirens grow
closer. “This moment is washed, blowdryed,
but as long as I can take it I’ll survive.”

Meanwhile: Eat your vegetables, do your work.
Respect women, respect men, rock & roll.

Just a lonely summer slowly dying...

or naturally me

doctor i want to feel the angry bee

            scared and frantic in my summer dress

can i feel again and touch the new with my mind

            wax coat or oven with the finished apple pie?

may i be me and recognize my leg’s fleshy bulbous machine

            so i can stop writing like the woman with the water breasts

            who passed me on the sidewalk and washed her eyes over me

i’m afloat in my own skin and wish the chemical tablets i take at night

            would make me grow gills and fins and be caught      drown a body

                                                                                            or

of human delight

What I heard at the bar last night

“I’ll shoot that woman if I see him with her,” the short Puerto Rican said. 

“Si or no?” the drunk girl they brought said. They noticed how drunk she was and took sips of their own drinks. 

“Are you going to answer my question?” she asked.  No one answered and the barman walked away.

Consider April from My Balcony

I

The seagulls sound like

Doors opening over the sea

When I paint my chest

Like the Easter egg designed

In womb  I felt the pulse

Of church bells echo           

            In the sewers and bones

Of the city

II

My balcony overlooks

Jesuit house defaced walls

And lonely golden window

Lamps  I saw portals of priests

And sisters using tea with their

            Hands bleached and

Free from callous

I checked my sense of the

Order   the march   the pace 

The quantity of ants

            Filing into the sea—

The catalyst suicides of childish

Novas the depth of storage for

Indifferent ill memories

III

            I sketched for the tea party

The public sex I’ve seen in streets

The beards burned in fires of

Money and condoms the small

Mountains of pleasure and success

The carcasses of flattened gulls

            Fallen from the heavens

  

            My friends sleep inside,

A warm rat king of

College exhaustion dissolving at

Last  and I on the balcony

            listen to the church bells

ring and turn

The remaining gulls with keys—

Consider April from my balcony

IV

This evening I use the Bible as the

Instruction booklet of the chords

Of giants gritting teeth beats the

Booms of St. Ignatius kicking

His boot against empty air

            Tried to build this door—

This door I cursive for frame

I take the wind three sheets

Covering lovers drawn out on

Haight and Ashbury to you

Allen to you and the salt from

Your eyes that turned your beard

From brunette to blonde when you

Dreamed of hot air balloons

Deflating above

            Greenwich night skies

V

            Every nail and board

Into this door

Made with the bread of pain

And the codes behind my eyes

Coursing from my blueprint of

            Veins and bones these

Fingers drawing the sketches

Of a gate for all to walk naked

Thru

At the foot will scurry

white pelts of rabbits against

The bare balls of the ankles

I am unsure if they will think of

Allen Hardy Jesus or me

            If they think of me

The way of the cypress tree

Let one thousand fields of lilac

And poppy candy

            In which the mystics are buried

Spread like acid on film

The mystics in their sleep

Will hear my footsteps

They will smell my sweat

And they will feel the pressure

Of my word like the finger

Clenched

VI

The door

            To building the door

That will open to all—

            The pallid angels with cigarettes

Hanging from their lips and a

Cancer spreading their wings.

            The annals of children waiting

Awake for the toothfairy who is

Left hung on the cypress tree

In the field of infinity

I keep building this door

For all to pass under

To see the sunlight behind

To see ahead

the moon

            dropped

In the great star like an Irish car bomb

           

            The howls of the sinking

moon will be mistaken for the final

hissing of dying time

The dogs of romanticism chained

To fashionable pegs

Lurch and froth and choke

Trying to reach me before

I finish this door

VII

My death is not inscribed in the

Book of Instruction

So if I shall die

If I shall fall before this door is made—

            I take the wood from the cypress

            I make the nails from icicles of our blood

            I find the glass in the delicate filaments of poetry

            I read the blueprints found in the body

           

            I build in the wall of saving grace

Finish the door

If I can not

Finish the door

So all may walk

So all may use the key given at life

Head held high to the portal of ecstasy

Before the flesh deteriorates and

The hinges are taken away

Exponential Decay

I am fitting into the crowd.
(or maybe i always was)
becoming more boring, more bourgeois.
every new possession only leads me
onto a child-like hunger
for another.

What can be done?
My pants are ripping and it makes me want to rip out my skull.
My computer is dying and it makes me want to take a pill and sleep for days.

Who is this person I am
now?
I couldn't name a favorite color
or a favorite song,
but I could name a favorite soda to buy at the vending machine
or station to turn to on the television.

I've lost my desire to write or think.
I just want to go to bed.

(sleep for four hours)

shower
breakfast
smoke cigarette
car

Driving towards the same thing everyday.
Driving towards nothing.

The world is filled with suffering
and such is my existence in it.

Do you hear me?

I would rather look at a picture of a cat
than understand a math equation.

The Redemptionist

The church was large and modern so there wasn’t much wood besides the pews.  All of the windows were right under the roof’s edge, at the base of it’s massive pyramid shape, and a large cross, made of yards of white cloth, ribbons, really, when you considered their height, hung under the peak.  Locals of the town who did not attend service called it the Jesus Mall and visitors craned their necks in admiration when they drove by.  The church was non-denominational and larger than most college basketball arenas.

Once a year, two thousand people filled the church to see the Redemptionist, an event the AM station 1300 The Bread advertised as the day of the year to witness miracles that renew faith.  Many drove from all over the area to come and the side streets and surrounding neighborhoods filled with lines of parked cars once the lot filled.  You never really saw people walking into the church or gathered in the lobby.  You just imagined the church filled completely otherwise it would not be as big as it was.  The event, with all the cars, would also appear to locals and passerby’s to be the church’s most important day of the year even though nothing stirred outside the massive building.

A crowd filled every pew and folding chair in the aisles and many stood in the back of the church waiting on this day.  A sibilant reverence went about the heads of the people and the rich green walls.  The colors grey, dark green, and maple made up the colors of the interior.  The people wore suits and dresses.  Someone placed a white sheet over the altar table and a single mic stand stood in the center of the altar at the top of the three long steps.  This made the one think the pulpit would not be used at all.

Twelve men in grey and black suits came out first.  They walked in a single file line slowly to the front of the altar.  The short men puffed their chests out and the taller ones hunched their shoulders in their pointy suit jackets.  All of the men with blond hair had short cuts that soaked up the sun coming in from the windows.  The men with brown hair combed the top over into a part.  Everyone in the pews watched them carefully and waited.

A short, plump man came out of a door on the left side of the church.  He wore a pink tie with a matching fluted pocket square.  He also wore a small lilac pinned to his lapel.  The man walked in quick, sturdy steps and swung his arms freely with closed fists as he climbed the steps up to the altar.  He grew taller and taller like he had been crouched and his walk forward straightened his back.  His shoes shown a brilliant black, polished like the finish of a piano, and he continued up the steps.  The first platform step was large and many strides were taken to reach the second.  He kept his chin up and the thick eyebrows matched deep lines in his face, like tributaries running from the pools under his eyes, and the powder make-up made his forward unnaturally diffuse the light filtering in through the windows under the edge of the roof.  His socks showed when he lifted his knees to step.  Each step became shorter in distance.  He was one of the men with dark parted hair but strands of silver could be seen in streaks starting at the widow’s peak.  He took the last step and stood before the mic. He was tall, straight and he scanned what was before him with great admiration.

Many of the people in the audience shook their heads in some kind of agreement, perhaps at his presence, and waited for him to speak.  The swollen church stared at the man and the air grew thin like hot sea air and the walls stretched.

He spread his arms and embraced the scene.

“Amen,” he said.  He scanned.

“Amen, Hallelujah! the audience yelled.  Several whooped at the end.

“Amen!” he yelled again.

“Amen!” yelled back the audience and the whoops coupled with chopped hollers and barks.

“AMEN!” he yelled and arched his back with force and snapped back at the mic.  The church erupted uncontrollably and the people rocketed to their feet yelling and shaking their fists, leaning into the backs of one another over the pews.  The twelve men behind the man speaking clapped and nodded their heads up and down or shook them left to right.  “I come here today,” he said, “to show you, each and every one of you, redemption through the Savior Lord Jesus Christ!”  The audience responded to everything the man said with even more violent seizures and louder cries.  “I come here to you, to you today to show you the divine power of Christ!”

            They cried.

            “You come here to witness the terrifying love of God the Father and His Holy Son, Lord Our Shepard, Jesus Christ!”

            They cried louder.

            “I come here,” he yelled, he had begun to sweat, “to make you all witnesses of saving Grace! I come here to show you how God’s saving Grace blesses the good and destroys the wicked!  I come here to show you the sinner saved by a God in tears, by a God with awesome power that strikes the evil dead and sows the seeds of the Good on our scorched earth!”  He shook violently.

            They cried for his words.  He took the mic from the stand.  He walked to the left of the altar with his head down and sharply walked back to the center.  He looked up and said, “Who will be the first to let God cleanse you of the evil that takes over us, the demons that run our lives, the sins we commit and keep in piles around our hearts?  Who will be the first to witness the power of God?”  Hands shot up in the audience.  The man nodded to the line of men in suits. He looked at the ground and scratched his nose with the back of his hand. Three of them left the line and walked directly to a fragile, old black woman in the front row with her hand raised.  She was crying.  Her jaw opened and closed like a fish and the tears ran into her mouth.  She looked like a greasy old bag in a floral dress.  She shook a little when they helped her step away from her chair and she put her hands out in front of her like she was unsure of the footing.  They tugged at her and she made it to the stairs.  She hunched and became more and more hunched as she climbed the steps one raised foot at a time.  The audience behind her cried with praise.

            They placed her before the man with the microphone.  They were both tall now.  He held the mic before her face and she hunched over, as though she fought her purse from pulling her shoulders to the ground.  “What’s your name, child?” he said.

            “Rosemary,” she said with a worn voice softly into the mic.

            “Rosemary, what afflicts you?” he said.  He held the mic to her rheumatic jaw.

            “All my life, I had never seen clear,” she said.  He pulled the mic back to his face. 

            “Rosemary here is afflicted with sins that have caused her eyes to fog!” he yelled.

            They cried.

            “The saving Grace of God will rid her of the sins and out go the demons preventing her from seein’ God’s goodness!” he said. 

            They cried.

            The man handed one of the men in suits the mic.  He turned his back to the crowd and did something with his hands.  He turned back to the woman.  The other two men held Rosemary by the arms and one of them held her head back by the forehead.  Her neck bent violently so that her Adam’s apple stood out further than her chin.  She choked and couldn’t cry.  “Open your eyes, Rosemary, and know God’s Grace!” Another man in a suit, one with blonde hair, used his thumbs to hold her eye lids back.  The man speaking jammed his thumbs into her eyes.  He pressed hard and pressed hard again against the eyeballs.  Rosemary gagged a little and the men let her head free.  She cried and a sincere pain came across her face only for a moment, like a cloud across a slivered moon, but no one saw it.  She blinked rapidly and looked at the man.  “Tell, me Rosemary, what do you see?” said the man and he grabbed her face with his hands.

            “I see your face a' clear!” she said and began crying.

            “I said, tell me what you see!”

            She was choking on her breathes and looked more in pain than in a state of joy.  “I seen God and the clear of His Earth!” she managed and buried her hands in her face.  The man turned to the audience with a red face and said, “I give you God and His Grace!”

            They cried and cried.

            The three men guided the crying woman off the altar to a door to the back left.  Other people in suits stood to receive her.  She was crying uncontrollably.  They closed the door behind her.  Another man opened a door in the room to a small parking lot behind the church.  “Thank you, Rosemary,” said one of them and they shut the door.  The man inside could be heard calling into the mic.

             That night Rosemary went home and counted everything for her family.  She stood ten feet from the fireplace and counted the number of bricks across the mantel.  She counted fifteen peas on her plate at dinner.  At bedtime, she counted the beads of the Rosary without touching them.  She fell asleep and dreamt of many vivid images.  She woke next morning and opened her eyes.  They felt like they had glue in them.  Her eyes were red and when she rubbed them she felt something shift under her eyelids.  The days went on and her eyes hurt more and more.  Eventually the world was as blurred just as bad as it had been before.  No one told her.  She waited for the next year.   

            

who is more moral?
the one who preaches the moral,
or the one who attempts to live the moral
and fails.

what is more pretty?
a dog licking its own feces,
or a model covered in makeup
walking down an aisle.

when does this end?
when one clock chimes at midnight,
or when i look out over the bridge
above a ravine
and jump.

when will one side claim victory?
the general will stand on a hill
and watch his army decompose,
or the rats will infest my small abode.

talking never solved any problems.
it was just talking about problems
until they weren't problems.

i have anger waiting to tear itself from my skin,
but i laugh instead.
i laugh so loud
that the man in the next apartment knocks
on my door and asks me what is wrong.

remember when you encouraged me to enlist in the army
and later i found out you were fighting for the other side?

remember when i fell asleep and woke up
and you were there and we feel asleep?

i say i do unto others as i would
hope they would do unto me,
but then again i don't know what they would do
unto me.

retrospectively, it is much easier to regret
the choices we made and the reasons why
we made them.

but then it is in retrospect
that we realize that we are
dwelling in a strange period in space and time.

Carbon Leaves (Mind Autumn)

   When spring comes violent from the chimneys

Of winter locker, the maids, honey blonde

Chords of Irish skein, sterilize the sanitariums

Until the chemicals make all blind, I tell—

   The sickly hounds and wolves, from stick and city,

untrimmed filthies and frothing cages of  brittle bone,

Shake in circles from the cold,

                                                and the washing rain

Under the newly sprouted leave fingers of trees—

For the past, the carbon leaves of color die to wind,

                                                vain memories,

Wilt and succumb to the hungry mouth of soil

                                                Or sink in sea.

The top side of leaf sees the sky,

The bottom sees the canines shake—

In the rain,

By the cold,

(when all shake their heads

            In fear disguised for sympathy)

the belly of the leaf sees the

                                    Heavens

And the sunned topside sees the

                                    Beasts—

   The sanitarium is a church of suckling and

Vivid impulse, prostrate in

Hay, through worn and

Wooden pews

            With thousands kneeling in prayer

            With the wind chiming sins escaping

            from tops of the canines’ heads howling—

   To the confessional with the maids

To the confessional with the priest

To the confessional flooded with rain

And Lilly pads of carbon leaves

   At the confessional door,

With the confessional door opened,

The sanitarium becomes

                                    beautiful and filthy

In the escaping flow of maiden, beast, and

   Many carbon leaf.

off the cuff, after Precious

when your eyelids start to close

i begin to think that

you'd be better off dead.

but probably

that faint smell of roses

that you leave in your wake

is a clear indication

that something stickier

is on the loose,

that

something runnier

something funnier

something sunnier

something that sins and gins more

something that blings and wins more

something that shiny new things more

something that wines and dines more

something that holds open the door

something that fucks on the floor

something that eats my roar

something that chews my lore

something that sucks my whore

and sucks and sucks until i'm so(a)r(e)

-ing

that's what I want.

and THAT is what I'm ready for.

a haiku poem

two days from right now

a tiger takes a bite out

of the gleaming jungle.

shaking in boots,

alone: the way the willow cries.

it is a long way home .

the underbelly

of the thundercloud is black,

weighted by fire and brimstone.

the roof caves inward,

the room emits a low moan.

a child falls asleep.

Margaret Little (AKA "the golden age when you could smoke inside")

Margaret was twenty-nine years old when she decided she didn't really care for her life anymore. She had given her job (a boring mix of shuffling papers, sitting at a desk, and occasionally walking through hallways) its fair shot. Her boyfriend had offered his hand in marriage, but four years had gone by and she was still working at the office, hating life, and wondering whether she should still be wearing a ring on her finger.

Her birthday didn't really mean much to her anymore. Today was her birthday. She sat at her desk in front of a Macintosh computer with a big Apple logo on the side, a black screen, and text rambling across it as if it were a foreign language. Dust and smudges could be seen on the monitor, while the computer hard drive was rumbling quietly next to her feet.

The clock to her right said 5:20 but she was fairly certain that it was 6:20. The clocks had changed recently, but some of them sat unchanged due to the fact that no one had bothered to walk to her corner of the office to change them. As for her, it didn't really matter whether it was 5:20 or 6:20.

That night she sat at home reading the newspaper in front of the television. Mark was out with friends at a sports bar, watching the Pistons play the Bullets. He had told her that he would make it up to her by taking her out the following weekend, but she probably didn't believe him.

At midnight she went to bed. When she woke up the next morning he was lying next to her, although he was facing away from her. She smoked a cigarette in bed and then she took a shower. She was supposed to meet with an old friend from college for lunch, and she didn't really care if Mark was awake when she left.

She made herself scrambled eggs for breakfast and she also ate half of a cold blueberry muffin that was left over from the previous weekend. As she washed down the muffin with a cup of decaf she realized that it was no longer her birthday. She was no longer twenty-nine. She played around with her hair for a minute and then got up and brushed her teeth.

She got into her car and drove to the nearby commercial area. She filled her car up with gas, which took longer than she had hoped because the first pump she pulled up to wasn't working.

The diner at which she was meeting her friend Jake was situated almost a hundred yards away from the road. It fit nicely in a small shopping complex in between a Friendly's ice cream restaurant and Christian bookstore. She looked at the clock in her car and noticed that she was half an hour early, so she decided to check out the Christian bookstore.

Inside the store there were cassette tapes of lots of contemporary Christian rock groups, but Margaret hardly recognized the names of any of the groups except for U2. She had liked U2 when she was younger, but now she yawned as she looked at their cassette tape. The store also contained several books that she had read as years before, such as the Chronicles of Narnia and Johnny Cash's autobiography Man In Black. There were also lots of different versions of the Bible, all in different colors.

After several minutes of bored browsing, Margaret went outside and smoked a cigarette. She looked inside the diner and saw that Jake wasn't there yet. A toy store was open at the other end of the shopping complex, so she decided to see what was in it.

The store was filled with action figures and toy cars and dolls and doll houses, assorted board games for children and also several of the newer games such as Oregon Trail that people could play on their desktop computers. Margaret went over and played with a puzzle called the Rubik's Cube, which was a cube that contained various smaller cubes of different bright colors that had to be moved around in order to have the same color cubes for each side of the cube. It was a bit mesmerizing but also boring after a while and she put it back on the shelf. She also played around with an Etch-and-Sketch, which produced about the same results for her.

She exited the toy store and made her way back over towards the diner. Her friend Jake could now be seen inside the diner, sitting at a booth and skimming the menu. Margaret opened the door to the diner and made her way over to the booth.

"Hi, Jake," she said.

"Hey Marge!" he said.

He got up and gave her a hug and she sat down and they stared at each other for several seconds with shit-eating, shy grins on their faces.

"Sorry, I was late," she said, "I got her a few minutes ago and you weren't here so I decided to look around the stores."

"Finding anything interesting?" asked Jake.

Margaret was in a brief daze as she surveyed the menu.

"Marge?"

"What?" she said, "No, I didn't find anything interesting. This area sucks."

"Yeah," he said, "I generally don't care for suburbs. I prefer either the country or the city."

"Me too. But I live here."

"Me too."

They looked at the menus for several minutes, and Jake made several remarks about dishes that he either found interesting, random, or cliché. Margaret smoked a cigarette and gave brief answers to his comments on the cuisine. After several minutes a waitress walked up to their table. She seemed to be somewhat forcing her smile.

"Hi, my name is Carmella. Do you know what you would like today? Our soups of the day are clam chowder and vegetable, and coffee is only 25 cents a cup until two."

"I will have the half-pound bacon-cheese burger with tomatoes and mayo, and Pepsi to drink," said Jake.

"Would you like chips or fries," asked the waitress.

"Chips."

The waitress wrote this down and then turned to Margaret: "And for you, ma'am?"

"I will have half a panini with ham, salami, cheese, and prosciutto. And a glass of 7up to drink," said Margaret.

"Would you like chips or fries," asked the waitress.

"Fries," said Margaret.

When the waitress returned with their drinks they each took a sip and then Margaret lit a cigarette.

"Hey, do you think I could bum one of those off you?" asked Jake.

"Of course."

She handed him her pack and he took out a cigarette and she lit it for him.

"Did you quit smoking?" asked Margaret.

"Yes, well cigarettes at least. I still smoke a cigar every once in a while with these assholes from my job that I play cards with, but in general I no longer smoke. But I like smoking, but there is just too much anti-smoking information out there these days. My girlfriend would kill me if she knew I was smoking right now."

"Yeah," said Margaret, "who is this girl of yours again?"

"She works for Proctor and Gamble, that is about all I know. She went to Penn State for college, and majored in political science."

Margaret took a couple of drags off her cigarette.

"She is fun to be around though, unlike a lot of people."

"I wish I could say the same about my boyfriend," said Margaret.

"Aren't you engaged to him now?"

"I have been for several years now," said Margaret, "But it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I don't really know why I am still with him. I don't know what I am doing anymore."

She let out a laugh that rang with sarcasm, and he did the same.

"What are you doing for a job now?" she asked, "You had been working for your father's bank hadn't you?"

"Yeah, but they got bought and I didn't like my new boss so I quit. Now I am working for a publishing company."

"Cool."

"What are you up these days? Besides living with your boyfriend or fiancé or whatever..."

"I work at a marketing information systems office, but I am hoping to get some jobs writing in the future. I can't work in an office for much longer or else I will kill myself."

"Yeah, me neither."

"Do you still talk to Robert or Sandy or Alison much anymore?" asked Margaret.

"I talk to Robert sometimes," said Jake, "He still smokes pot a lot, I think, but he seems to be doing okay. He is working for a small advertising agency that is based somewhere in Ohio."

"Yeah, I talk to Alison sometimes on the phone. She says pretty much the same thing about him."

"What is Alison doing these days?"

"Working as a paralegal at a law office in New York."

"The city?"

"Yeah."

Their food arrived and Margaret put out her cigarette in the ashtray. It was the third cigarette she had since she had been sitting there.

The prosciutto on her sandwich was a bit too thick and it made it hard for her to chew it as quickly as she would have liked. Jake had already finished half of his burger before she had even taken three bites of her sandwich.

"What is up with women watching their weight?" she asked Jake.

"I don't know," he said, "I wonder that all the time."

"Yeah."

"Aren't you watching your weight right now?" he asked, pointing to her half sandwich.

"I guess so. No, I'm not. I'm just not hungry. I had breakfast before I came her."

"Oh," said Jake.

She looked back down at her sandwich and took a bit and then she washed it down with 7up. They each concentrated on their food for a few minutes.

Jake finished his burger within a couple of minutes. After Margaret had eaten the last bite of her sandwich that she was going to eat (she usually left the crust alone) and gotten a refill on her drink ("Excuse me, can I have some more 7up?"), she lit a cigarette.

Remnants of cooked potatoes and processed meat were sitting patiently on their plates. They each sat back and in the booth, leaning against the leather, adjusting their pants, sighing, and slightly flexing their stomachs.

"I've missed you," said Margaret.

"I've missed you, too," said Jake.

They sat in silence for a few moments. Margaret would stare at her mostly empty plate and then glance quickly at Jake, and she would see that he was doing the same.

"How long are you in town for?" asked Margaret.

"I will be here for the rest of the week, because my hotel is here. But I will be heading into the city tomorrow and most of the other days in order to meet with clients."

Margaret nodded her head a bit and twisted her lips upward as if to show that she understood this information.

"We should hang out again while I am here though, of course," said Jake.

"Yeah," she said, "Do you want to hit up a bar or something in awhile later?"

"That'd be nice," he said.

The Pink Floyd song "Another Brick on the Wall" was playing softly against the backdrop of the lame buzz of conversations and cooks and waitresses and the cashier shouting inside the diner. Jake scratched his eyes. For some reason, this made Margaret angry, and she felt like slamming his face against the table. She sat back in the booth and massaged the leather seat with her hand.

"Do you know of any good bars around here," asked Jake, "I haven't been here in years, and back then I didn't have enough money to really 'hit up' bars too often."

"There is a nice Irish-themed bar on the other side of town, and there is also a stupid cheap bar right down the street from here," she said.

"Is the Irish bar actually Irish or does it just act Irish?" asked Jake.

"I think it might be actually Irish. Or Irish-American or whatever."

"Okay. Cool."

They told their waitress they did not want dessert and they paid their bill. Outside the clouds were beginning to coalesce into dark gray pillows, and the sun was no longer as bright as it had been that morning. Margaret lit a cigarette and walked over to her car.

"What are you doing now?" asked Jake.

"I think I am going to go home and do my laundry, and then hopefully I will be able to continue reading this book that has been sitting on nightstand for the past couple weeks."

"What book?"

"It is called Women. It is by Bukowski. I don't know if I like it."

"Sounds okay."

"What are you going to do now?" she asked.

"I think I am going to go to my hotel and prepare for a meeting I have tomorrow, but I will give you a call in a few hours or so, okay?"

"Okay. Bye."

"See you later."

The drive back to her house was boring and dramatic. She was happy to see Jake, and it made her realize she needed to leave her fiancé and find something new. But she also was bored, because she had spent several years with Jake when she younger. She had gotten bored eventually of being around him, and she figured that she might get bored again if she spent too much time with him or kept in too close of a contact with him or whatever.

The song "Don't Let's Start" by They Might Be Giants was playing on the radio. She hated that song so she switched the station to NPR but she hated that too so she flipped around at random until she go to the black people station. She didn't know what song was playing, but for some reason it made her think of sex.

When she arrived home she put her laundry in the washer and turned on the television. She watched an infomercial for a few minutes until she realized she was falling asleep. She smoked a cigarette and then she pulled her pants down and began stroking her clit. She inserted several fingers and kept rubbing her vagina until she was sufficiently wet. Then she smoked another cigarette.

Around five she got a call from fiancé Mark saying that he would be home later than expected that evening. He said she could go ahead and eat if she was hungry, or if she wasn't they could make dinner later that night. She said she would make herself something to eat because she was meeting an old friend later at a bar. He didn't seemed to care and she said goodbye and he said goodbye and then she hung up.

She wondered whether he was having an affair and then she realized that she didn't really care.

She made herself a salad and coffee for dinner. For several hours she sat in front of the television; she would turn it off and try to read her book but that wouldn't work and then she would turn it on again and stop reading and then she would turn it off again and try reading again.

At 8:30 or so she got a call from Jake saying that he had just finished dinner and was wondering whether she still wanted to get a drink. She said "yes" and gave him directions on how to get to the Irish-themed (or perhaps actually-Irish) bar. They agreed to meet in half an hour.

On the ride over to the bar she put in a cassette tape of the new album by Sonic Youth. She stroked her hair and looked at herself in the rear-view mirror. When she arrived at the bar there were about a dozen people there, mostly men who had just gotten off work at the port but also several slutty-looking women who were older than here who were either talking in gossip-like conversations or hitting on the men from the port. She sat down in the middle of the bar.

On the television the Detroit Pistons were playing the Chicago Bulls. Margaret didn't know the stake of the game, but she figured it might be the playoffs because it was May and that was usually what happened this time of year (most of the boyfriends she had ever had had been fairly avid basketball fans). She noticed Michael Jordan as he was shown in close-up. He looked intense. Words flashed across the screen before a commercial saying that this was "Game 1". On a television at one end of the bar there was a baseball game playing as well.

When Jake entered the bar several minutes later she finished her drink and said hello. He was wearing a different and nicer shirt then that afternoon and he had on nicer pants. The shirt was flannel and the pants were Levi's or something, but they looked a bit too small or tight on him.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," he said, "I had to call my mom to check in. I hadn't called her since last week."

"How is she doing?" asked Margaret.

Jake raised his eyebrows to himself and let out a small sigh before he said, "She is doing okay. She bitched to me about my dad some and asked me what I was doing here."

"Sounds like fun," said Margaret.

"What are you drinking?" he asked.

"I just had a vodka-tonic. I was thinking of ordering another one."

Jake got the attention of the bartender and ordered himself a whiskey-soda before also ordering her another vodka-tonic.

"This isn't really too much of an Irish bar," he said, "They have a Notre Dame pennant, that makes sense, and a bunch of Yankees bullshit, that doesn't make sense. I also have no idea who any of the people are in those photos."

"You recognize Jack Nicholson, don't you?" she said, "Or what about Flannery O'Connor?"

"Oh yeah, I see him. But is he Irish? Hold on, where is Flannery O'Connor? " They each laughed. "I guess there is a lot of green and stuff in here, too. Like look at that neon green lamp over there. You don't see that everyday."

"Yeah," said Margaret.

"So did you eat dinner?" he asked.

"Yes, I had a salad or something. I was going to eat with Mark but he had to stay later at work."

"Bummer," said Jake, with a hint of sarcasm.

"Yeah."

"Do you have any plans for tonight?" he asked, "It is Saturday night after all..."

"No, I didn't call anybody. I've felt like staying in the past couple of weekends."

"Yeah, sometimes people aren't nice to be around, even if they are nice."

"Yeah," she said.

She was drinking her drink at a fairly fast pace, but so was he. He seemed somewhat interested in the basketball game. He asked her offhand if she cared about the game, and she said "not really."

After they had each finished their drink, they ordered more and Margaret suggested they go sit down at a table.

"I was just tired of both us, mostly you, using the game as a distraction," she said after they were both seated at a table.

"Yeah, televisions shouldn't even be allowed really in public places. People use it as an excuse so that they don't have to interact with other people."

"Exactly," she said.

"What kind of music have you been listening to lately?" he asked.

"Oh, a lot of the same stuff, a lot of older stuff, some new stuff. I guess Sonic Youth is my favorite band, but I have been listening to the Beastie Boys more than I used to also."

"I love that band," said Jake.

"I need to reconnect to music or something," she said, "I think it might help me figure out what I want to do or something."

"Yeah, I can give you some tapes or something," said Jake in an off-hand way.

Margaret lit a cigarette.

"So are you going to...stay with this guy for…how long?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said, "I should probably move out soon and give him an ultimatum or something. Or just leave him."

"Yeah."

"He doesn't really seem to care about anything. Actually, I hardly talk to him frequently nowadays. I think he might be cheating on me."

"That's fucked up," said Jake.

"Yeah, I guess so," she said.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said.

"Can I bum another smoke off you?" he asked.

"Of course," she said. She handed him her pack and laid her lighter on the table.

They each finished their drinks.

"What would you like to drink?" he asked.

"Just get me a class of wine, please," she said.

Jake returned to table with her wine and a glass of scotch for himself. She felt uncomfortable about the fact that he had paid for her last two drinks, but she also kind of liked it.

"Remember that time when we bought a couple grams of coke and went bar-hopping all over the city with Robert and Sarah?"

Margaret laughed. "Yeah, I remember that," she said.

"We were wasted. I remember not paying for half the drinks we had that night. I wonder if anyone ever paid for those."

"Probably not," she said, "It was just really strange going into bathrooms and doing lines and then dabbing our cigs in coke and smoking them and being discreet and not being discreet and everything."

"I think Sarah puked that night," said Jake.

"Yeah, probably," said Margaret.

"I remember Robert going up to some guy that was talking shit about us and almost starting a fight."

"Sounds about right," she said.

"Do you want to go drive around this area of town after we finish this drink?" asked Jake.

"Okay, sure," she said.

They walked outside and got into Jake's car. It didn't make sense, because she didn't even ask why they were getting in his car. It was just an old habit, maybe. Or some type of subtle masculine domination. Being around him was somewhat relaxing and good, but it also made her nauseous. She couldn't stop biting her lip and she felt a headache growing, but it was possible that the drinking caused that.

When they got in the car and Jake started the engine, Margaret could hear the motor. It started much easier than in her car. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. He turned his head slightly. He looked like a sad puppy who didn't know what to do but deep down knew what he wanted. He took his hand around her head and kissed her back on the cheek. He turned on the radio and began driving down the road.

"Where should we go?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Margaret.