The tree in your yard, the brown ground,
little rocks, tire marks, look over here now, an oil stain definitely resembling something important, a feeling you once had, when you were young. The slope of cement, and the street meets the driveway. Bright bright blue out there, up there. Move your hand around. Wave it, make circles in the air, and look at your hand as it moves. The sky responds to your motions, just a little bit. You are a marvelous force of action. Are you buying or renting? Have you met the new neighbors? Trash comes on Saturdays. Nice stroller. And a lizard scuttles up the back yard gate. You eat a burrito, the same sort of burrito you used to eat. Remember? No? That's OK. You drink some water. The sun goes down. If I wasn’t who I was,
if I was someone besides my current self, (I am a person who stays inside too much and can’t figure out how to replace the windshield-wipers on my car and I actually have very bad table manners.) then there are two other things that I most definitely would like to be. (And I've given these two other things a lot of thought, really a lot and a lot of thought, so much thought that I don't want to tell you About it because telling you would, frankly, just, embarrass me, and you too, probably, so, let's just avoid the whole awkward situation, OK? Suffice it to say that if thoughts had weight, Then my thoughts on the matter would weigh Much much more than a trash bag full of chicken fat.) A cowboy or a lion. Photographs on College Brochures
have very attractive people, in attractive, well-tailored clothing. There are very attractive plants, too, in these photographs, and very attractive architecture, and very attractive computers, which the very attractive people type on, and look at, and smile at. The pictures show lots of friends: friends in a dorm hallway, friends in a cafeteria, friends at a sporting event- all smiling friends. There’s usually an attractive white woman in her early twenties, wearing a skirt, checking her watch, or holding a cup of coffee, or writing, or putting one hand on her chin, or walking down a path while a light breeze gently blows her blonde or brunette or red hair. Frequently the attractive white woman in the skirt is having what looks exactly like an intellectual discussion with another person. It must be an intellectual discussion because they are in college now and they are in the library and they are talking with each other, and the male student has a beard, and wears glasses, and is holding a book. She has a smooth skin tone, a smile, and in the picture you can see, for a college brochure, the perfect amount of cleavage. It’s a stranger’s name to you,
an entry in an index you won’t use, eight letters that sprint across the page, sounds that sing their only song- one time. Thatcher: two impotent syllables, conjuring no colors to your mind. Unless, of course, you were there. In Thatcher, with me, in the comfortable dark, squirming our toes into the cold sand at the park across from the gas station, February, 2004. I like people a little bit crazy.
I like garbled speech, disjointed thoughts, words skipping like flat-sided stones on a pond, a pinky that spins, constant hand-rubbing, angry invisible friends, secrets they’ll tell you, yellow teeth, too much eyeliner. Shrinks call it schizophrenic. I just call it cool. But I avoid the homeless crazies, the ones who ask for change or a place to stay. You scoop soupy refried beans
onto white foam trays, plopping the sludge into the little rectangle, plopping the tray on the counter, as Boy Scouts pass by. Some say hi, some say they don’t want beans, some stay silent. Today Mike’s there, you’re favorite boss, the manager who lets you listen to the radio. Ever since you switched to dinners about a month ago things have been better. A woman a little younger than you, a lady in a dress, comes through the line, and you don’t know what she’s doing here, with all these Boy Scouts. You look at her body a little longer than you should; you want to give her another scoop of beans, or better yet, a piece of cake from the back, but you know you shouldn’t; you remember that meeting about sexual harassment. She asks if there’s any meat in the beans. You say no and wonder if she’s a vegetarian. You scoop the beans onto her tray, taking care not to let the beans spill over the little walls of the rectangular compartment on the white foam tray. She moves on, you never see her again, and you're still scooping beans. I have a black hat.
I don’t know where it's at. Maybe it’s in the closet. By the way, what's a bozzet? I've never heard of a bozzet before, maybe it's a type of floor, or a door. Or a rock band that's hardcore- or the part of that movie where the intestines spill out plus more gore. Is it a viewpoint in which the poor are glor- ified? Or a trinket trolls adore? Or, maybe a bozzet is nothing more than lore about a store that only sells a single apple core. (No, that last definition was dumb. Ignore it.) A bozzet must be a tiger. Yes. Exactly a tiger! The spitting image of a tiger, the identical twin of a tiger, with the matching DNA of a tiger, 100% tiger! So let's call a tiger a bozzet. Nay, rather, let's call a bozzet a bozzet, for surely bozzets are bozzets! This is a delicacy, you know?
munch munch munch, to eat bagels like this- to eat cream cheese like this- munch munch munch, the single-serving pouches- oh! the pre-cut bagels- oh! munch munch munch right in the middle they’re cut- smudges of pink atop the tan… mmm… It’s all just like I’ve seen it on TV! Bum bum bum rum-diddy dum
Dum diddy dum absolutely Entirely rip rip rip rip rip rip- Hello Montana, Hello Wisconsin. Hello cow, hello dirt. And hello cow- bum bum bum diddy diddy dum Yipes! Yipes! Tree!- Trunk - bark in the face Right smash in the nose- Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Hello cow- sniff that dirt You dumb animal- Moo, you mooer! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! You dumb animal- Keep mooing! Eat that grass! Barbed-wire fence- Hello sun, hello toes in the dirt- :) It’s a comedy called Jack and Arnold about this loser
postcard salesman who goes to a petting zoo one day and finds a talking goat, Arnold. Jack buys Arnold and they have a bunch of adventures together. Arnold bakes a cake. Arnold eats the neighbor’s prize-winning flowers and the neighbor gets mad. Jack is dating this ugly lady named Popolou just for her money and Arnold seduces her even though he doesn’t really love her and a big romance debacle ensues. Arnold gets hypnotized to try to figure out how he got turned into a goat. (It turns out he was bitten by a scientist-vampire goat.) Jack and Arnold almost go to church. |