Monday, July 28, 2008

thats not a depressing story

post-un-remarkable
my friend. the liar
is offering money to those
who will take up his time
and confirm his sense of
benevolent achiever, a Caesar of
small business. helping the needy,
giving small dinner mints of advice,
he is helpful but there's an implicit
understanding to those who know him;
don't believe half of what he says and
the other half is probably a lie

Saturday, July 26, 2008

standing on a wide brimmed hat
in the middle of the parking lot
describing where he thought he left his pipe
maybe it was the library or
the sushi place
something had caused this irreparable damage
we used to buy green and orange jelly candies- orange slices
the green ones were mint
they were covered in sugar

He didn't know if they could still get Lucky Lager
they turned left at the totem pole
and headed down college ave

damn it was fucking hot
he said he'd had sex with the waitress at the sushi place
sometimes i get on top and sometimes she gets on top he said
I didn't know whether to believe him or not
It was a possibility but her husband was the sushi chef and
their daughter was helping set the tables

We decided to go the all you can eat Chinese buffet instead
he remembered how to get there
Fen- Tone street he said
take Fen- Tone

He had a photo of himself when he was a technical sargent in the army.

he was standing over his motorcyle - a 1942 Harley

Saturday, July 12, 2008

last day in vegas chapter 11

He left Houston with no particular destination in mind. He thought he would just head north and see what would happen.
His car was a gray Gran Torino which his stepfather had left him after dying of a combination of heart failure, kidney failure and some horrid skin malfunction. There had been a series of alcoholic episodes as well, after his wife had been killed in a crosswalk by a hit and run driver.
The Torino was in relatively good shape.
His stepfather had lost his license years ago and had parked the car under a huge blue tarp in the garage which also contained a vast collection of stuff from years of a pack rats life.
Both the mother and the stepfather were pack rats. He had come home after being away for several years to find them living in tunnels of boxes. The entire house was filled with stacks of old boxes, stuffed and browned with age, teetering above narrow passageways. He now knew why they had dissuaded him when he said he wanted to come visit.
There were boxes filled with bags, which contained more bags. There were boxes with newspapers, boxes with flattened boxes, boxes with old magazines, boxes of broken china, boxes of odd pieces of wood, boxes with bags of seeds from the trees and plants that were still growing outside the house. There were also odd things tucked away in a box whose contents seemed uniform. In one box of Life magazines he found several pictures of his father. In another, a box of old shoes, he found a box of jewelry including the diamond bracelet his father had given his mother after being awarded the patent for a medical device. There were also mice living in the boxes.
After he left he called the Health Dept and the Fire Dept. and ratted them out. He knew they would live like that forever and they wouldn't listen to him. They didn't even think it was a problem. When he had tried to throw out plastic food containers his mother would pull them out later, wash them and put them in a box with other to go containers. He knew they wouldn't stop on their own.