DEAR PEN PAL

Now over the bridge you forget yourself and fall into a book on rivers. Then the power plant exploded.  Friends offered umbrellas or a ride home. Another time I noticed the mess I made merely by reading in my lawn chair. You laughed at Faulkner and your brother's pot routine. Your failed marriage too. Divorcées everywhere! (Except your parents — the cheap bastards). 

Barbara had only just learned to draft promises and Billy whom I knew in the Biblical sense found a school teacher to fondle. We don't speak anymore-- we raise eyebrows. Our project was to prevent us from becoming who we are.

You must know when or where to stop. Line after line. Where disorder develops, a word is the first step (Confucius). Air is exhaustible, layers peel away.  The committee will find a way to ruin you. Are you going to change your mind again? Barbarians are just outside. Your heat recreated them.

Me and my backpack wandered the earth, our borrowed personae and blue jeans. In Costco with intentions to be genuine, we meant what we said and scaled the shelves for paper towels then petered out, lost in the mattresses. 

After a brief sexual encounter she changed her name. The dotted line stood for progress. But progress is forever prejudiced. Try this lampshade on your head. Do you feel dimmer?

So I went to the country where the trees were all twisted, all solid but the leaves came swimming. I was finding these needles in my hair. What are you looking at? I wish I could wow people with my unsightliness. Chuckle. You can really get lost in a cornfield and drive away the people who love you. It’s the anxiety, I never got that right. Heavy heat, drip of vermilion.

 

Tomorrow I will discover I am a lost cause –- best news I’ve had in years.