Humans & Horses Read online

  of the leaf

  to the bottom of the tree, like a drop

  of water

  from yr sleeve, yr careening out

  of

  yr league. You won’t even hear the gunshot

  between yr

  teeth. That strong whistle of

  a split or

  fork-

  ed

  tongue.

  But, you say, I’m young. I’m strong. I

  have

  all my hair

  and I’m very,

  very pretty. I don’t have much to say to that,

  as I’m sure you don’t

  care. I’m going to run you over

  with my

  four-door car, and back over you

  for good measure.

  Then you’ll join me for a séance

  at yr best friend’s house. You, me,

  and yr Mrs. We’ll all hold hands

  and pray until

  our knees shake. Until the floorboards pry up

  and

  we find ourselves at a loss, walking down

  into yr

  unmarked grave, refusing to look back

  or listen to a single bit

  of advice, music, or electronic signaling devices.

  [I was about to say how someone would turn into

  a pillar of salt, but that gets everything mixed up.

  That’s not what I meant. What I meant was:

  you’ll be waiting for us a very,

  very long time.

  It’s not a sprint. It’s a marathon.

  It’s not a marathon. It’s a sprint.

  And I am a runner. My number

  pinned into my chest.

  It’s not a marathon.

  It’s not a marathon.

  It’s not a sprint.

  It’s not a sprint.

  It’s a marathon.

  It’s a marathon.

  It’s a sprint.

  It’s a sprint.

  It doesn’t matter

  by the time

  you’ve reached

  the finish line

  no one is a winner,

  and no one will be there to greet you,

  or pull the pin

  out of yr chest.

  You’ll break that tape

  as good as you’ll break yr leg

  walking away from the race

  and into the lights.

  The shrapnel from it

  crashing down for days.

  221 years ago and sometimes

  it feels like

  we’ve only gone 26.1 miles

  and are

  nowhere to be

  found

  in our country

  that turns over and crumbles

  whenever

  the crowds get caught up

  in the pressing presence of

  NOT LISTENING—

  a preferential state

  for the 21st century

  and the largest State

  of the Union.

  How come we come here to hear what we don’t here

  we don’t come to a finish line in the dust or at the borderline

  or when the water meets the sand

  and asks:

  How is it that we meet?

  And how the air cancels out the sound in yr voice when you think

  yr about to say something unique or be somewhere you need

  to be or come down from the hot-air balloon you have been sailing

  in the wind above me for some time now, and you said you could

  see everything we could see but could see it differently and that up

  there you had yrself some top-secret technology and so could hear

  every word, every word you heard me say and heard what was said

  by EVERYONE

  and you listened.

  From that balloon overhead, simply floating, barely

  moving, kissing clouds not concerned with coming down,

  not even counting the seconds or how far you’ve gotten

  and from there you tell me that you’ve heard it all. You say,

  “I’ve heard

  it all.

  Over. All from here

  I’ve heard

  and what I hear is what I hoped.

  If you, dear, would only listen. Over.

  When Apollo said, I am the Alpha bet and the Omega, he wasn’t

  finished, was he? Over.

  Look up at the sun and watch it burst

  until you get yr answer. Over.

  And over again, if you’ll be this way,

  let it beat yr face

  red and blistered.

  Just keep staring. Over. You’ll be just like them. Some kind of man.

  Over. You’ll be like the rest. Waiting in the end, the sand,

  without a beginning. You’ll just sit on yr ass singing

  and complaining and crying. Over.

  You probably can’t even hear me from up here

  over that. Over.

  I’ve got somewhere to be. Over.”

  And I floated again

  in my fat

  on the water,

  in the ocean,

  and Alice’s tears

  were something

  I refused to eat

  or

  return to. I kept

  my snout

  clean,

  no doubt. I didn’t do

  the wrong thing, then, see,

  sea?

  Did you

  see, Sea?

  Like a see-saw,

  up and down, the horizon line and sun or moon,

  then the salt of water in my eyes.

  And the forests burned up and the cars were bombed and I thought:

  If I’m to become any more than where I’ve come,

  I’ve got to move on.

  Or I’ll choke on the water with the fishes in the sand’s

  indignant absences.

  So I started another song.

  Dear Love,

  I hope you’ll keep me in yr trifecta, I hope you’ll yell out my name in ecstasy from the grandstands, smiling in expectation, the flat land stretching beyond you, behind me, the wide sky of rust swallowing up everything, the wide red stretching from left, to right, to wit, I hope you’ll get up and jump and cheer for me, I hope you’ve put me in the number one spot, I hope you’ve got nothing left to lose, that what you put on me will only be a bonus to what you have brought with you, and that second place is only a second’s thought, not a spot you’d put me in, nor I you, there are no second thoughts, no second chances, no, not in this game, and if yr in it already, then it may already be too late, and the chances are growing dimmer, yr seconds, out of the gate, how you should have known my love as a horseshoe thrown from 17 feet would not win you or me any trophies or accolades or jet fighters beating down the sky for you or I, how about the absence of my pace, how I keep rhythm as I please, how I do things my own way like Sinatra or Sid Vicious did, how I don’t listen but I listened and when I did I sometimes repeat, myself, and you, and others, hoping you tell me that, yes, I, can, or how you hope that I will break down this house of cards with my splitting teeth or my last breath, the best in show, is how, I know, I’ve come to be a part of it, how I get lost in the tongues of lovers, how I have had the words in my hands and the words in a book and I knew that the book had no end, it had no end and it knew nothing more than that until it did, and it didn’t, it didn’t start, it didn’t end, it didn’t carry the cart behind its back or by a rope tied round its neck, it didn’t get here like that, didn’t come from far but did, it always comes from far away, the closest things are often things spent in the past, you didn’t cave in there because you didn’t know it yet, you’ve got a lot to say and nowhere to sit, because it never ends, you better get up and get, I heard the sounds of sirens in the distance but then it turned into nothing but silence and laughs, it turned into a cold drink around a table with friends and no lo
sses from them, no bets placed, and I thought I was not supposed to be tricked, but then again I got into plenty of accidents and this is nothing new at all.

  This is one for the good days.

  I’m thinking of you, dear friends, who came to yr end

  though you knew no end

  and so you don’t. I have you here in this room with me,

  and it’s a small room,

  and I do not feel crowded

  one bit,

  and I am having a drink to you, thinking of you

  with music on the radio, my friends. You two, no, I didn’t know

  so perfectly well. But,

  you knew me well enough

  to see me dance down the streets

  making obscene hand gestures

  at San Francisco taxi cabs

  grabbing you

  close to drink in more and get more drunk

  than I usually get

  because I couldn’t know what I would forget

  or what I would remember

  or how faulty

  it all is and what it was and what it is

  and how

  my face

  must have looked to you at that time and how

  it must look to you now, much more aged

  in just a few years, or just a few months.

  And how yr face

  is ageless

  and changeless

  to me.

  But yr looking at me now,

  in this strange glow

  and beat. Yr looking at me now

  and see,

  and know, my face,

  it’s not the same

  as last

  you’d

  seen,

  at last,

  as last

  I’d seen yr face

  near mine

  in blue smoke

  floating.

  Outside of the bars, we talked some, but not much.

  We’ve crowded out each other and the others.

  We’ve burnt our lungs on mile-long cigarettes,

  and sang songs sometimes in my truck,

  late at night,

  driving when I probably should have not. The city

  slowly glowing, as the city slows, it slows with the light,

  gets slower and lower with the hours passing into it,

  gets slower and lower as the crowds filter out of it

  until it’s just dark, and just quiet, and the air is just cold

  and clean. It’s sometimes like this, especially

  when

  I step out of it, the hugeness of

  my sopping wet rat suit.

  for Parker Zane Allen

  for Rebecca Marie Susan Ohlson

  As I crawl out of the drink

  I find myself in a place

  called ABSENCE. I’ve lost it over and over again,

  but how would I know? I know what it looks like. It looks like

  false memory, usually it looks like places that didn’t start,

  it comes crashing at my feet

  in a

  splash

  of hair and teeth, and perfected, it is, by the bamboo in the desert,

  the water in the lungs,

  and the air in the brain without pain the painted painter paints

  scenery into place and I move thru it like I speak from the set

  of relief to the stage of unbelief, how I gathered myself and collected

  my breath,

  and from

  this play

  this game

  from the head of the choir

  I sing,

  “Please don’t interrupt,”

  and then I move onto an encore of

  “The Stars and Stripes”

  and call out to the fat man in the first seat

  to call them

  balls or strikes before I strike the lights

  and catch myself on fire

  I set myself on fire and run out on the show

  without pain leaping like I would from the pitch black sky

  to plant myself right in the fucking earth

  or drop back

  into

  the drink,

  spilled and complete but unfinished,

  without speeches or rings or birds to keep me company

  I’ll climb back down

  from my perch

  and find myself too much,

  too powerful to burst, to blow up in the hot red sky

  like I’ve expected

  so many times before and as I expect I’ll expect to again.

  Coming

  down

  from the iron hard

  Atlantic,

  or up

  from the silky soft

  Pacific.

  Rising with a trail of smoke in my taste. Stuck in,

  trapped in, upper space,

  eating snake chowder thru a straw,

  in a straw-filled bed,

  somewhere

  south

  of Kansas

  but north

  of Texas

  and somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. My wings are the lungs

  of hurricanes and I hurt

  so many

  without

  a thought. Combined with the come down,

  I don’t remember

  much. I was spinning pretty forceful,

  but then I stopped

  counting stars

  and went home

  though

  it wasn’t a spot I could point to on a map.

  I’ve got the poison

  I’ve got to get out of here my way from here has no way to there.

  You don’t get it. I can’t say we ever will. Will have it. Will beat it.

  The clock that counts

  down in

  North America,

  counts up

  in European soccer matches,

  and the like. We’ll see how far we go, or how far we come.

  Depending

  on

  where we put our asses down

  or what we move our feet over. I guess it doesn’t mean that much.

  The means.

  The way the time

  g o e s

  or how they count it on fields of grass

  in Germany,

  or slates of ice

  in Canada, but I was wondering, anyway,

  if my straw-marked face and brittle teeth

  could devise a way

  between the two.

  I’m not so sure. I’m not so smart.

  I don’t have much to add to

  this.

  Don’t have much but a lousy degree

  and

  I failed

  economics,

  so, dear Country, I’m sorry,

  but I cannot help you. Can’t, sorry. Really,

  I failed

  elementary

  statistics,

  also,

  more than once,

  before The Terminator

  would finally sign

  my diploma. I hang it on the wall, right next

  to my poster of ALIENS.

  It doesn’t make sense. I know. It doesn’t, I guess.

  I guess I’m too busy waiting for my tax return

  and working in an accounting firm, counting my

  paycheck daily.

  I’ve heard you like to put on flippers and squawk? Like

  to play with ducks?

  Like to perform yr duties in the park?

  Is this true? Can you push yrself up off the rooster’s roof

  and float

  for five seconds or more?

  If so, then, yes, I’d like to meet you.

  I’ve often dreamed I could soar. Or float, rather.

  Something more

  like a drifting up from the earth than what the birds do,

  when they do what they do, they sometimes come

  crashing down,

  though rarely, much less than a
irplanes,

  I think. Though what do I know,

  not having been

  in Nature

  for so long.

  And the horn sounds!

  The drum beats!

  The heart races from its throat!

  RETREAT!

  RE-

  TREAT!

  Stone

  from

  the mountain

  is holding

  tight

  to what you thought would be there:

  Magic

  God

  &

  Belief.

  You are not wrong

  nor are you right.

  You’ll find

  yrself

  here,

  among the swaying dandelion

  among the growing overpasses

  and sound of cars swapping spaces,

  passing sounds,

  pushing wheels

  around

  up in the air

  by the head over the heart and heels because yr

  not involved enough,

  none of us.

  To feel more than this, what we’re told to feel, what

  we’re taught, be-

  cause we

  li

  ve

  in the land

  of un

  teaching taught.

  Oh how hard it is

  when it is

  not that.

  From this we’ll get a very short trip,

  the gas mileage

  is not getting

  so good

  not that much better

  anyway

  and you have yet to purchase yrself

  the flying car

  promised

  in

  THE JEFFERSONS

  or

  whatever. It gets stupid and stupider to HOPE

  for the future,

  but what is

  it

  but a continuance

  and what is that

  but

  inevitable? Yr an idiot, Logan. God, yr stupid. Someone

  should slap you in the face for writing this.

  No one wants to hear yr gibberish. Get back in yr room