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So it’s the first real weekend of the new year and what will you do? Try to find something that will make you believe this year will be better. Set the thing off right. There’s been too much confusion, angst, anxiety, analyzation, and analysis.
The best I could do at this point is to water and fertilize my growing spine and hope for a quicker recovery from my rusty resolution. Stop prostrating myself before the gods of self-pity, absorption, indulgence. I’m not so bad. Just frantic lately. Maybe, it’s the drugs. Oh yeah, although I haven’t written about them lately, I am still on the drugs. Maybe it is me. Slowly, life turns, and returns. It’s time to leave well enough alone, and start making a new life without all of the tears and sadness. This weekend is welcome.

Huh? What
you say?
Did I hear that
just right?
I’m out
tonight with
short lines
and crazy mind.
If we gonna
riff, might as well
with this crazy
myth.
Four and four
will maybe two make
and inspiration comes
for no one’s sake.
How did you find
your way around this?
I couldn’t read
a sign if
it hit me upside
this large head.
But if I break
with rule
it is not because
I’m the fool,
or maybe I am.
Just ask me in
the morning,
just love me tonight.

Why the rush toward definition?
Tonight I should take it easy,
at least that is what Steve has been saying.
I’ve been making faces at myself
in the grey-black blank television screen,
my head seems so big and
I begin slowly to think of
a beach somewhere I’ve never been
where I can hear the calm roll over
this columna de mi espalda,
where my tongue would massage this air into
a gambit that could end the game at the start,
and in this screen I am painted well
full with monobrow, and my statement
tells of a more full story,
full enough that I could take flight,
and be there for the making
of divots in a different land,
and not just waiting on another
arrival, revival or resurrection,
that will make my lonely divot
a little less so.

I am going to save Southern food, your collards and coleslaw and all. I am going to ride on the backs of strange waves off the Georgia coast. I will make it all clear to you all. With love, or without, I can inspire a whole region to betterness. This is the way things go. Potassium pulses through me tonight. I am great and will be greater. This may be megolomania, but at the end of it all… it is me that needs to be taken care of as much as anyone. Here’s a road, and I think I will take it.

Clickety click! or that is the way it is supposed to happen. You on the phone tonight way past the point that you should be, but still there. This is two in one day, or three. What will we do with this? This city excites you, and maybe I do too. But at the end of the day we all want to retreat to the beach and fill our jaws with ocean meat, and to make pledges to each other that only a beach will make real. How’s that humidity? How’s that sleepy town? I hope your night makes you new again. I hope it creates great dreams that will teach me and you how we should feel again… after all of this.

I know i still love you in these strange ways and it hurts that it is not the way that it used to hurt, but I realize now that it can be something else, that perhaps you have to crawl back into your own cocoon. I could not even find you in a lineup now as the crazy muses make the effort impossible. I can lay down no more, which may be a great effort to you. Happy new year. Happy life. You, and I, will be happy. How’s that, boo? I think I have felt some strange love lately, but it cannot be talked about, because of therapy and talk and gossip… I hope you find it. I think I have, or will, or can hope. I can always hope. Right?

This bed is cold tonight.
I get in rooting around
for a little scent of you
that may have been left behind.
Is it the pillow?
No.
Maybe try the divit in
the sheets where you layed.
It is there.
It is there but
will slowly diminish.
In fact, in a couple of days
I will not be able to
exactly recall how you smell.
It will then become a memory
unattached to any real sense,
that can only be awakened
by you again, my nose
against your nape again.
That too will come to pass
as you return to the winter
heat and humidity of that place
you have created – a sunshine city
for yourself.
I will stay here in the cold,
and rain, in this now quiet house,
trying to find a way
to warm this bed without you –
trying to find a way
to make that faint scent
hang around a little longer.

Today, a federal holiday, and I out finding things I did not know existed. Could I fly on a cloud, ride on a magic carpet? Could I dance to the music of someone strange? Oh, you bet! I will drift to this slumberland, the one that makes the dreams all so real with crazy palpitations in my heart. If we were to make it happen, then this is the way. Oh, this is the way!

Tonight was the first night that I have ever gotten to play Santa. After the traditional soup and sandwich dinner at my brother’s house, we put the kids to bed and I stayed awhile delaying a late-night, potentially futile, hunt for petroleum, as my car’s gas light had just come on as I arrived in Durham County. He asked would I help and I said I would, so we went down the street to the Grandparent’s house and into the garage to retrieve several boxes of Biddy Baby paraphernalia and the new gas-powered 4-wheeler for S. We brought them back to the house and took the baby doll furniture into the house for assembly to begin, and a spirit of Christmas that I haven’t felt all season flooded through me. I realized that it really is for the kids, and that not having any kids actively present in my day-to-day life has kept the spirit partly at bay. Tonight it seemed so different, being back here in this town. Although it is strange to me now, there is still a homeyness to the place that is unmistakable. I can feel my pulse slow a bit when I cross into N.C., and even more when the Durham County line is crossed. While playing Santa tonight, I thought, “I can do this… I like doing this,” and thus I put to rest some of the nagging doubts that I have had lately about my suitability and desire for fatherhood, marriage, settling etc. I can put those thoughts, fears, and worries away now – and it feels good to do so.
I hope you all have, had, and are having a Merry Christmas. I hope to see or talk to each of you very soon.