We Drove Out Through the Dust...

We drove out through the dust… beyond the abandoned buildings & filthy warehouses into The Kingdom of Grapes & The Luminous Peach Trees where my mother is buried & the chain link fence bends down beneath the weight of an ancient tree. I laughed @ the names: Timothy Buktu & John Marvin Blue. There were sisters & brothers, mothers & fathers & orphans & criminals & soldiers & The Forgotten…they are all buried there. I stayed on as long as I could & then I finally left & moved North where the San Joaquin cut the city in half… It was there the days got longer & longer until one fused into the next & the methamphetamine the Bikers were making kept me up for days. I found a Black Widow nesting under the arm of my couch. I smashed all the mirrors with beer bottles & ripped out the sink. I started to twitch & shake. My apt. , the one owned by Peter Harlow, was filled with people coming & going. There was Cleats & Kid Durango & Jason & Gypsy, & the most enigmatic, Lisa, who would blow into town from time to time with a different hairstyle & a different look & a different car & a purse full of credit cards that didn’t belong to her & a pound of uncut, glass shards of methamphetamine & she would stay until we had done our share & the rest was ready for the bikers & then she’d be gone again & I never knew when she was coming back. I finally left town & I left all my stuff behind & moved down South to try to start over again. I started running long distances up & down the beach & on the boardwalk & I would run all the way downtown through the baseball park & back home. I went to work for the Greek Lady & I went back to school & wrote poems again & started playing the guitar again & it almost stuck until it didn’t & then I was off & running & that was the last one & it was a doozy & the twitch came back & there were tombstones in my eyes. I was talking to every ghost I had made & the ones that had been following me around & mostly I was in conversation with my constant companion Mr. Sorrow, who wanted me dead, & he talked to me about it all the time & it was our favourite subject. Somehow though, & here is where it gets strange, I mean really strange, because every bone in my body was pliant & tender & it hurt to touch anything & there were bugs crawling all over me & my right side was paralyzed & I was twitching & talking to ghosts & then, for no reason @ all, except I wasn’t ready to die just yet I guess, I walked into a room & started talking & talking. I got my guitar out of hock, really it was Russ that got it out, but I got it out & I started listening to Thelonious Monk & I started writing poems again. I went to work in the fucking grocery store stacking beer & telling everybody I was okay when I wasn’t & I started running again & I was listening to Thelonious Monk & I was trying to write poems again & then she walked in…