the last mushroom
first of all
psilocybin tastes
like shit
I think that's what
they grow them in
I was lying in Danny's
backyard by the lake
next to the beer keg
trying to get the taste out
of my mouth
when Helen walked up
I hadn't seen Helen
in years
since my ex-wife
stole her husband
she kept talking about something
in that quiet way of hers
but the colors came out
so damn sad
I went into
a death spiral
all of us sinking into some
catholic hell
she talked for 40 days
and 40 nights
and then I threw up
and she was gone
Danny came wandering by
with Muldoon
"particled wavehood" said Muldoon
"broken-faced gargoyles"
I answered
and he poured me a beer
if I ever eat another
psilocybin mushroom
please shoot me
I don't even like the regular kind
on my pizza
and in salad they taste like
little rubber bags
of dirt
Like trains into tunnels
Yeah I saw the whole thing,
that knife slid into him
like he was loose dirt.
Naw I dunno, just a knife.
I dunno, long enough I guess.
They was having
some kinda bitch about somethin
over there by the pinball machine.
He called her a damn whore, I
remember that real clear,
and she yeah she
stuck him good, like he was a
balloon...you shoulda seen
his face pop, like one second
he was in it and the next
he was gone.
Seemed like he deserved it though:
like he'd been top dog for so long
she didn't have no way out but to cut him;
and he was so tough and
shitty grinning, and then
gaffed like a fish,
and I ain't surprised he's dead.
Knife slid right easy
through that silk shirt,
right between the ribs so perfect,
the old tongue into the slot,
and he was just so much
meat and she was gone.
I dunno she was...
well kinda average lookin:
about so tall, brown hair, that's all.
I never seen them before.
Hey, honest, but
he sure bought it fast,
it coulda been worse for him;
she knew what she was doin,
you can tell.
Yeah I saw the whole thing. Like he was
loose dirt and been turned over.
No I didn't see her face;
I'da liked that but
I was watchin his at least.
You know even when you covered him up
he still looked surprised.
quiet here in the dark
wishing I had something to
say to you
that something had happened I
could relate
some thing you would find interesting if
you were here
but nothing keeps happening in almost
fall still
you sit in my head waiting or
I think this
since I never know when you
will appear
but you always do eventually
unexpectedly
and I find I remember things
about you
things I do not know though it is nice
to think of them
and I go back to cutting up onions
making coffee
it occurs to me to smoke but I light
the filter
that burned taste like the one firemen
have always
with them you can remember tastes
you know
like I remember you standing naked
in my bathroom
you or your shadow at the window
the light
a halo through your hair watching
the moon and
as you can taste perfume if you get
close enough
you can taste sweat if the air
is still enough
from across the room across
years you
can know from what is spoken
what remains
unspoken you can try to put these
things away
but for me closing my eyes is
better to let
these things flow over me like standing
in warm summer
rain the cold only later when the
wind rises
after the wake
we crossed the river
into New Jersey
because one friend's parents
had a swimming pool
most of us too drunk
to drive but we had help
she was only 3 months old
another crib death
it was as if everything
in the Jersey house had yet
to be unwrapped
plastic covers on the
furniture on the lamp
shades plastic runners
across the carpets
the baby's mom
tears hidden in
blue water and chlorine
an unasked dissonance as
` she looked so good
in her 2-piece
around the pool a chain
link fence climbed
by plaster squirrels
and we swam hard
as if to get somewhere
but thunder brought us in
before anyone drowned
secret names
my eyelids bang open and I wake sudden as summer
fire spreads down dry arroyos -
her lovely nameless face floats above me in the heat -
a dissipating cloud of dream
that rims a thought that will not clear.
but the lost green eyes and hair not red but
not blonde her smile the old smile back in place
draw down icons of memory -
through the freckles that spread wild
to the line across her breasts where freckles end
and I can see in the dark - the whiteness of the curve
below untouched by sun -
the suprising pubic manicure
shaved small in the shape of a heart.
she speaks my name
I cannot speak hers.
and I roll in my sheets chilled but sweating
out the sudden details gusting through -
the alcoholic memory of that first evening rush
from bar to bed pulling desperate relevance
from every article and consonance from every vowel -
a trident siren sea of memories welling up
from nowhere incomplete.
and I try again but nothing still -
no trick will bring her name to mind
not even her first name a name that could have been
a man's or woman's name I know that much but
not Chris not Terry.
though the endgame memory returns of course -
whistles up unwanted again
of lying hopeless on frozen
apartment balcony concrete drunk
against Valentine's bitter cold - someone
saying come in come in you'll freeze -
watching through the glass
her leave the party with some unknown
unnamed one - I never saw her after that
until years later
back in town on business -
by bluff chance in a bar downtown
we had lunch together at the rail
and I ate and slowly nodded through
the story of her latest man -
the one who could have made her
happy at last arrested the night before
at the airport
their little package gone all lost.
what happened to us -
you and me she asked and we both
knew what but not why -
no sense attempting the why of it
or the inevitability - not before not then or now -
more of the secrets we hold away from ourselves.
all lost and I left two drinks for her and flew
away secure in my own developed relevance
uplifted if brought low.
ten years later those redlined eyes
still endlessly familiar -
I turn and fight my way back down to sleep
knowing her name is there somewhere in secret
locked deep in some internal file.
dreading now the dawn too soon to come -
the vast undertakings of a Tuesday or Wednesday -
slamming eyes shut in the hope of no dream
back down the corridor into sacred darkness
before the sun burns its inevitable hole
in the blanket of night
and flames the whole damned sky
with morning.
after 6 drinks
I went to the head
and worked the old penny jimmy
on the rubber machine
rattled the handle back and forth until
the little boxes sprayed everywhere
I filled my pockets left behind a couple
that fell in the urinal
next time I came in they were gone
I got a laugh out of that
she ran the little plastic wrapped boxes
through her hands like diamonds
smiled up at me like any princess
and we tore into them
blew them up and sailed them around the room
till the whole joint was laughing
I said I'm Mike what's your name
she said her name was Michelle
but people always called her Mike
too and we laughed some more
it's like looking in a mirror I said
she said smile let me check our teeth
they threw us out at closing
and I felt my pockets and not
thinking too fast said shit
we blew up all the rubbers
I never had much subtlety
and she laughed and reached in her bra
and pulled out 2 little packages and said
I gotta couple
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