Its called public speaking
But I am utterly alone in front of this fake,
fiber board,
paper figgiting,
******* podium.
I can see it in their eyes.
They anticipate my words
as much as I loath them.
Cough,
clear you throat,
your a performer
a great juggler
bleeding in front of a room of razor toothed hecklers.
I'm sure they'll remember your name
they'll burn the ground you've stepped on
to cleanse it of your lingering, godless opinions.
They're waiting fruit in hand
to offer you prizes
or splatter you with disdain
and self serving amusement.
Speak
its now or never
the orators you admire
roll in their graves with laughter.
I'm sorry,
did you mean to be taken seriously?

Cigarette in the Sunday sun
Its cold despite its overbearing presence
the overbearing presence of
planes overhead,
dogs barking,
screaming children loosed from morning service,
grinding steel wheels on a rail road track,
cat calls,
coughing,
laughing,
cussing,
imagined smiling.
The world spins,
tips,
teeters,
and I dance on its edge
songs strangling my lungs.

Everyone knows its a bad part of town,
no one lives there by choice.
Its this place called The Heat
down at the corner of holy gate
and 1-deuce-deuce.
There a girl there,
her real names Lucinda,
they say friends call her luci,
which is short for Lucifer,
and she works in The Heat
which is slick for hell.
They say she's called bass
"cause it look'a like a wide mouth bass
smell 'bout da same"
Nicknames and false alibis.
Luci works the Heat on taco Tuesdays.
They say she'll serve it hot for ten a song.
Fish taco Tuesdays.
They joke that it always smells like tuna anyways
even without fish taco Tuesdays.
They say on a good Friday,
The Heat almost becomes bearable
and every body watches old bass
swinging widemouthed and tasseled
around every pole in the bar.
But I can't bare it,
the kind of sadness in places like this
where they serve up breakfast
and Tuesday specials
for ten dollars a song.

It was as dark and warm
as the womb
when i stepped in from the cold chill
of my cigarette.

Movies and images
flashed on endlessly
in the abyss
of the darkened room.

I knew better than most
that soon sleep
and dreams
would set in refreshing
and familiar
as the face of a mother
to a wounded child.

I could see these patterns
repeated behaviors
forming themselves in the dark
and so I too
lay down my weary head
and my heavy bones
and slipped oil like
into the rough embrace of the sheets
and the unknown
and the loved
and the eternally forgotten world of dreams.

He told me he was leaving,
to be gone for good and no longer tired.
He told me the decision was final
chrystallized
in the floating mush of his brain.
He told me he would leave in the middle of the night
unknown, unseen
like a thief
or an abused lover.
He said he had been thinking of it for a long time now
that finally something had made up his mind.
I asked him.
What.
What could make him want to leave,
want to leave this sleepy fishing village
settled endlessly in a saltwater fog;
a thick constant fog
that burned the lungs
and made cars rust in real motion.
He stopped.
He thought of how to say it
moving his eyes back and forth
as if bouncing the words he would speak between them
contemplating ping pong.
He took in a deep breath
of the briney breeze
and looked up at the cold sky
above my head.
" It happened three days ago
when I woke up in the dark
just a little before the day broke golden and grey
over the village
and as I saw light faint on the horizon
I stepped out onto my porch
with a hot drink steaming in the cold air
and watched the sun break the line of hills
and saw the dew glimmering on the leaves and bushes
and smelled the salty water
evaporate off the broken streets
and heard the first songs
of unseen and unknown birds
and listened to the waves crash in the distance
and tasted the ground that surrounded me
as it filled my nostrils
and as this beautiful scene unfolded before me
this tired foggy damp wonderful scene
that I've seen a thousand times before.
As it all broke open before my eyes
filled with all too familiar memories
I thought to myself
I have to get the **** out of here
I have to leave forever before this place rusts me dead and shut
I have to get the **** out of here
and I will"
Then he stood
and closed the book
that had laid open on his lap this entire endeavor
the pages flapped together in the wind
like the book was a cat disturbed from his khaki covered lap
and he bid me farewell
never making eye contact
or gesturing.
"Maybe I'll see you in another life
or sleepy town"
and he
my grandfather
was gone forever.