I’d give you the hour I had. Slipped down the front steps, into to my boots, “Mom, I’m going to James’ to catch up. Back in an hour,”
“Elvridge?”
“yeah”
“Oh, is that who’s here? Awe tell me how he is,” my mom smiled with warm sandbox concern as she waved out the window. You’ve always been welcome here.
“I think he is doing better he got a new job he likes, going to go hear more,”

We started like we always have, along the awkward edge of fragility, like I might just jump out before you get going too fast. You’re the tooth I have tied against my doorknob; it’ll take escaping the threads of my body to ever find the nerve to kick you clean out. I commit when the road gets quick underneath us. I have always played reluctant and barely convinced to come see you. One layer you thumb against your index; you make me feel like a rookie when I am the older one who knows better, who’s watching her body slouch into a fiddling girl.
We split 2 “****** joints,” no filter - a term you taught me just then, tapping it against my nose before lighting it between your lips. You decided on the cell phone lot along the airstrip; continued your scant refusal to answer my questions, ones about the text from the night before. Insisted the ****** ladies had swept you straight off your feet - no need to go back when you’re feeling so much better.  
Oh good - I will tell my mom that you are well and hear from you late later this week with your prayers to the subtle god of short-term solutions.

No planes took off but we hoped with our eyes pressed against a clear sky.
“Could be Oregon.”
“Yeah, it could be.”
“I’d pack the car tomorrow, you know that.”
“I’d be nice.” I breathed to close this prayer between us. I will meet you there when all else fails. You’d take me there tonight. I hate you so ******* much but I trek out every time you call to look at Oregon through your windshield because it would be nice. We’d stand a chance in Oregon. We could love each other well.
You wrap your hand around my thigh.
“Sorry, had to,” you smirk before retracting it quickly.
“You have a crooked idea of what’s necessary,” it’s gotten us into that backseat only twice over five years but, I have always let your hands test my resolve.
“You’re right. How’s the boyfriend?” you tease as you throw your arm over my seat and the car into reverse.
“Oh, please he’s not my boyfriend,” I dismiss you quickly and watch the scar sweat down the corner of your wry smile, warmly lit by fire between your teeth.
“I think it’s funny. You’ll call me when it’s over so what’s the difference.” I hate that you’re right.

It was a smooth red Mazda roll from the cell phone lot to the roads you came here for, the hidden highway stretches behind the airport. The blood left my chest as your knuckles went white against the transmission.
down shift
down shift
down shift
the darling terror of your acceleration swelled to breath in my lungs. You smile like you remember; I smile as if I don’t. The way the floor caved to meet me the day I got the call. The way you cried into the mirror when you finally woke up to the tempered glass scar that carves across your face. I’ve been the fool in you passenger seat more than I’ll ever admit. My mom would never let me leave the door if I told her the truth, that I only trust you driving this fast with me there. Flying around these wooded bends, I know if I ever want to keep you, I have to be your something to lose.
Don’t worry mom he wouldn’t **** us both.

The first time we did this was the first time after. I thought we were going to park and talk but you wept as we climbed to 200 on the highway. I shook and begged you to slow down.
You wished it had worked. You wished it had worked. I knew the EMT, she told me you wished she had not worked.

I don’t know what is different now but as the night whipped past the empty roads, I wanted to reach out my hands and touch time through the December sunroof, to kiss the creeping truth of scarcity like she was coming home. We are moving so fast through what we have left and oh my god I feel like I can breathe again. I so am afraid for the unsuspecting, praying that any late-night jogger or crossing deer is miles safe from our never stopping in time.
You are not. You love me like a religion, with enough faith to steer straight and trust the road ahead like you know that it will clear it if it’s meant to. But I know you. I know your nightmare isn’t the oak tree you met on this road months ago.
You won’t **** your wrist this time
but if the tires slipped on the melting snow
and we both fly to Oregon through your windshield,
you pray you’re not the only one this time,
begging not to come home.

Wander from Argyle Street towards the pyramid shaped monolith
past the oddly named Benny Hamish - Sicilian Couture Tailors -
through the automatic glass doors of persuasion
up the revolving stairs of many stairs
sail by the portly security guard
(who looks like he'd be out of breath after a 10 yard dash)
along the imitation marble airstrip
passed neon facades and signs for proactive self indulgence
toward the carousel of smoked-mirror lifts
that take the well heeled to their desired destinations
without having to worry about their Chanel leather clutch bag
and newly purchased Christian Louboutin shoes

and I sit people watching,
writing this poem on a borrowed napkin
with a discarded betting shop pen

amid a horde of timid stomachs and twitching wallets
faced with a thousand fast food offerings
and gaudy coloured tables and chairs
littered in the remnants of repugnant non-ecological eateries
and Styrofoam cups and re-composite cutlery
under Noah's grotesquely beautiful steel ark
lined in industrial tubing and chrysalis shaped netting
and giant Art Deco toothbrushes
and 30 foot wiggly mirrors
and stretched rhombus sails
acting as a blanket barrier
to the blue skies and arched sun of the outside world
somewhere between
KFC and Burger King.

We were cleaning out the attic
For the estate sale when we found
My fathers’ letters to my mother
from Vietnam, near Khe Sanh.

The pages old and yellowed,
The ink, in places, faded.
written in a boyish script,
with dried tear stains on the pages.

These were written from a battle
in a long and costly war.
They hold a tale of love and longing
For his wife and the child she bore.

My father was a Seabee
On the airstrip at Khe Sanh
By the time the siege was lifted
He was already gone.

The letters end abruptly.
He never made it home.
My mother set aside the letters
and lived the rest of life alone.

I never knew my Father
He never held his child
Still he found a way to touch me
with his letters from Khe Sanh.

I slept like a log, inspite of the pains from my blistered feet. Harry woke me at six thirty. "Time for breakfast, better jump to it or i'll tickle your feet."  The thought of that was enough to set me in motion. After breakfast we assembled for role call beside the waiting coaches. Then we boarded, and left the camp heading for the airfield. Every one was expecting to fly from RAF Lyneham, we had heard that we would be flying in the new Dehavilland Comet, the first passenger jet. It was not to to be. The comet had crashed into the sea, there were no survivors!
Instead of that, we were driven to a remote airfield in Wiltshire, I believe it was called Cliff Pypard,  there we boarded an ageing hastings transport and set off into the wide blue yonder heading on a more southerly bearing than one would expect for a flight to Germany.
I tried to keep an eye on our progress by following coastlines, it was difficult, clouds obscured much of the coast line. I had the definite feeling that we were travelling in a South Easterly direction, and I asked one of the aircrew about it. "Don't worry, I expect we'll take a turn to the north soon." A little later, I suddenly realized that we were flying over the Med- Germany via the Med, never in this world!!
We ate chicken wings lettuce and bread for lunch, still flying at a steady one hundred and eighty miles an hour at mid day, below us dessert! We were all confused. Where on earth were we going?
Our first stop was at a place called Idris, it was an airstrip in the Libyan desert. There was nothing there only tents, and a place to refuel. I was a squalid stinking dump, and that was all. We left early the following morning after a laughable breakfast that no one ate. Our ext stop was a similar one but even more so, It was a place alled Habanya, I think, I went to use one of the two toilet's and discovered that the horrible brown stains in the toilets were actually enormous heaving masses of huge cockroaches, I went out into the desert insted. when I got back to our tent I was told off. "this place is crawling with snakes, don't stray about!" we didn't need telling twice! The tents were just as bad, infested with huge spiders, no one slept. We were glad to leave it.

On gloomy overcast , Driving down the Texas road.. Destination airstrip, to fly above the gray sad day, And see the sun from my Cessna that I pilot today..  No matter what I can always see the sun when I fly above the gray..  

No matter how the day looks.. I can always see the sun in my Cessna..

The Australian desert can be very cold at night. It was the cold that woke us early in the morning. We were all eager to be off, and we soon found ourselves drumming along the metalled road leading to the airstrip, in an ex military four by four open topped vehicle. By the time we got there we were all frozen, and waiting for the Sun to warm us up. The pilot asked us if we would donate a shirt, the fitters were doubtful whether they had been able to stop the leakage, they intended to stuff rags into the filler pipes  to see if that would help. The pilot had second thoughts, and decided to try without, he thought there might be a danger of blocking the fuel lines, so we took off again to **** it and see,(an old tried and trusted technique in The Royal Air Force, aparrently.)Twenty minutes later, we were back on the tarmack once more ,stuffing the remains of my shirt into the fuel filler pipes. This did not cure the problem, but it did alleviate it to a degree.  The Pilot calculated that instead of being able to do twelve hundred mile (hops). we could manage three hundred miles. and there were small airstrips with refuelling facilities within range. "We should be ok, fingers crossed." I liked his confidence, and sat watching the wings slowly leaking our fuel into a thin vapour trail, as we flew along over the outback desert land. We landed several times I think, by then I was so tired that my brain craved sleep. The only stop I can remember was a cattle station at Leigh Creek, it was the last stop before Edinborogh Fields,near Adelaide. I wondered "And then what?" No one was able to tell us why we were in OZ!!

"Yes" is positively positive among positivists. Half my parents are dead & the other half are half-dead. I must careful! I almost nearly wrote: "No *** snot." I'm glad I remembered where to put the spaces & the apostrophe. Let's behave immunologically to mercilessly slaughter pathogens as it's better than gagging to coax throwing up. These choco'/caramel pretzel bites are awful! I often win, everything but money. It's a good week to ride a horse as hay is going on sale in Annapolis. More death, that's just what America's whining wrist-slitters need...
   Half way through May, again, I anticipate with regularity the June month, as my colon waves in spasms, goose stepping in quick time to June. I should look up old friends, old ****-buddies if I were a homosexual (which I'm not). It seems relaxing to sit when spoken to; to speak from a seat.

she is a location
policed
by a trauma
that never
returns.

that’s a mouthful
on a first
date
but she is far
from photographing

roadkill.

still, she hears
it said
in sister
and in health…

she starts with a boy
who becomes a clown
getting
his pilot’s
license
on borrowed
time

and she loves
god is your
airstrip.

she knows it
by number
the single
highway
truck
that doesn’t
come.

her father is just
as she imagines-

a man
not making
siren
sounds
pulled over
by the man
who is.

an owl
with an owlish
disease
***** with
a bat

as an altogether
different
angel

swallows
her mother
like a sword.

hell has lost her mind

but tries again
its troubled
flashlight.

Walk on babe, the night will find you soon enough. But, do not give in so kindly- it seeks to play with you for 100 hours, or 100 years; perhaps 100 years and 100 hours, I don’t know…. my glasses fell off. The best way to say it: if the day is temporary, so are you, and the night will swallow everything, from common skin to rare hues.
Don’t pull your punches with nature! Don’t let that primeval smell defeat you or good God- get a kick out of you. Nature is the piece of furniture that you bought, not the other way ‘round. So, how do you feel? Icicle fingers, sap bearing veins, rebar arms, tenderloin body, washboard neck, prison gate mouth, airstrip nose, typhoon eyes, telephone ears, coniferous hair, freedom’s mind. You owe it to nature, she coddles you.
A funny thing, then: the lifetime of a dream. Where love, bliss, sorrow, *** are not unknown, but as uncanny as they can be. Old friends may sleep it off and give you a cheque and a kick out the front door, but don’t you know what you were in their beds for? It was something true, and if you were the only one to find it in that pile of quick/messy lovers, it is truer still. So walk on babe, the technicolour night has left you, but in its hazy laboured breath, it promised to return. It swore to explode all over you- what can you do in return?

***** it tightly, sweet, slutty ***** in a perch from the lowest mast
with the queer **** who kicked in your teeth after you back-sassed

The locals invite us for an evening game;
the town has 27 residents
and most worked today.

The Rampart team comes slowly,
dressed in waders and mitts in hand,
riding quads with beer coolers
in back.

They take the field first,
arrayed against a forested
backdrop and smoking,
all of them smoking
drinking running running
running as the softball skips
across the ground like so many
days flown by too quickly.

We mark ten runs and swap,
taking places with 11pm shadows
following us.

The never-setting sun
plays with our hair
as one hand might
play with the wind while driving,
that is, all fingers;
our own are spread between leather
webs and dusty stitches;
the ash on our hands
settles into our palm lines;
and we play deep into the night
on a gravel airstrip overlooking
the Alaskan interior.

The world seems built for Tyrants
Egos scraping the sky
They chase glory, adulation, loyalty
They place cataracts in your eye
And fill circuits of mind
With plaque-inducing memes
You’ll only catch phrases
Banal recurring themes
Sublime viral encounters at Airstrip Nine
A streaming black market
Of lies revised as gospel truths
You’ll master the fine arts
Of double-think
And polemics
You’ll scorn friends and lovers
Who dare intervene
You’ll run from the Thought Police
Screaming obscenities
Like $uicide boy$ @ Woo Hah
Run from truth
Run from facts
Run with lies
Run with the Tribe
Run to Big Brother
Run
*****  F*hka
Run.

~ P