"Waiting for Spring" read at Trace 3-24-09

Waiting for Spring


Jumbo-legged anarchists, kindly giants, bitchy and bovine in their ways, make their way past storefronts overfilled with stereos and knickknacks, gewgaws of late capitalism, incense and condoms in all different colors, assorted flavors. I am your whipping boy, but it's all just pretend. My heart has been broken so many times it doesn't bother to mend. And when will you show me the way to Prince Charming. Am I forever to be slipping on banana peels, falling in the snow, in the freezing rain, in the mud, humiliated by the eye-scorching sun. You humble me. The coins fall through the hole in my pocket one by one. I am not a record player. Play your own accordion. Master scrabble and monopoly and staggering in the dark.

And all my non sequiturs fall on deaf ears and unsoiled panties. My only friend is the piano player playing all alone in the dark, cigarettes lighting burning ash, Jack Daniel's on the rocks. Where my thoughts meet the sharp glass edge of a flat world reflecting mirrors, synthetic plant life. Just as you called my name, I saw a giraffe, her long tongue reaching for a leaf, her eyes partially closed in enjoyment? Memorize anecdotes, long-winded and peppered with caricatures unwillingly coerced into making you look larger than life or science fiction concoctions bubbling over with narcotic side effects and new hairstyles. Left behind are incoherent memories, days you wished you had soup but there wasn't any, and the walls were too plain. Where were the posters of rock stars dripping sweat onto ecstatic but disconcerted audience members?

Foggy-headed super heroes flying over skyscrapers tall and lean, gleaming and mean, forget their lunches, lose their hunches about what could have and should have and might have been. I'm just another rock and roll addict, crazy lady in the attic, in the palace you can no longer call home. When you call me, don't forget how vulnerable I am. How I fall apart like a jigsaw puzzle, and the dog chews some pieces and hides some others under the couch. Play my game your way. Leave me in the cold on the sidewalk in the dark. Sex toys, brightly colored dildoes adorned with flashing Christmas lights, seek me out, put me on display, make me feel at home like the spaceship of aliens from my home planet coming for me at last.

I know there is no home, not for very long anyway. Things change too fast and where are you and who am I? Little mice are talking. They're taking trips to new places and changing colors. He said, "I wish I had penises in different colors, shooting semen in different colors. I could paint as I came."

Wherever you are, I'm someplace else, and there's the rub. The crowded pub, the substandard grub, the back aching to be rubbed. I'd be someone if I wasn't so self-absorbed. I never get used to "I don't care," no matter how true it is. Rent me a spaceship; lend me a lipstick. I'm ready to roll with the punches; do abdominal crunches; steal the lunches of school children. Mesmerized victims of sudden and inexplicable pangs of paranoia huddle and grapple with difficult and self-defeating philosophical concepts amongst themselves.

And at the playground, there are used condoms and cigarette butts and empty beer bottles and fast food wrappers partially buried in the snow, awaiting a toddler treasure hunt. And the Easter Bunny can't help being an alcoholic.