Deer Prints

It has been nearly impossible developing original language. Finding fresh explanations. Breaking new words to better fit old desires. Capturing the code of communication between us.  Words can just be tricky that way. But I still had to try. Language remains the only bridge between where we were and where she is destined to go. Because we were in very different places. Even though we were walking there together.  We started at the park. The one where we used to meet. Years ago. In the before times. Back when life wasn’t this fucking complicated. She confessed to wanting to find her spot. And expressed her gratitude that her favorite fox, the one sporting an alarming amount of grey in his fur, was there to help her. …

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Where the Sidewalk Ended

Somebody lit the house on fire. It burns to this day. Even though I have temporarily retreated safely back across state lines. It is a tangible buffer; it keeps us separated. And responsibly distant. Which, considering the severity of the situation, is probably the best possible outcome. Because I felt that familiar compulsion to jump in. Head first. Consequences be damned. Just like I always do when tangled up in a situation where wounded hearts are on the line. But at the same time, I don’t want her to jump with me. Only one of us deserves to tumble down these dirty alleyways. Better that it be me—I am expendable. And she is already destined for a different kind of fall. So I will take the …

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Where Did You Go?

Where did you go?  I screamed your name atop the graceful arch of the 421 bridge straddling two states. I called out for you beside a carved marker of polished stone. I whimpered soft your many nicknames under the shadows of the places where we should have kissed. But when I screamed, the mighty Ohio took no notice. Only continued to barge west on its journey over to the Mississippi. When I called out, only crumbling angels answered in their tears of a broken November. And when I whimpered, the streets could only laugh and heckle. Poking fun at the wounded pedestrian crossing against all the wrong lights. Where did you go? The time here is all empty now. Time usually filled fighting temperamental tin beasts. …

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Songs from the Fish Ladder

November rain shimmered bleak on broken “Five One Seven” asphalt. An agitated capital howled back in the dampness of oil slick reflections. Clammy concrete amplified the winds, funneling nocturnal vagabonds. And the creep of city street creatures. Aggravated skies leaked unseasonably warm, lake-fed temper tantrums. The river, bathed in polluted runaways, flowed heavy. But not heavy enough to live up to its named expectation.  Decayed leaves stuck to everything. An inconvenient reminder. A crumbling signature of another vindictive season of falling things. The one currently caught decomposing, down where the fish are all laddered back up.  Into that storm I walked, a vagrant heart absorbing the similarity of surroundings. Begging the connection of repetitive reminiscences. Twisting memory into disrobed branches. Matching the ones clawing up, clashing …

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typer

Birthday Funeral Part Three: The Typewriter

With a belly full of church food, and a head full of heavy static, this road weary fox slinked back to his room in the woods seeking temporary sanctuary.   The silence and stillness felt good after the emotions churned up over at St. Patrick’s.  A recharge in the pool, floating weightless in transparent nothingness; a quick sweat in the sauna, purging the poisons. Then a sprawl in dark, air-conditioned solitude, my skin bumping up gooses at the drastic shift in environment. I closed my eyes until the phone bleeped annoyingly beside my head in the bed. Hot coffee. A hotter shower. Because I had to wake myself up for the wake. And make myself back human again, before Skelly and I rolled over to the house. …

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Birthday Funeral Part Two: The Mass

*blink* “Where the fuck am I? Oh yeah. Indiana.” *sigh* “Again.” It took senses a minute to congeal into coherence inside the darkness of that rented Porter County hotel room. After having fought the 69/94 gauntlet, reconvening with extended family shortly after wheels down, and just the whole stress of the situation, sleep did not come easy when the world finally stopped moving. Even after being nudged with the better part of a bottle of blackberry infused literary lubricant. At least that part of the plan worked. Although the resulting words of a first part were more idiosyncratic than intended. But that’s probably the fault of the idiot sitting behind the typewriter. I am not sure I will ever understand the reasons behind why she stuck …

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Birthday Funeral Part One: The Drive

Things just haven’t been the same since you hot shot yourself.   That awful Monday night when the needle bit you a final goodbye. Alone. Curled up inside that ramshackle Indiana motel room tacked to the shoulder of US 33. Your few belongings neatly arranged as a last courtesy. Everything in its proper place. Everything except for those last words on a page—your final temper tantrum. It was a gibberish beyond the comprehension of most. But I understood perfectly. Because no matter the distance of our disconnect, we somehow remained tethered. At least when it came to the writing. We could read each other as easily as the riddle printed on the back of one of her hoarded banana Laffy-Taffys. She always had that soft spot flair …

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Coconut Rum Diaries

Sunday drunk on coconut rum. Not a flavour native to Michigan. But it reminds me there are better places in the world. And that’s not nothing. So I cling to it, like a mother does her special needs child to keep him from running into the traffic barreling south on MLK. Tropical drinks downed against the backdrop of Midwestern blandness. It seems a reasonable response to the ridiculousness of it all. Because nothing here makes any fucking sense.   And I’m dying to get away.  Away from the stink of airplanes—yeah, I’m pretty fucking talented at kicking tin. I’ve set the early departure record multiple times. And someone up at corporate must have noticed that. Because they rolled back our scheduled departure. In doing so, I helped …

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The Opening Part Two: The Closer

Eerybody has been asking about the status of the second part of the story.  But honestly, I debated even writing it.  She did say that Part One was a lovely opening to an experience that had left her mind reeling.  As admittedly mine had been, too, ever since the taillights of her green Subaru faded south, leaving The City to feel that much more empty in her sudden absence. My weiner was starting to feel a little peculiar about it all, too.  Not sure about how hers was feeling.  Things not meant to cling were starting to get sticky.  Weird, but in a way not entirely unpleasant.  Like going to the gym drunk. But I still found myself hesitating. And it didn’t really help literary matters …

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Barking Foxes

Good morning again, Michigan.  This one isn’t going to be easy to write. Or much fun to read. But I am going to say it plainly anyway. No need for flowery verse. Or clever wordplay. This isn’t the time.   Because I wish that the people I care about would just quit fucking dying unexpectedly.   That would be absolutely ducky.  Another transcontinental text; another fallen friend. Another gap in the collective hive-mind of memory. Another empty seat at a table whose ranks are rapidly dwindling with each passing new year. And that widening void breaks my fucking heart. I have been writing long enough to understand that our stories are themselves living creatures. Constantly evolving. Adding pages. Taking notes. Absorbing punctuation. And occasionally, delighting in the masochist …

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