Twenty-four

30 SEP 2023 Little Red House Under the Stairs Sitting in front of an electric Underwood.  A 565.  It isn’t fancy. Or particularly pretty.  Functional.  Business.  Drab in its presentation. But, I can make it work. Some stickers.  A stencil here or there.  Perhaps some paint.  Or, maybe just let the kids free to have at it, with markers and paint pens.  Because why not? Colour never hurts.  Neither does another typewriter.  How many?  Who fucking knows…too many to count.  And, that’s okay.  As long as hers are hers and mine are mine.  Because we haven’t yet crossed that relationship threshold.  The one where collections are truly combined. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next year. Or maybe never. And, that’s okay.  I don’t want her ever getting lost.  …

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Homecoming

Heading back again across county lines a bitten straggler.  Just a dirty, exhausted Boulevard Boy limping back to where he doesn’t really belong.   Not the homecoming once imagined.  That foolish ideal was born years ago––an unearned right surrendered to the whims of violence.  But in those adrenaline tainted moments of its birth, just the idea of that ideal was enough to help keep me alive.  Because it meant that in some improbable way, I was actually wanted.  And that everything I had sacrificed somehow mattered.   But then came that night when I should have died.  That changed everything.  And afterwards, not much else seemed to really matter.     Including me.   Somewhere between those extremes, I was left an intimate trespasser.  A sweaty nightmare …

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Post-pandemic Saginaw Blues

Half seven on a Mitten Thursday and accidentally whiskey tickled. Not what I expected from the day. But days are seldom what I expect anymore. So no point in demanding something different. I have always been more of a homewrecker word rocker. Because it is more fun. And that leaves the metaphorical boats under the direction of more capable captains, ones not afraid of navigating deeper waters. So I got caught chasing white lines with the White Stripes down West Saginaw. Because things belong with similar things. Otherwise it all breaks down, this illusion of civility. And I needed a spark to trigger me out of a lingering post-pandemic hangover. Because suddenly, we were all going to die. Touching groceries was a gamble. Wash everything; don’t …

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Capital City Consequence

More miles than meaning.  And, that must mean something.   Even if it’s just words quivering over asphalt.  Chasing empty roads.  Or another fragile dream stumbling down another broken Boulevard.   Consequence.   The dirty offspring of (in)decision.   I tried loving myself once.  I just never did a very good job of loving myself back.  Because it was confusing.  A foreign concept never properly explained in domestic fashion.   So I learned other lessons instead.   How to fight.  First, with words.  Then later, more deadly intentions.   Soldier mode.   A simple switch of humanity flipped off. Not with the heated gesture vigorously displayed towards an endless parade of shitty Michigan drivers.  But the switch inside my head.  That dark space too ugly to …

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Deer Prints

Broken trees bend in a familiar meadow. A cloudlessly blue Mitten sky hangs bright. Covering unsteady ground. But not taking any notes.   Because nature keeps her secrets. Right along with mine. Not where the crawdads sing. But, down in the holler. Where foxes play.   Fresh deer prints on the trail; vines stripped from all the pines. The ones pulled free and trimmed, to spark warmth in the chill of a star-filled Clinton County night.   Anticipation hangs. Like frozen exhalations in winter. Impatient for growth; hungry for the spring.   Sounds carry strange, caught in the grip of a Capitol City December. Voices echo harder; vibrations, they linger.   The songs of nature rhyme–strange words for a city boy caught out of his elements …

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