Bitterness Stew

one dash hope
one hope dashed

half cup ennui
cup of tears
two drops alligator tears

salt (the wounds) liberally
pepper to taste

three pounds organ meat
heart
kidney
pickled liver
one smoked lung

acid of lemon
all of the useless love songs

4 tablespoons of curdled virginity
6 tablespoons of neglected dream

generous sprinkling of loneliness (sans cat)
6 cups broth of thyme lost

simmer ingredients awhile
boil for excitement
add a lot of wine, deglaze, glaze over

add more wine, throw in a straight up vodka martini, set alight
burn it up, burn it off

reduce heat, shiver
it's good to feel something, anything

turn up heat, variation enriches flavour, it's all about the melding of tastes

simmer, simmer, simmer

finish with cream of disillusionment and a splash of rage

serve with a generous amount of potato product, bread and pastas.

Serves one.

No Title

I have been sitting on a message, for a sum total of two weeks. It was delivered by my mother, seems while she and my father were supping on oysters and rose (allez la France, Euro Cup 2004) my very first love was trying to track me down.

I have been returning from work and following the usual routine, checking the mailbox for more bills, checking the answering machine, though the only calls I seem to receive are from the DNC and MCI, and staring at this number, and sort of half vaguely surprised that I didn't ring him up immediately, and three quarters wondering if I have really gotten that old, that my knees didn't verily knock in my proverbial boots at the mere mention of his name.

BC - oh yes, Before Christ. Green Dart, summertime, seventeen, he is long limbed, long fingered and long haired, and has never managed to shed his Canadian accent. He doesn't tan, he reminds me of Mick Jagger, in a good way. We made out in graveyards to the tune of Iron Maiden, gleefully disrupting the ghosts, we made out in other people's bedrooms, we made out in parks after dark, until we got busted by the cops. I am sooo giggling as I write this...

And so I rang him up.

And I got his voicemail.

And verily my knees they knocked, and I giggled onto his answering machine, and quite possibly made an ass out of myself (nothing unusual there) You know in French there were always two verbs that I was getting mixed up, the first is s'epanouir which is to blossom, and the second is s'evanouir, which is to faint. And if you were me, you would know that one can blossom and faint in the same moment without ever losing consciousness. But all that is gratuitous build up to what I felt when I heard his voicemail, not that we actually exchanged dialogue, because, fuck all, it's the digital age and... who actually speaks anymore... but, again, I digress.

And I heard his voice, and I blossomed and passed out, and I was seventeen, and none of the rest of it has happened yet, there is no thirty-three, it is beyond the scope of what I wish to contemplate. There is only my august August, BC fetching me on his motorcycle at the end of the drive as it was forbidden. There are only the haints as we skim through a dip next to the cemetery, fostering my nascent love of fast bikes and the cooling evening on my bare legs.

And in my seventeen year old certitude I will do anything, anything for him. At least until the first frenchman whispers obscenities into my ear and then I am lost, but that hasn't happened yet.

I fell in love with BC when I was in eighth grade, and plotted, planted myself strategically, made friends accordingly and finally caught the coup in the summer of my sixteenth year. The day you gave me your number was in April 1987, I was wearing a white sweatshirt and pink cut off sweatshorts (yes, it was the eighties) and in my state if unfettered ecstasy I promptly walked into the nearest pole. And I stayed in love with you, through all of the ons and offs until I was twenty one years old. But I have been following news of you as you have following news of me, because that it is what it is when you come from a small town. You knew I married and divorced and I knew you were in Las Vegas (Vegas?) with your long term girlfriend...

Your voice is unchanged, like a perfume I had nearly forgotten, potent enough to make me blossom and faint.

That must be a good thing, after so many, many years.

Pisco and Champagne

Dearest A and B and beautiful GG,

A fine evening
but,
Pisco & Champagne
do quite a hang over
make...

bisous!

Radio Silence

Let not our paucity of words dissuade you. We have been thinking, nay, our thoughts overburdened with explosives synapses igniting lovely fireworks in our imagination. We have been dreaming Great Big Dreams.

Also, we had sex with a live human man, for which we are eternally grateful, though it is likely that we were opportunistic. Developing.

Sometimes our head gets too full and words dart like so many minnows and it is easier to go to sleep, or drink a lot.

In this case, we will leave it to the ether to judge, we have a hobbit fix we need to attend to.

a tres bien tot.

The Great American Empty

When you fly across the country, you get an idea of land, of space. When you fly in daylight, the landscape yields sulfur, yields crags and pits, yields unruly patches of civilization dotted with swimming pools, but mostly, but mostly, great, haunting swathes of emptiness.

When you fly at night there is an ocean of land, spotty patches of town, concentrated city lights, street lights, head lights, porch lights, a great empty strip mall anchored by a Wal-Mart and a Staples deserted in whatever timezone you are flying over, bathed in the ghostly green of those sky-ward parking-lot angels, their very ghostliness enough to send you shivering to your semi cost efficient SUV, bollocks to the price of gas, purchases in tow, pepper spray in hand. In essence, the picture of the lonely American, in the midst of the Great Empty, trailing debt and the promise of a new credit card at ZERO APR for 24 months....


The Saddest Thing I Ever Saw

Happened shortly after I learned how to read. Naturally, the first book I read was "Green Eggs and Ham", naturally I became a Suess junkie at the very tender age of five. But when one thinks of a sentimental education at such a formulative age, one mightn't think Suess, but parents everywhere, should I succumb to regular bouts of melancholy, I blame the good doctor. More specifically, I blame a particular book and a companion illustration. The book in question is "Do You Know How Lucky You Are" and the image that has been plaguing my dream life and subconscious for nearly three decades is: I cannot remember the text quite precisely...

The sky is yellow and there is a canyon, across the canyon is strung a string, and from the string dangles an empty hanger, and the text is something about loneliness, a hanger without a coat, simply hanging, and gathering rust.

And I am quite sure, there are all kinds of reason Freudian, Jungian et al. to calm my quailing at the sight of that lonesome hanger. And of course, now that I am several years removed from the age of five, there is a whole wasps nest of contextualization and la di da di da that I am simply not going to fucking address.

The Second Saddest Thing I Ever Saw

Happens in the movies and at cross roads, and belongs to the great American pantheon on iconic images of our very vast emptiness. I watched a visually lovely little movie called "Northfork" and there was a 30 second scene in which three cars diverged on a cross road in the middle of the great American empty.

And for those of us who have ever driven in an unfamiliar landscape and watched the car before us turn onto a road seemingly to nowhere and let their imagination flicker, flame and burnout. Driving somewhere, driving nowhere in the great unending emptiness.