blastedgoat

i just remembered the first time i watched a silent film. it was on television late night at my grandma’s and my best friend was staying over. i think it was about cleopatra… i will try to find the film but anyway i was so intrigued by how it looked because it was so spooky and different. i think that night was when we were freaking out about the really long-legged horse in that coldplay video.. iiii never meant to cause you trouble…

dangle your body like rotten berries deep red and starting to reek i am not mesmerized by your high-pitched whine or bleach
blonde brain cells, deadened like the nerves in your jaw but am repulsed by the slack in your thigh, the line of your orange mask that peels like moldy fruit skins and falls to the floor i am unamused by this musing so i give it up in exchange for musical experimentation, a stellar stoner-action flick and a family consisting of a smoky black-and-grey purr-box, a manic man band (my name minus m and
my hunny-bunny) i take rock-n-roll videos and close-up photos of things that fill the finished basement….

Feet pound erratically on uneven stairs that I take at top speed, flashing a jagged key, twisting an oval knob, heart racing past a pile of summer shoes. I bolt the door behind me. This reminds me of a recurring dream I had when my window overlooked Broadway and the train tracks. The creature was snarling with black matted fur and cold eyes. I pushed my brother inside and saw it going for my mother. Her foot caught on a stair and she fell forward. Someone inside slammed and locked the door. I stared through glass and screen. I saw my mother’s eye disappear down the dog’s throat. I tried to scream and move. I tried to shake the bed. I saw the ceiling and heard a familiar voice.

The wooden floor is hard against my head. Colored lights
crawl across the wall warping in the cob-webbed corners.
In the next room ending credits play. The babysitter opens
the screen door. I hear my mother’s voice but not
what she says. I’m pretending to be asleep.

i slid in the mud–voices on t.v. floated out the window, my owww

an unnoticed howel to the hungry hangnail-moon.

AIM yrs l8ter: OMG WTF EVER HAPPENED 2 BRIAN HALL?

but that night broken glass was embedded in my foot. a long deep cut,

bloody foot gushing on wet blades of grass…he chased me

around the house in circles, we rode out bikes with0ut touching handlebars.

we picked up broken window-shield glass, pretending the shards were priceless diamonds.

we pulled hairs from giant green men, single strands at a time or in chunks connected to roots

and dirt. once i broke a branch off a tiny tree his dad had just planted, i grabbed it

and put my full 60lbs into a swing, landing hand in hand with wrinkled leaf and bending limb.

i am envious of the lens that saw him moments before he died–

he smiled. kids rolled down hills, their screams were the things of dreams…

i tumble and feel wet grass, growing around his gravestone, a place that marks

the letter sealed inside. words eaten long ago by worms–scorched on a sidewalk,

split in half for the world to see what’s inside him and inside me.

nothing feels right

until i watch this tape.

i can’t be sure how many times i have been half expecting to see him

turn a corner.

instead he floats further down river…

i never saw him, i wasn’t there when they pulled him from underneath a bridge

after days of searching and seeing dated photographs

on the channel 7 news. i didn’t see his smile, we never kissed at all…

a picture someone gave me after your funeral makes my fiance jealous,

jealous of bones and a seven-year-old-conversation late in to the night

one summer i spent the night at home alone.

trees bend and wave, flowers remind me of running

through bushes with purple bunches, floral and lush until

the snap–a swing-set unmovable-cemented haphazardly

in the backyard with all its knobby trees and rotten leaves.

apple-core eyes are smokey and coiling under an invisible

chain-link fence for dogs, cutting the bandit’s neck staining

bare feet like crab-apples–ghostly presence in the long

shady patches of lawn… a black cat crosses a toe-headed boy.

he stretches his stubby fat fingers and yawns as a woodpile

splinters, sparks, and burns to the ground.

there were girls standing all around me in a clearing, there was a huge fire.

it felt like the ending of a film, just before the isle lights flicker on.

they sing a theme-song that haunts me in the moments between

lights-out and first light. a haze is cast over an emptying stadium.

fluttering patterns are really blackened-blue fireflies trampled by sneakers.

i keep on walking. howling at the moon, i feel close to my home tonight…

lying still in the morning before the other girls wake up,

i stair at a sleeping friend, admire her freckled nose.

she remains unaware that, while spending summers

sharing rooms with me most mornings were spent exactly like this…

locked in a fog of confusing boundaries between

your hairbrush

my comforter

your perfume

my shoes

your diary

my stuffed animals…

that is the lie my friends, i could never lie to you…

most of you don’t even care that i talk the way i do

or that i write the words i write for you. if you knew

how i stress each letter, that i stress over every line

maybe you wouldn’t just walk or click on by.

i am in the mood for talking nonsense,

which is a wonderful sense to have.

i always used to write about my day

but the only one who ever read about it

is no longer my best friend. he has a little wife,

i was invited to the wedding. it was strange,

his fiance has celiacs  just like my ex-fiance,

but he never sticks to his diet.

i know too many people in this town

but i don’t recognize any of it at all,

its all totally different now.

i drove by my old house today,

the house i lived in when i was six.

it was tiny and grimy, just like i remembered.

i only remember moments my mom took pictures of…

and maybe a bad dream, looking over at the bars

of my brother’s crib and asking one of dad’s friends

(i think it was brad) to draw a star for a school assignment.

i remember cutting my hair at the base of my neck,

listening to the neighbor boy who liked to swear,

kissing my dog on the mouth in the yard,

bits and pieces of a swing set, and climbing trees

with a friend who oddly enough i don’t remember at all.

all these things happened when i was six

before we started and ended our life together

as a family in a new house, a big house,

a house most people know by sight if they

had ever driven down Broadway.

i used to be so proud as i squinted in the distance,

“look you can see our house from here.”

i used to look in the side-view mirror or my mother’s

beat up blue pickup truck pretending i was the star of all

my own movies that played only in my head.

each new “home” was just another set…
another setting for my next book…

it’s shit-tastic remembering all these things,

what have i lost? what was i worrying about

when i was six and when did all these things became

the past? what will today be when tomorrow

is long-fucking gone? will i ever be an old woman

shriveling in her recliner…or can i live on forever

in these moments if i am willing to write them down?

Vomit, unintelligible telephone conversations.
You may have tried to change everything
but I know, behind oversized sunglasses,
your eyes are brown. You take them off
from time to time to remind me briefly
how we used to believe in magic.
You wash your face in a marble sink
a gravestone. Toothpaste epitaphs
are grim, a crooked smile in the mirror.