This isn’t my heart on a TV show isn’t my heart crushed on Cannery Row This isn’t my heart on a Dylan song isn’t my heart on a chain-linked town This isn’t my heart at all.
Feeling like junk in the high-blue sky Margaritas and needles and your sparkling eyes tell me why I don’t have to die so you and the girls go trippin’ all night as I sit back and watch the fight just another town just another landscape just another piece of misery just another place you want to escape so go back home and do it up right dance and drink all through the night feel the claw of a stranger touching your face why does everyone take my place.
Ronald’s in town with his big red shoes looking at the girl with the big red mouth he’s got a bullet and a burger a chomp and a stomp a trigger finger stirring ketchup and rain laughing while he tries to swallow the pain in another city by the sun in another remnant on a postcard another tear left to dry in a dirty motel ashtray he’s just junk and he’s learned to stay that way.
The fair light peaks at dawn this heart flattered by the rush another perilous tick tock another band of blue in a seemingly endless veil of gray
say something for once say something that is real
There’s a motion in the air tonight as souls weave and collapse through American freedom Tees the land of liberty stitched up tight with fenceposts and signs restricting passage
I am Trish I am Robert I encompass every soul and every broken bone I’ve penned every sad song with a pair of scissors and a blowtorch cutting, yet mending every carnival lights reflected in her eye the sound falters from a laugh, to a whisper to an eternal sigh
Gasping breath in some lonely dream until I land alive beside her when the fair light peaks at dawn and with it a brand-new day making her more beautiful than the one before – but where do I land anymore?
So back down in the shadows of the Pines I troll the bleeder bell tolls I am running over the land as cold mysteries of life lunge ever closer with outstretched claws and where would I be if I did fall off that mountain? Not here, not anywhere hiding my fear in a bell jar pasting it shut with hoarfrost a crystal icing so cold and clean a white glaze with her imprint frozen, forever
The complicated clock ticks recklessly tossing time into a volcano feeding Buddha bedtime snacks cold strawberry cobbler mad, hot liquid drinks Have I done anything remotely close to what the Red Soldier has done I think smoking cigars at a toy train station bring me my luggage I am going home with her
We smoked our last cigarette on the train ride to New York it was 3:35 in the P and the sky was losing its shape and I was losing mine returning to the womb now to feed on mother’s blood I’ll come back out and start all over again.
The soft hand of a baby’s breath clutches snow for the very last time for the fires are illuminating the sky our white-haired fathers are sending missiles to obliterate philosophies and the hungry and our children’s children ask why why are all the forests gone why are all the rivers running dry why is there a big hole punctured in the sky?
And the snow in the soft hand of a baby’s breath melts away with the regrets so wet and the baby cries as he says goodbye
Human hearts are flecked with the need to destroy yet the need to feel something down deeper more than black scratches on walls of brick splashed neon there are severed heads among the rubble everyone lives in a bubble encased in an impenetrable casing of greed and even when we penetrate the bodies of others are we merely manipulating our own seed?
The baby’s breath lays there blue and wheezing in a north London street his heart has nearly stopped beating for the madmen have pulled the trigger whatever the trigger of the day may be and there is no justice when rapists of foreign lands are pardoned by their own cogs the evil empire is set to implode on the dawn of revolutionary resolution
So we must hang on tightly to the ones we live for and trust for that new Italian Ferrari in the garage will melt in the turbulent hell of it all and would you rather die in the cradle of plush interior or in the arms of your everlasting love?
I broke the seal of the highway bottle the greasy liquid shot of a place unlike Eden a place called Plains on Texas
The sickness came on like a roar the shaking and the sweating love all nonsense now reality but a blur Dairy Queen red running over my eyes catastrophe walking the strip of a gravel pit morgue dead end ruckus and muck sandblasting the sky with a dire need to survive
Like I said the sickness I was ready to tumble to eternity nerve endings bursting without joy or meaning or purpose the stench of oil so thick the desolation of a wounded place sticking to the sweat of my skin and I was ready to snuff it snuff it loudly in Plains on Texas choking on an imminent stroke
I sailed to the roadside tables trembling and feeling wildly ill I needed a pill a naked, sleek pill to kill the present-tense situation the coma I was driving toward a cure was badly needed for a stroke was knocking at my door
The shop windows reflected dead light glass depictions of gray headstones kaleidoscopic blurs of broken eyes and shimmering wanderers lost in flattened fields of hot wind and demon paste and I was ready to pull to the side to let it all go in a dirty lot discarded moments of plastic and paper soaring like wounded doves soaring and circling the stroke victim clutching his brain and catching his breath gripping the end of the story like a blade or a torch.
This past weekend, my wife and I took a mini vacation to a nearby college town – just to get away from home and visit her son’s future campus, among other things, like good food and coffee.
I had searched online for a hotel and found one of those “suite” places, thinking it might be a good alternative to an Airbnb that I just couldn’t get my hands on. It was my wife’s birthday and I wanted her to have something nice – even though she’s very appreciative of anything, except Motel 6.
I was pretty disappointed with the hotel from the get-go, considering I paid so damn much for it – $250 a night plus all those damn taxes. They should have been charging $59 a night in my opinion. I guess the room was decent enough, but NOT worth the price of admission. I was hoping it would be much larger than it was, but it was pretty much the size of your run-of-the-mill hotel room – just with a bigger refrigerator and a dishwasher that was falling apart. Whoop-tee-doo.
In my head I was saying “I am pissed!” just like Tourette’s Guy would. If you don’t know who Tourette’s Guy is, look him up on YouTube. Hilarious.
Anyways, another perk to having the suite was having it stocked with dishes and silverware we could use if we wanted to eat in… Or in my case, enjoy a delicious bowl of cereal.
Even before arriving at the hotel, my wife and I stopped at a nice grocery store, and I grabbed myself a box of Corn Pops and a box of Apple Jacks and some milk. I was pumped! To be able to have a bowl of cereal at the hotel – “I was in such bliss, my brothers,” as Alex DeLarge would say. If you don’t know who Alex DeLarge is, Google him.
But upon arriving to the room and inspecting the dishware that was provided, I just about lost my shit. “What the hell is this!?” I cried out to the cereal gods.
The dimensions of the bowls did not exceed the size of my palms.
“Are those ashtrays?” my wife wondered.
“No, they’re cereal bowls the size of ashtrays. How can this be? How in holy hell am I supposed to eat cereal out of these?”
My wife just looked at me like I was crazy, but I was crushed. Another dream had been snuffed from my life like a dirty cigarette – how appropriate, right?
Yellow Corn Pops polished with sweetness tinkled into one of the tiny bowls in the middle of the night. I poured in a little milk. I couldn’t sleep. My mind and soul were restless. I sat down on the uncomfortable couch on the other side of the partition from where my wife was sleeping in the bed. I began to spoon in the delicious late-night snack. It was so good, but due to the size of the bowl, the pleasure didn’t last long. I had to go back for more. And I did. And I did again. Like crack.
Still restless afterwards, I went down to the lobby and out into the hot air of a summer night. Corn Pops tumbled in the tum-tum. Light pollution blotted out the stars. I turned back to look at the lobby through the sliding glass doors. A few annoying weirdos were playing pool. Yeah, they had a pool table in the lobby. There was a lone lady clerk behind the front desk pretending to work. I considered complaining about the size of the bowls. But what good would it do? It wouldn’t matter what I said – nothing would change. The lady clerk didn’t care. She had more important things on her mind… Maybe.
The lobby doors slid open, and my wife appeared. She was fuzzled and bedazzled. “Are you still upset about the size of those cereal bowls?”
“Yes,” I confessed. “No one should be forced to eat cereal from such a small bowl. It’s ridiculous and inhumane.”
“But you could have no cereal at all. Think of that and all the other things you do have and stop being so glum.”
I looked at her, pure beauty radiating in the neon glow of the high hotel. “You’re always the positive end of the battery,” I said. “Cereal trouble may have killed me by now if it weren’t for you.”
I wrapped my arm around her, and we walked back into the hotel. There at the front desk was a man and he was loudly complaining about something to the clerk. We stopped in the shadows as I wanted to eavesdrop.
“How the hell am I supposed to eat cereal out of a bowl like this!” he screamed to her, and he threw it down and it rattled against the counter.
The clerk was shaking and crying because he was being so mean and hateful. “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll make a note of it for the manager.”
“Oh yes, a note for the manager. I’m sure you will,” the man grumbled. “You’re nothing but an inept ding-a-ling. I’ll never stay in this hotel ever again! You’ve lost my business!” And he angrily stormed off, tossing a perturbed glance in our direction.
“See,” my wife said to me. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t become an asshole like him?”
“Yes,” I said. “You’re right again.”
“Of course, I am. You should listen to me more often.”
I gave her a squeeze and a sultry smile. “Let’s go upstairs and watch some crappy TV, and maybe later you can give me a reason to have another bowl of cereal.”
CEREAL AFTER SEX 