have to have

You can order what you want for us
I drink all kinds of cola
I'm fond of fried potatoes
Greens and beans frijola

You can play the songs of yesteryear
Quarters in the slots
Flirt the room from dusk to noon
And rush the polka dots

I don't care
The noisy air
The drunken sotted
Atmosphere

All I want
And it's the truth!
I have to have you
In a booth

sunday nights in america

I get an eerie sensation on a sunday night  standing on the precipice of the death of a weekend. I get the kind of rattled only a vanilla shake in an American diner can quell, listening to Elvis on the jukebox with friends, in a booth upholstered in automotive leather, flirting and killing off time.

high fructose corn syrup dyed, twisted and wrapped tight in plastic, posing as black licorice

We were at Lucky's having breakfast. The booth was luxurious under our asses. You said you wanted to be helpful and we got close because I reached out for help and you appeared. Then you acted in a way I thought was unhelpful and I reacted in a way that upset you and then you distanced yourself presuming I was ungrateful or shocked because you thought you were being helpful and should not experience other people's reactions. I think I was about to walk away and out the glass door framed in the glass wall, the storefront where the specials had been frosted on: Ninety-nine cents for a cup of coffee. 2 fried eggs for five bucks. I did not wanna trust you were being helpful when every cell in my body was on edge by some things you were saying. You saw me getting ready to get up and pre-empted me. You laid down cash quickly on the flat plastic tray, and walked away. How could getting me worked up this way be helpful to me? How could you be so upset at me for feeling defensive? I thought you were working me up this way, but it was really me. You thought I was hurting you but it was really you.

Suddenly we were no longer close. Everything changes, the whole world gets blocked out. All I could hold on to as I picked myself up to follow you out there, was the smile I saw on the old man's face, the proprietor, with an apron tied around his belly. I passed him by as he was wiping down a booth closer to the door with his rag. Someone wasn't so offended by me. Still you and I were miles apart. This did not mean anything, for we both had an underlying connection, call it friendship. This connection caused us not to feel abandoned, just hurt temporarily. Call it a misunderstanding between friends. I approached and listened. You told me I was acting entitled, when all you were doing was trying to help. I told you how you said stuff that hurt me, which caused me to react. You demanded an apology. I thought about it. While waiting for an apology, you preached. You were a bit older so I let you. On the side I was contemplating an apology as a gesture of good will. I do not typically give in to demands, but maybe for someone I care about who cares about me.

I admit I tuned you out until several seconds later when I apologized. You didn't hear it because you were worked up, so the next time you told me how I oughta apologize I reminded you I just did. We were on the sidewalk in front of Lucky's. The cars were passing by. The atmosphere was white without shadows or fog. The sun just could not be refined. The street had noise which kindly muted our argument. My feelings were laid out for you. I think you saw me the second I reminded you I had apologized. Because that's when it changed. You saw I was quiet and quieter than you and putting up with you there. You saw that I was your friend. You relaxed a little bit and changed your tune. You acted like an older woman telling a younger woman how you were trying to help me, how your support would look, but not feel, like support. I nodded my head because I honestly remembered you were wanting to help me, you were trying to. Maybe I just wanted your help a certain special way, like I am programmed to receive only certain kinds of shapes, like Tetris falling. Everything was okay again. We were friends again, with only a residual, a bad memory; like high fructose corn syrup dyed, twisted and wrapped tight in plastic, posing as black licorice. You finished describing how you are. You didn't have to say anything, I guess, I already figured it out on my own.

categorically. in the making of taking

Self-denial... i practiced it for years. I realize I get set back like anyone, all the time, and it's painful trying to fall up into the goodness of affirmational living, but it's worth the effort once you get there, self-crystallizing and shining again amidst your purpose on this hot spinning earth... I think it's funny over scrambled eggs and patty sausage in a booth at my favorite lucky American diner to be across from a new friend whom I really love, listening attentive as you try to read my cards back to me... but it gets harder when you tell me who I am and what I need.  I have been depressed since the day you met me, as though it were news. I remind you ima fucking depressive, okay, you just cannot take some things off like clothes, but are you so sure it's a crime in the making of taking my life from me with my permission, as samsara goes -- are you really gonna go there? yes you are -- and you know, I got those butterflies in my stomach immediately, like we do, seeing the truth there and deciding to come to terms with my anger around it. Oh! to absorb how someone honestly sees you. Full well knowing it's brilliant for anyone to take a risk and share how they feel, and celebrating this rather than pushing it away like you wanna. Especially a new friend whose got that courage, thank you. I thank you... and I categorically reject your attempts to tell me who I am and what I need. And it's okay that you would wanna tell me, because I do know that you only wanna help anyone and yourself and why not me, sure, of course, and you are more than a decade my senior and quite a professional from what I understand, a state worker, a really nice lady who loves women, not unlike me who loves women and men even if I don't trust most of them, and a high energy consciousness here in this booth electrified with boisterous argument. This is good. This is beat. This is more of what I want in the world, I think. Challenge my ass, sweetheart. This is my impression of you. And you are impulsive and perhaps insensitive with others whom you hope to understand. And that's okay, too, please, be that way with me! Make those mistakes for me to absorb and reflect and correct. It helps me to see the deep rootedness which causes my categorical defiance of anyone and your guesswork on me. I am no stranger to myself today. But I only know it cause I was lost for so long. I had to get lost to find myself and my heart and my spirit and my passion and my obsessiveness. And here it is, again, staring me in the face and demanding I walk it down twenty-first street and pink-colored dogs behind plate glass windows and a belly full of coffee and write it down!  link to my book

the temples

I wasn't on anything, I was just on . 
I was circumstantial.

You told me and you told me again and you told me one more time, and sure I heard you but why would that change anything? I was still gonna hit the streets late at night and up to no good. Your social was not my social, even if we both had ice cream. I cannot even relate, and you think just cause we are related I ought to, like it was good form, I oughta conform to your standard. The whole attitude was circumstantial. And the circumstance was the influence you had over me, waving it like a badge in my face, demanding, demanding!

Laughter.
Clasping of hands behind head.
Pulling elbows in tight against the ears.
The temples.

And if you were to hit the streets with me, what would that be like? Can I imagine it, or will you come into my thoughts with a big fat roll of duct tape and mark my internal off like a crime scene? I don't care if you consider all my lifestyle, irrelevant. What am I gonna tell you, anyway, as you lean upon your own misunderstanding? What I care about, is whether you care how I feel when you cast away all I have become and am becoming...

With a letter
with a look
with a social media
snub.

Hey you! I can dream for us, can't I? I can dream we can meet on equal terms on soft ground some day. Over easy at the diner in nobody's home town. WIth no control over the music in the atmosphere. They might be playing dubstep in 20 years. No more Sinatra. You might need a cane to walk. Ageism tossed in there with the hash browns. But will you stay closed off at the end of a smoke? Not in my dream. In my dream

I will be holding
you tight. Rubbing your
 temples to
sleep.