Kelowna Sutra
Faces don't get... any fresher than
that.
Faces don't get... any fresher.
No pressure... on either of us please.
Just saying is all. Just saying.
Methol break. The cook's sneaking shots in plastic cups. They're left in the
butt can with syrupy fireball residue, golden brown, texture like whiskey. Who
would fail to notice? Who would care? No pressure, on either of us, please.
Luxe eternal for a woodsprite splinter.
Empty adulation - but I crave your masturbation - like the rock I didn't smoke
today. Not attention starved, only carved with blunt instruments, memorial park
granite, first initial, last name, accounted in aggregate, stat.
I could be yours. I could be yours, all yours, for the low low price. I shaved
my head, just for you - cause the rehab dope-peddler told me to - he said I
have self confidence issues, don't I? Here, a broken clock's right thrice a
day, so I shaved my head just for you. I'm the missing ingredient, pared down
to nutritional value. I could be yours, all yours, for the low low price.
Technique. A slug on a straight razor, spelling technique. Ring of empty,
rattle. All research done. Shutters on Black Mesa, flickering lab light, making
anything everything. Trivial pursuit, playing to win, lose, or drawing room
comedy, parlor guitar. If you drink, I'm gonna drink, cause Mr. Overbee is
falling, falling down like an Irishman. An Irish wristwatch tells all time most
of the time, and some time all of the time. An Irish clock is broken most of the
time, and right once an aeon, every flux.
High concept, star-speckled loneliness - rubbing alcohol and icelesta. Sucked
in, but it don't blow. As below fruitfly, so above fruitfly. Broken earth makes
molten tires. A trashed tire strung, full of rainwater makes a mosquito lagoon,
larvae by any other name fails preschool. Flunky mozzie. Et, it just ain't the
same, they're playing for blame, après extra terrestrial tabernacle choir.
He's a leaf thief but wouldn't you? There's window washing work for you, heebie
jeebie jesu squeegie hustle and cocksucking crack hos. Back home, they smoke
rocker. Do you recall its name? At its suggested beck and call. Paraphernalia
amounts to a mound of pre-lapse, under every skirt's a slip, under blond skin,
an expected involuntary giggle, he's silly, this player, with his grim passion,
like he's fucking for babies for jesus, exposed bishop, lapsing in catholic
fortitude, lost, found, in the jungle, cold, behold the desert nuns in summer
clothes, in breast-hugging navel-baring clothes and sweaty pantie-hoes - yes,
pull her panties off with your teeth, a maneuver released to the public domain
in 1984, but you're so punk you're not neo, nor retro, but imprisoned in a no
smoking symbol, hippie craque, so you don't care.
Gypsie hair - you're in my dreams. Still. A little taste of what could be for
me, in another key, one I never learned. It was beatific, an F sharp I say, in
impressionistic insulation. Harmony was hard, fucking you right to orgasm, or
so I imagined, was led to believe. I also remember, Nikko said you would meddle
with my poor little head, and leave me broken, haha, broken, what ever, crazy Nikko. Well I can't say I was broken, or not for long, I patched myself up with what was
available, and now I'm here to recover from the chemotherapy. It's all part of
God's plan.
I'm in rehab like I said I was gonna be, but I'm sure that makes no difference
to you. This torch song serves only to illuminate the dungeon I pace, back,
forward, back, dripwater chat with dead player. I had my shot, haha. Now
there's a new guy for you. He was only referenced in an email, telling me to
"man up". And get my stuff from your house, cause I wouldn't want him
to come bring it over himself. So I went to an empty house, shuddering, and
grabbed the drawings and gifts, the ones that were stuffed into a home hardware
bag. My friend Neil here in Kelowna, he said, damn, at least she could have put
them in a box. Haha. That made me smile.
Does it remind me a little bit, of something? The end of the preceding relationship?
No closure, on her terms. Pseudo politeness, infuriating euphemisms. I was
gonna write my grief letter to Desiree, but for some reason, here at
Crossroads, I'm thinking and dreaming about you. Are you worth this grief
letter, and this sore wrist? Are you that important? Well, I'm writing it a
half hour before group therapy. I procrastinated this far. Figure I'd keep you
as an afterthought, like you kept me. That was your torch song, a snappy little
ditty, ended with a quick sarcastic curtsy cadence. But I still freeze in
vertigo when I see anyone who looks or sounds like you. Like that chick in that
movie, "Changing Lanes", the office girl Ben Afflick was cheating on
his wife with, the one who looked a girlish 30ish, and reminded me how filling
it was to have someone to myself, someone who wasn't the ideal, but realer and
better than that. So I guess you are that important, even if I was a
provisional partner.
For some reason I flash back to the night we dressed up as pirates and went to
the Spiritbar. You with your long wig on, looking so hot. You thought it was a
riot, us playing dress-up on a boring tuesday night, and me, the initiator, no
less. On the way I bought some K and got kicked out of the bar for doing rails,
the mystery man. Even pirates have to follow the rules. Clandestine hooping.
Well I knew how much of an idiot I’d appeared, but the fact didn't bother me so
much with my head full of animal tranquilizer. Now the feeling comes back,
hard. Oh man. But you followed me to the Royal, where I snorted more K in a
more hospitable environment. That got me gooned, High Weirdness that always
seems worth it. Ended up talking halfsense with hippie trippers outside for
hours while you were inside with your gypsie wig.
I guess you're more perfect than I gave you credit for. You had standards, you
stuck by them, you decided I was choosing the drug over you, and you left it
for me to figure out what real life things were variables in your equation.
Maintained I was an invalid for loving ketamine dissociation. Funny, Desiree
always said I never showed as much passion in loving her as I did with drugs.
She never said that when she was drunk though. And I always insisted: love,
drugs, they're both chemicals yeah, but it's so apples and oranges, girl.
So now, outside the haze, in rehab, where everything is perfectly clear, crisp
static, hacking signal with a machete, things come back to me that I never
processed before. I remember that night you said, in a sad voice masking rage:
"I got offers tonight. I could have gone home with this person, that
person. This person in particular." I thought little of it at the time.
Maybe that pissed you off, haha. Thinking back to that gave me a sick jolt. You
with your sexy gypsie hair. And I guess you stuck by me that night, although
you were this close to leaving. So I guess you were angry that you could have
had someone better, while I was anesthetized outside the bar. Understandable.
And you stuck by me, and I won't qualify that. And I stuck with drugs, although
I stuck with you too, like a Velvet Underground song. But I'm sure you thought,
what did I give up, for this K-tard?
It hurts thinking that I proved you right, that I wasn't worth it. Yeah, you're
too healthy and balanced for the likes of me. You've got your neuroses and
battles with life, but I haven't been granted those magazine struggles. You,
blond lawyer hair, girlish thirty, old enough not to waste time with men that
don't measure up. But we could have been friends, still. I don't understand why
that was noise to you. Didn't want to be dead to you. I throw death around too
often, like it's a ninja weapon. Haha. Contriving dignity or at least assholery
by hanging on every chuckle. It's my hang up, my dial tone on the call you
never took.
You're sorry, just a little bit, that I hurt, despite all the custom cabinets
your boyfriend, the real one, builds for you, and despite his spare spite. I
hurt, yeah, perhaps, you'll think, every six thousandth drag on a belmont cigarette. Even healthy livers gotta have a vice, and you only think of cancer
every eight thousandth drag, I'm a higher priority than cancer. I hurt,
passively, nobody hurt me.
You shouldn't have refused to remain friends, you think. That must have sucked
for me. For you too, but it's like Jerry said, do it like a band-aid, one
motion, right off. Your skin healed well. You see that my self-worth is fragile
- most of it is tied up in investments. You can sort of understand abandonment.
You still think of me often. Well, not really, but often enough to justify a
white lie. Those three months, you say, they were significant. Not scrapbook
material, but, you know. They required cleaning fluid to cleanse. That's not
nothing, is it? Things change, rather quickly sometimes, you should know that,
you should be philosophical, there's dignity in that. You don't know how else
it could have ended, it's like the best of all possible worlds. I might enjoy
living healthy, you'll say. It's worth the effort. And no smilie. Just a
period. Love, Wendy, haha.
Ф