JUST DADDY BANDCAMP


 

When we were both supposed to be sleeping, we would knock on walls until it lost its charm. Then we’d crawl to the doors on our stomachs and lay in the floor and whisper until late. Now and then, I roll over and knock on the wall and listen and sometimes I hear the dry newspapers and the rasp of the brush and springtime brings the ruins and leaning into the act of forgetting the broken-necked bird whispered over one morning and I listen for the tap of children’s fingers

on the other side of time.

 

They tap “eat blud…eat blud….”

 

Those “froggy mornings” she called them. I smiled, but thought tin ignorance, yearling yearning to throne the hill of so many hills. Tilt the twins in the playground who tormented me, not knowing they were twins and preacher’s kids. The top of the rocket wasn’t for me and the slide only led down, but the froggy mornings were ours for a few minutes mist.

 

Mourning and fog around the pond and around the will, well, you get the idea. My ankle grinds with each step like gravel in my sock and an invisible goose honks across the water, O mine is cooked. I hear they are good guards, maybe they can smell cancer like a dog.

 

Childhood is full of nosferatus. Some hum in the lights of blinking VCRs. Clocks the way they floated at the edge of candlelight. The ghosts hovering off the end of the bed at 3am. Red robes and ill tempers. The yolks make custards fall, but he couldn’t stand up to one of the ways we dig 

into each other. The pig flea birth sac only comes out with a safety pin.

 

Mine eyes are rotting projectors, spinning the shame celluloid, monadic movement. Ripe filmstrips, dormant canisters. This spittle will not kill swilling forklifts, ashes sephardic, trances canvas clatter. Kafka mazes muting the anthill babel and feel the humidity lift off for once. A flag that fit a coffin. I can’t remember your face, but I can feel your stubble.

 

Sliding eyeballs, old dugs uneven. Potatoes and glass-blown bulbs. The whole bleeding edge. Sulfite wine, like quicklime, just not in my grindhouse--sir--like all lemonade stands. This one charges, but my sister’s baby teeth are free. I don’t lick change any more and the burn tongue mythos, bloody mouth gags.

 

This lawyer feels like murder, but it’s alright. It’s not magic, but it is. Keep your hand back

and don’t let Rogers in on the no-win. So now it sours. Keeping the half moon under the engine, 

a heart in a rag. Suffer those little bastards. Bless the beef, though it doesn’t make it something other than what it is

 

The hands of power are many and squeeze the cows and take the buckets and leave bootstraps long enough to hang oneself. The stumps, idling like engines of industry. Crows caw. Burning letters, the neon federalists chop and swing. No time these days and no rain in months. The lake near me just wide enough to bathe one’s foot.

 

They were tied up like little otters. Where the ball? Where the stick? Fields of red mice. Floating lodges go by like a chill in the air, like the grey in smoke, like high insect whine vesper. It will leave you shivering on a bank or in a small open place horizoned out.

 

the gifts that you open in June in humidity

the ticking heart the sale the baby legs

the pinches the pause the face-smacking applause

the curtains the calls the pianissimo gesture 

the love of fall and the fall of love and mirrors

the crows always critical watching from corners

the old playpen ruined in the water heater leak

the old playpen folded near the dumpster the caw

the cookies for the toddler that get eaten in the car

the last time I heard a song on the radio that I knew 

 

He said we are all poets because we all dream with our face on the ass of midnight. We’re all dogs’ nails click whimpering in the night. These abortions I have shored against my ruins. She keeps talking about the blisters in her mouth, bildungsroman swamps, borodin dances. 

 

Snapshots. Cousins in pickups with their boyfriends stuck in a book of country birds and suicides. Another picture of a crossdresser shaking hands with a killer who spikes a football soda. I forgot the word for “manuals.” More secrets than before the big bang. Even a space ape has to urinate. We can toilet train birds, turtles, snakes and coyotes. Waiting for the right

blister. I can’t keep the icing down. Just three more miles and four more boxes of nails 

and the smell of nights on my hands.

 

So much depends upon the shoes full of blood sitting at the curb. Life sometimes is eating a plate 

of live crabs. Coltrane tongue, o holy comma, like my great uncle who had his appendix taken out on a sub and every time we played electronic Battleship and a boat got hit he would slap me,  but we’d play until the end. Do I dare to eat an otter pop? He got drunk and tried to play the cello 

standing up, a saxofoam raw as a dog’s throat.

 

Rashes like mosquito logics. The grain basement where moldy Barney masks line the shelves. Monsoon tears and our lady of sighs. Her breath on our toes, the lick of the chicken feet in the dirt where she writes the prayers.

 

West to east uninstagrammed, and therefore never seen. Like the black matter mass gravity that may keep us all collected. Oh dear, where’s the tea kettle? Dilemma collards? Mashes to mashes, 

Chuck to Chucky, we know Frasier’s mom’s a junky, strung out in tavern highs, hitting some all-time blow.

 

The smell in the cleft of a shoulder. Bony wrists, little halcyons. It’s not just a waltz, or the chill of the tomb or all the actions lined up in little envelopes. At least they know where they are going. It’s almost sincerity, but he can’t keep his teeth in long enough. Man is no archipelago, spilling everything, but the drink in the seat.

 

A truth that can be rolled between the fingers like a salmon skin. It’s only when no moon is cradled, when no moon is nothing to cradle. Maybe it isn’t a soul, but I felt it curdle in a dream of the old dog.

 

Poppa Mandrill cheated death. Left two stones of charcoal. The rug burned at one end and a chair leg went missing with him but there was always a deck of cards with thirteen jokers and no hearts. Slack hearths, stills of berry wine in June. Almost made it okay. Bitter fruits on bitter vines that wove over the door to the bedroom decorated with yarn dolls. Icicle pickle shelves, a cool ruin, a cool run. Knots and needles to cushion some grief. Woe flower. Shovels lean in all the corners and not one hole filled.

- Stephen McClurg

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