introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- homecoming-reckoning same song on repeat - first of october, 2001 "i dreamed that i saw you down at the corner store. you were lookin' through magazines and you flew out the door. i was tryin' to wave to you but you wouldn't wave back and now you know i understand, you're with me only in the past...only in the past."~the be good tanyas i came home from work early today after a few hour bout with throwing up and a dizzying headache. the prince was running late for work because of it, i think...and the chariot could have done without that extra trip to the mall to pick me up, but i was trying to be...what, exactly? i'm not sure. i haven't called in sick to this job yet and its been months and months and i rather liked that feeling it gave me...it was like my work ethic is better than yours or something along those lines. and i've taken a lot of pride in that showing up day in day out for the torture of the nasty mothers of children aged six to twelve of the robinson town center area and their rejection drills. blah. i like my job. don't get me wrong. i'm even toying with taking some marketing classes now, since its been pointed out to me that i might consider it. brian....you are forever genius, regardless of your polish descent. so when i got my sick body home, i curled up naked between the flannel sheets and propped in a nest of pillows, tried to rid my body of the tremors and sweats of what appears to have been something like food poisoning or, perhaps, a fleeting strain of rhinovirus. i nestled into the pillow-nest and dozed myself biorhythmically into strange dreams that i imagine are stemming from my reading lengthly passages from a book i've fallen into rather unexpectedly: the lovely bones by alice sebold. my dreams are scattered and rooted in literature and forthcoming times this weekend, i suppose. in essence, this is what it boils down to. homecoming is this weekend and saturday morning, we will pack into the mitsubishi and drive north an hour and a half to indiana university of pennsylvania and converge on my best girlfriends apartment on gomper's avenue. there will be drinking and merry making and, i'm told, the perfect example of an ikea living room. there will be dinner (hopefully) with the best professor and the best professor's wife. and more drinking. and maybe more after that. i intend to visit three bars. maybe four. the question remains: why? why am i planning the crawl when i never really got into it when i was there? what am i looking for? homecoming-reckoning:a poem in four parts the first stop the first stop will be the brown hotel and maybe we will find a table and maybe we'll just stand and maybe there will be a cover because there might be a band and i'll scan the crowd and search out your faces your laughs your hands and i'll wave hello but it won't really matter anymore because lives run together for only so long, sometimes before they go their separate ways like the highway route sixty two that followed the river on our trip, and i wanted to stay so close so we could always see it but it drifted and we made our own way, forgetting the roar of cars. and from time to time, we could see the highway again or hear the rumble of a backwoods pickup truck and we smiled because it was there all along but we were okay without it. and if i see you, i see you. there might be a hello and a drink. and then its time to move on. and maybe you won't be there at all. and maybe you won't even be in town. but i'll look because its my nature... to look for something i dont even need to see anymore. the second stop the second stop will be the coney island grill and dance hall. and i will force my way inside after paying the steep cover charge for standing room only and i'll be crowded and uncomfortable and hold the hand of the man i love and look for the largest man in the overalls with the beard and the voice and the stories and the motorcycle. and maybe we'll share a pint in good cork county style whatever that means and we'll talk about some good times and i'll sit at that table he's destined to have because the kings always get the chairs and he is a king if not only a fixture of that small town and a name i will forever associate with my higher times and licorice root. and then, it will be time to move on because if i stay too long, the stories might start repeating and i might want to never leave because i'm nostalgic like that. the third stop the third stop will be wolfendale's and maybe the marlboro people will be there giving out blankets and sweaters and i'll buy him the two dollar pitcher and look around, laughing at caged dancing women and waterfall walls and seeking out the face of the man i met on the streets on cold winter nights and took home with me to watch movies and smoke bags of pot falling into depths of height together. and i will reminice at those thursday nights when the drinks stayed cheap and the people who couldn't sang and we played trivia for free and i wasn't as into it as he was but it was company when i needed it... it was closeness with distance. and then, when i can't take it any longer, the barbarism of the place, the trashiness of the joint... we will head out and make our final stop. the last stop the last stop will be sgro's across the street from our old apartment... the place where i met her on the roof outside of our window. and i will show you the velvet clowns on the wall and we will both shudder because we both understand the evil of clowns. and by then, we'll be toasty drunk, because we're not drinkers anymore. and we will trudge our alcohol sodden bodies to my best girlfriend's house and i'll be really alright... perhaps more alright than i am this very moment... because i'll be able to admit quite finally that the best is with me all the time and the past isn't as pretty anymore as the future forcasts itself to be... instead, its just the days that came before. *** in essence, then, i guess i can put it most simply like this: its reckoning time. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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