“You’re the one that took them… You eat ’em like candy. You’re addicted to them. Just like a cocaine dealer. That’s ten I gave you the last time.”

“You owe me seven bucks and then I’ll give you the bottle. You owe me $6.84 actually, but I’ll tax you.”

Today M. tells me about the two girls he knew who were murdered when he was younger. I remember the name of the murderer of one of them, but I can’t remember the girls’ names.

A woman outside the restaurant held a plastic bag up to the wind.

New Year’s Eve. What does this mean to me? Another mark in my personal time line which has no marking for husbanad and children. The blank mark is today and it stretches back into the negative numbers and forward into blackness.

Drunken man on the train platform needs attention. No one is willing to give it to him. Where has my need gone?

It is easier not to think of the lives of others. How depressing it must be on Sunday afternoons when the lighting is harsh and when there is no where new for them to go.

Saw Joseph Heller speak at the BPL and he said, “Change is never good.” He has the option to say that. I know he meant it in a larger sense but this is a rash statement to make in front of me.

Fucking psychos all around me. Man putting his money in behind me looked like he wanted to kill me. I just want out I want escape I want out I want escape. My circle becomes smaller and smaller. More compact and restricted.

I don’t want anything and I will get nothing.

All is well right now. In this one instant, all is well.

Question everything and worry all the time. Lie in bed and my thinking reaches this separate plane which I have never experienced. Filing cabinet worry.

Mention a name to get a reaction. Watch one dog walk towards another, head down, back straight as if there were no other way to approach one another. Two joggers pass one another – they breathe simultaneously. The sound of feet on pavement and breathing is not alien to me.

Listening to a mixed tape over and over again.

Sunbathing. As always, this is where I should be. Alone and in the sun. Go away clouds, far away. The leaves turn inside out. It will rain soon. Dark and light. Sun filters through. I drink my second beer of the day. It is 2pm.

If I just held the tip of the page, would it fill up eventually?

The men working on the house across the way go swiftly about their work.

The breeze by the water is heavier, softer.

So what if an American boy in Russia drinks a bottle of vodka a day? He has assimilated. So what if he thinks dark thoughts?

The young woman is allowed to sit with her son.
Overwhelming noise everywhere
The saws and the hammers
The plane overhead
Each day I slip farther from the truth.
I keep waiting for a check to come in the mail.

Her wedding invitation arrives in the mail today.
The guardian angels – men on the train
“it’s my favorite genre – sci fi.”
The two trashy girls, one in white stockings

Broken tooth
I will take one day and stay on the beach
I will take long lunch hours and look for work
A foreign couple, French, make sandwiches on a bench in the cement courtyard. They don’t know that if they walked a few more blocks they could sit on the grass by the Charles.
Broken tooth.

February 29th – a day that only happens every four years

I look for you in all things

Broken tooth – snowstorm – cheap dentist – he pulled it out and I bled all over and went home and J. left me alone hopped up on codeine. Then the new dentist – he and assistant (sassy black woman) got in a fight and he told me he was passing a kidney stone.

California: the burnt hills in Malibu, the smell of sage brush in Santa Barbara, the sunset at Pismo Beach. San Simeon. Driving on the foggy cliffs with the top down and the heat on. Big Sur. The soulful redwoods. The seals in Monterey. And all the time, missing and missing.

My blue blocker lenses made everything beautiful and surreal.

I like sitting in my cold, dark kitchen drinking wine. Winter wrap me in your thin arms and I will rejoice.

If you can be quiet for just one minute you can hear all of the strange life.

He read the girl’s poems and told her that they were “nice”, but on the way home all he could think about was her anger. She was so small, like a little boy with her closely cropped hair so brazenly shorn off in the closed minded farming community. Where did the anger collect…

I bring my eyes down and form a bridge with the light from the door.

– Does she know I’m moving out?
– yes.
– why?
– I don’t know
– This is my bed. Mine. I made it.
– I know.
– It is my bed.
– Do you think she’s going to be in here the second you move out and we will be fucking and fucking?
– What do you want from her? What can you get?
– I don’t know.

I am losing everything and he cries for himself.

The man on the street drives by and waves
Smiling, I think I know him
He looks familiar
He brings his car over
I wave, smile
His face is not known
I don’t know you, I say, covering my own blank face.

The sky opened up a huge cavity in the clouds and I tried to fill it with the smoke from my cigarette.

I remember well playing snooker with you in Glasgow