[Editor's note: A disk showed up in my mailbox this week, with M.P.'s handwriting on the label. The note said to use the poetry this week and the other file next time around. Unfortunately, some of the line breaks are ambiguous - so I'm presenting the poetry exactly as I found it.]
There are nine various posters of Sarah Michelle Gellar,
the actress,
decorating my otherwise blank bedroom walls.
I have never masturbated to any of these pictures
because
I do not want her
(her - her eyes - nine poses, nine smiles, nine pairs of SMG
eyes, I stare at them -
"When you stare into the Sarah Gellar, the Gellar stares
into you,"
etcetera - she sees me times nine; cripes, I think I'm
paranoid)
I have never masturbated to any of these pictures
because I don't want HER to have to see that.
My blue Ibanez electric guitar is worth five hundred and
fifty dollars, market value.
My white 1973 Ford Maverick is the same.
There are nine Gellars, two Love Hewitts, and a couple
of Neve Campells on the wall,
I don't talk to them, I'm not crazy, I'm not, I'm not
although I don't have insurance and
any motherfucker
could walk right in and take these things and I'd be left
with nothing.
I doubt the motherfucker would take the posters, though.
Or the one hundred and twelve pornographic magazines
(tucked away in my chest of drawers)
Dogeared and torn and worn and stained as they are.
Tonight I again call the Chattanooga Singles Line.
Lisa is in a wheelchair, describes herself as attractive, a
social drinker, likes horses. I leave her a message.
Mary is twenty-eight, five feet tall, is a NASCAR fan and
enjoys the outdoors. I don't leave her a message.
I wipe the fingerprints from my guitar,
I turn off the word processor,
I kiss nine Sarahs goodnight.
I got drunk for you,
because you said I was boring,
because you said I never did anything
FUN
anymore.
I got drunk for you, darling, and
you weren't even there
anymore
At the age of twenty-four, with a hairline
receding in waves, with a smile full of holes,
I took a night off from writing the Great
American Moneymaking Masterpiece
took a night off from contemplating the
reconciliation of my libertarian and socialist
political tendencies
took a night off from trying to gleam order out of
the Nag Hammadi Gospels and converting them to Zen
Taoist - Christ on a stick, the smoke got thick
I got drunk for you, darling, dear, and I lost my sight
and breaths came in wet splatting gasps
lost my balance
the floor said hello
And no matter how much I drank I could not forget the
exact number - days, months, hours - when you left me
you said I was an old man, a shriveled prick
and seven months sixteen days eight hours later
The golden beer cans piled on my - our - my bedroom floor
not even enough to construct a pyramid, a monument
to my darling, my dear, my long-gone love
(three beers; I'm reeling - my tolerance for
intoxication is so much less than when I was
holding your head in my lap, your hair in my mouth,
I - I'm babbling - my exuberance so low - You said
as much. And then you took the cat and the computer.)
I got drunk for you, I threw a party, I
threw the fuck up
I got drunk for you,
had some FUN,
doing fine now,
wish you were here,
send my love to the cat.
This really happened.
I tried to pick up a girl in a bar -
girl: nice ass, vegetarian face, New Age flyaway curls, you
know the drill
says Girl: "I'm working on a second-person-plural
present-tense stream-of-consciousness novel told from the
point of view of a middle-aged suburban housewife who lives
near a river,"
the river, apparently, being very important to the story
(I could hardly hear her; loud loud band in background and
she had a mouthful of hyphens)
I tried to pick up a girl in a bar, this is my pickup style:
smile and nod, smile and nod
believe in God
believe the soulmate principle
and smoke a lot
She didn't go out with me. I guess she wasn't my soulmate.
This never happened:
I walked out of a bar, cigarette in one hand,
No one knows, no one understands, and
other random cliches until she,
my god SHE, well, to quote Brother John:
I saw her standing there
outside the bar I gave up hope until I saw her except
I didn't. SHE wasn't. Standing. Anywhere.
No squinky little slice of perfection
waited for, oh, hell, you know the drill.
This girl I try to pick up, she says She Writes Poetry,
Mainly; I, me, I said, I say:
I'M A GENRE HACK
YA HORROR
DON'T WRITE POETRY.
I tried to pick up a girl in a bar, a friend introduced us,
he thought we might hit it off cause we were both writers,
you know the drill, hell
This always happens.