B and A

Before ---

That night, she was still alive just turned 40 and it was her estranged husband’s (my weird doting uncle) 51^st birthday. I did not speak to her, already heavy with the souls transforming inside me, except for the pleasantries. I did not wish to intrude on the date between a separated couple: I was there but I was somewhere else in one vein of the mind, like the veins in mines from where you could at times unsurface but would lead to gold.

In that parallel--- Uncle and I would later recall at dawn days before the X in the penthouse of Pacific Plaza, as I danced to Miles Davis after--- she and the other were the saints of loving patience and my uncle and I were the divas of damaged weirdness. Like the trip he was supposed to take last November: ten years of her having to pack his suitcase and he didn’t know where anything was. He chose not to leave then. The parallels got along.

It was the tenth of December, two years before, a Saturday when she said what needed to be said. Two years to grow older and assume the presence required by the husband her death would leave behind. I loved her, knew so well what wounded her life. And while mine was a wormed wound that I had uncanned, hers had festered. I shied away from our living rots but I loved her because she was my friend--- her sullied warmth my surviving cold kept distant--- and because she loved him. People like us are always uneasy to love.

That night onto his 51st, drunk, she had shushed the others and declared, “Let him do what he wants! Let him do what he wants! If you don’t I’ll kill you!” She was laughing. She meant it

The clock---

That night:

Hello Mary…

It is this heaviness that feels light---

My eyes flutter slowly…like…a…

…b…

…l…

…i…

…n…

…k…

It will be the 51^st---

The old man threw away ten months of dry---

I throw away eight and some years---

For one night…I am not floating…I am afloat…

My heart had pounded…Wanting the smoke…

The blues of the opiates…

Women and trains, these suitcases.

Hello…

Mary does take the old…To the blues…

My Girl…

I got a serious song…

And so puffs and exhales…Puffs…Exhales…Puffs---

I watch the old throw away ten months with each inhale---

That smoke--- I am watching whom I love and what I hate---

I eat it, smoke it…

This is what you want--- Oh yellow mellow--- To be afloat----

The heavy head flies and the old become possessed

By the smoke god, the finger goddess…One song for the night:

“My girl!”

And next week?

“Dancing queen!”

Sunshine laughs, misunderstanding the monstrosity of this…

It’s back on the train…

Gin is blues juice…

No more puffing…

Uncle says to me, “No more!”

The old forgets and forgets rules and plays covers…

They play with E and other corded letters

Broke---

That night:

She was alive.

That night:

12 later said.

That night:

Indecision snapped into the unhappy explosion.

That night:

Nobody could pretend After---