tim puts on a hat. he puts it on and tilts the brim a little down in the front and a bit to the left. it showcases his eyes a girl once told him and he’s been doing it ever since he began shaving his head, his eyebrows still thick and lustrous. he thinks they make him looking haunting. something straight out of a book, haunting eyes and a fifties styled brimmed hat. while pouring shoots at the bar he works he wonders sometimes if he should’ve been born then, when men were men and women knew their place. he wouldn’t be one of those kind of men, but he would’ve fared better off then because he would’ve been different than the others. instead he was born in the city, where all sorts of people have come and gone, and he thinks he’s pretty much figured them all out. just by looking at them, how they sit, how they order, what kind of drink they drink. like some lower east side bukowski, he leans against the liquor cabinet with a book in his hand, jots down a line or two, thinking he too will write his way out of this, but never leaving. real men like him never leave where they were born.

i dreamt i was out eating alone. i had snagged some down time after work and i wanted the greasy kind of goofy fare that are offered by corporate chains, that odd fusion of a meal where the staff are all bubbly at your table but express utter contempt everywhere else. all was fine and dandy, you can never complain about anything in a place like that, until i wanted to leave. and for some reason i had taken my finished plate up with me while i looked for the cashier. and every stop i made i was redirected and no one offered to take my dirty plate. by the time i had gotten to the register, one of the staff was yelling, “you gotta fire him, i caught that mexican licking my utensils.”

you cannot escape the necessity of language to explode tongues into fists. or knives for that matter. fists and knives that bruise and cut, and sometimes cut you open into a whole new kind of thing, be it pain or wonderful. nor can you escape a fistful of words crammed down your throat. stuffed to the point where you cannot breathe, to the gills with guilt or sorrow or happiness. but you can turn your lungs inside out and shock the shit out of everyone, which i do from time to time.

where the throat meets the back of the tongue before breathing, the flutter of a hummingbird’s wings, an anxiety that stops all confessions, stops all lies. each lie is a confession from another life, of bricks crumbling away, tired of pressure and time, hard red morsels by our feet. we sit crossed legged in the sun while the wind whips our hair and keeps us from meaner things that gather broken bones and set fire to them. embers jump, carried off into wild sunsets without effort while the crackle of marrow splits the sound of dusk. somewhere in between all of this, dry lips and longing, sand finds its way underneath our fingernails and we close our eyes before they steal everything.

and these things add up to the sum of a tragedy, a significance of plot and motivation, where the actions of characters mirror some other worldly stage missing floodlights, and the audience holds its breath as protagonist and antagonist meet just before kissing.

the night swoons like a bitter lover, half drunk and restless, roaming and kicking up dirt with shoes scuffed from a day’s shuffle of clouds and children. we were all meant to be like this: desperate and angry, having lost tin cans draped over telephone wire, laces tied behind our backs, and a tuft of hair tucked behind our ears. feathers locked within the links of a steely fence and we pine the folds between the neck and the collarbone. how grand the pock marked moon scratched atop trees with fingers withered empty.

my mind always goes straight to mayhem