i am dead

I am dead,
cause everywhere around me
I see pictures of
you. I was
good. I was good. Then
you came back
into my life & I
started dying right after
you left me
again. I was
good. I was
good,
I said.

I quit those things
you hated
about me. I left
that place that
you hated
to be.
I got somewhere
new.
I got somewhere
new.
I lost
40-fucking-lbs
thinking of you & I
got someplace new, just
to be so lost again now
thinking of you.

So
I go
to my door to get
inside
my silvery green leather
(it smells
so new),
slip my head inside
my golden knit
cap &
I pull on
my white Chuckie
T's.
They are so so white & that's
gonna change
- gotta be - &
I leave
the smoke of my place &
I drop this
lighter that makes music &
I cross the threshhold
& breathe for
the first time
today,
in peace.
There.

That lady I passed, she had a smile on her face.
Who was she thinking about, that lady? Secretly
I wish it was me.
Finally, there's no
you.

I cross over &
watch briefly
these ramen goers leaning over
steam &
slurping away.
I don't know where I'm going
but I see a red-painted door. There,
the grocery store &
donuts & cakes. No,
no
not them today. But fried chicken,
maybe.
So many good things that are
bad
for
you are really cheap
today. It's a Xmas sale but
I don't know
what I want. So I'm just gonna
feel this
avocado.
This guy's ready
& so is this one too but
no not you.
Maybe
in a few days,
baby.

There's that chicken I was
maybe looking for. But
I have some
at home &
I wanna
cook that up like
I used
to do
for you,
wrap it up, like
you used
to do to
me,
but with soft skin &
no,
not with this bag of lettuce
in my hand.
I think
I'm gonna squeeze
a slice of this fat
tomato
in, too.
That should be good,
& that California red over there.
Soon I'll be jumping on the grape train,
drinking & then
thinking of
you,
till the end of time.

(But suddenly now wishing of
drinking
to this new
you
sometime.)

I walk outside.

You know the music in my
head
makes me scared - like
Yusef once said - & now
Liam says how many special people change &
how many lives get rearranged, where were
you -
yeah where were
you
baby -
where were you when we were getting high?

(But then
you,
so where are
you
now?

Cause
these Neptunian colors
paint pictures in my mind &
the music we dance to
plays on until
time
stops.
You
should
know.)

So then this other you just slipped into the sunshine & gardens over there & out through the doors of
my head.

(I feel alive
cause I'm thinking of
you.)

I must've stopped being dead. Or maybe
(I'm lost
somewhere in Heaven.)

why i like flowers

They last only a little while, coming in spring, but dying soon after. So they come back again & life feels clean. (Smells good, too.)

They come in many colors & they make girls happy. (I hope so.)

And they have exotic names that I can't remember. But their scent lingers with me sweetly, long into the night, long into this cold winter.

They are the greatest thing.

(I feel like a bee right now, ready to go home & make honey.)

Flowers, that's what they are.

in a little while

(photo: a heart-shaped rock I pulled out of the Itadori River in Gifu)

I just want to forget that anything happened. But then, that wouldn't be right. It was an experience, that was all.

One day I will carve out a place in this world, but now I'm all over. I think I'm going to the sea, not to get away from, but to get closer to me.

TD asked me to write about love for the Feb issue of his magazine. So I've been thinking a lot about it recently. What is love? So I asked BusyBee. She said,

It makes me feel alive.

That's perfect, I thought. I have been a zombie, the living dead for a long time. I wondered what it was like to feel like she said.

BusyBee's man is in France. I met him. He's skinny & tall but she says he's sexy. What she likes most about him is his strength, but it's not physical. "All these guys who talk to me are afraid of you," she said. "But he's not." Then she said if she doesn't see her guy soon she's gonna die. She was serious. Life for her is love & sex, pure & simple. So she bought a $2500 ticket & will stay there just eight days. She said she can't hold out much longer.

I too wanted to feel alive, so I went out & tried. And it worked. Then soon after I had music in my head & my stone heart started to melt.

But now I'm thinking of the sea, getting away from here, getting closer to me.

People either push you forward or hold you back. They lead you where you should go or hold you where you shouldn't be. This new one taught me to keep moving, so I go, never still, don't slow me down & let me get out of here.

In a little while, I'll be there, falling into the sea. It's that pure & simple.

coin laundry

It's been a year since I read that book, the one that got me to quit smoking. I lasted four months & had given the book back to Kentaro before I needed it again. I smoked & couldn't stop. I asked him for it back, but he told me that he gave it to some Africans. Maybe they were his neighbors or something. Kentaro never read the book. He still smokes.

This morning on my walk to work I was wondering how I did it. It was all mind control. The guy said to just think about it all. It's an addiction. People who smoke are drug addicts. I think maybe 35% of Japanese people smoke.

I remember back to that school I taught at two years ago in the bad part of town. Some of the kids smoked in class & they were junior high students. The teachers would nudge them to put them out. Some of these kids never wore uniforms, they rode their bikes through the halls & spent most of the time sitting outside on the school grounds, smoking & chatting with the teachers. At this school, each yanki (yankee, or bad student) had a teacher who'd follow them around. These teachers were huge, bigger than me, & they had a lot of patience, more than me. Often they'd gather behind the trees outside of campus, smoking away, out of view of the kids. I remember that one kid who hit me & I heard that he got a job at a gas station after graduation. He was happy. I was happy I finished that school, too.

. . .

Back to my walk. The air was so clean, the sky so clear, the rice paddies long barren. I started reading signs. Katakana is easy enough. ラーメン　(ramen). コインランドリー (coin laundry). I thought how cool katakana is. It makes Japanese more interesting than Chinese. Then I saw this old house with a wooden horse girdle, those things they put on a horse to pull a cart. It must have been hanging there a hundred years.

Mind control. My mind is out of control. How did I do it? I need to find that book & stop thinking about the signs I've read, the music in my head. Slow down my beating heart, slowly, slowly love.* The sky is clean & blue. I wish I could dive into it.

*U2 from In a Little While