feliz navidad

live bloggin the xmas eve shakeytown
salsa en la casa, skeeters in the shadows.
front lit by the puter on my lap, on the patio
in the otherwise darkness.  in the backyard
neighbors speak in happy tones below
the music, popping something occasionally
for a game. this year is too much to bear
outside this little circle where tragedies
are of our own making or absent
 you have enough anxiety to shake
loose rivers from their banks.
  want to run to the sea /disappear in some mist that runs off the page so no one knows your name
but i remember, love, the times we can have
if we just remember how to be young
with old souls and older bodies.
never mind the gray, i love you anyway.
the music rises behind me, voices break like a wave over rocks
the horns , the singer yelling o mi amour, contigo a la playa
or something like that, i always mix them up, it confuses me
why i can't learn more spanish than i did in eighth grade
and i work with these people, they talk all day and i
ignore them. selective hearing. they will miss me
while i'm on vacation, i think. the boss is gettin a triple bypass
i saw the circles under his eyes he's almost sixty, like me
and it comes to me like a soft mandolin we don't have a buncha more years
to smoke and drink and carry on like teenagers
so we better get crackin if we want to get it all in.
and then i just go to sleep thinking of the energy required
to even bend over and put on shoes i've been in constant pain
for five
or is it six years something like that and it's not like i didn't ask
for the mental pain to cease but i didn't think it'd require
an iron brand in my hip eighty percent of the time and i
could take pills to make it stop but they make you stupid too
unless it's non opiate but like everything else even ketoprofen
becomes unaffective when used consistently.
so i save it and wait till the pain's too much
or i have something to do the next day other than work
one pill works twenty four hrs.
then i'm not tired.

i don't k now why i lent you my car
you have a history of self destruction through
carelessness. a hole burnt in the driver's seat
the lanai, pushed forward two inches. i'm like wtf
i can't believe i let you. hold on to your no
you said and ignored you. i had to tell you no you know?
it's a game of dom sub again, i guess. i love the slave
and so do you. you drew me in, pretending you were mine
but it's slowly become you who are master
freezing my commands with midwest tornadoes
springing up out of nowhere and i convince myself
if i just hadn't flapped those butterfly wings.

the skeeters have found me
i must go inside now.