Friday, June 24, 2005

Fast moving thunderstorms are blowing thru right now and pounding on the bus roof. And I’m off to dreamland. 6/21/05Dental appointment today,Got up at six, took a shower, got on the road, see theRandom splash of blood hear the news on the radio from some ancient timeI just happen to live in& impersonate any one of numerous public official selves I invent on a daily basis dead Javelina

the guard at Ed’s Parking Lotby the McDonald’s arches has nothing to hide he’s there all day, dying in the sun might as well be friendlyI walk the wrong way a few blocks until the painful jolt of orientation sets inI remember this street by the borderwith the empty looking shops I almost remember the black face, torn clothes, aimless smile of the homeless man sitting by his bundle of rags staring into some absurd sky but then once I turn away from the sheet metal fence, the crosses piled up on it, telling us over and over how cheap our own lives are no matter what we think we have, once I turn onto Calle Obregon memory fails me every shop looks like every other shopI call the dentist’s office, get a recording, I’m at Calle Obregon and Calle Pierson, I’m lost. I say, the next time I get a busy signal, then nothing, then a voice in spanish says my service has been suspended. I go into a Western Union office, ask the lady working a computer up front for a phone book"No Entiende" she says, & shakes her head, as if to say, crazy tourists, who knows what they want, or expect? The line inside the Western Union is too long. I go into an optometrist’s shop, they say, he’s 2 doors down. But it’s another dentist’s with a similar name.I try a pay phone, It makes incomprehensible noises when I dial.Try another, it takes my card & makes other noises but won’t do anything.Try another, it’s dead, has tissue covering the keypad that has bubblegum under it that smears all over the phone when I try to remove it, go into other dentists' offices, there’s smelly air coming down dark stairs, cant handle it, the whores, maybe I could just forget the dentist, forget the karmic debt, forget my humanity, just fuck somebody, so young, so lovely, so broken so dead inside and I cd look at them, forever, tears in my eyes & ask for every love they & I never hadwhere is that love I cd ask and they wd be mute,. no entiende, they wd say, there are no phonebooks in the land of the heart, only bubblegum and phones that don’t work from one side of yr brain to the other, stop bargaining little baby mama’s busy dying on the street, all the lost loves, the dead friends, I think,....fuck me till the hurt & loss & anger spurts out of me white & juicy, if you don’t I’ll get sadder & sadder until you give in, I warn you I’m an excellent manipulator, I learned it from a lover who was a trauma queen, if you will I’ll pay you in advance for every bad thing that happened and could happen, fool, fool, to look for love in a miasma of desire! Look in the ugliness! Or look under stones! Look in the unforgiving stars!I take each one inside and punish her by punishing myself for not wanting me for not repairing all the brokenness, I tell the homeless man, too crazy to even beg, with the black face & torn clothes & the insane smile, It’s ok, I gave at the office, I was sad & anxious for years, I have insurance, I paid the premiums in imaginary blood, I’m a god damned liar! Finally, by accident I stumble into Dr Gonzales office, the artificial marble on the floor, the split level ceiling, so relieving in their inane familiarity. I plop down in a chair & wait, exhausted, I had plenty of time after all. He shakes my hand. He remembers me from a year ago, did you bring your bite plate? no. are you still using it? yes. yes I think, except for the last month I should have said, when I decided I had resolved all my subconscious conflicts and anxieties & was perfectly relaxed when waking up, and was no longer grinding in my sleep except for the secret identities, except for the something that is so wrong inside me I broke a tooth trying to eat it....ohhhhhh Dr. Gonzales says looking in my mouth, very bad! my heart sinks. I’ve been bad.....those times I said I’m over my depression & anxiety now, I’ve outgrown them and didn’t use the bite plate.....wrong. something is still terribly wrong inside me, some part of me is not communicating between one brain and another, one self and another, except in dreams, the frustrating part is I can’t get at it.....some people want their dreams to go away, I desperately need mine & want to take them back to the lab and analyze them and can’t have them "Are you nervous?" He asks. "I wasn’t until you told me how many problems I have." I said"No," he laughs, "I mean are you a nervous person?"I guess in spite of all I tell myself, I still am. I don’t answer, overwhelmed.I didn’t equalize the tension between one part of the mind and the other. the animal inside is still scared, still needs to chew on bones it digs up from the dark within, needs to cling to the past, dumbly, stupidly, anxiously, the more so, the more ephemeral things get AFTER

we all agree, it was all in fun, all a joke, the time, the money, the love, the disappointment,after the monsters who ruled the arts center for seven years are gone and it’s gone, after all the loves of my life that oppressed me are dead and/or gone, the reasons (and the anger at the very reasonableness of them)I submitted to the oppression are still here baby selvesthat live inside my old man’s face, the animal is still not happy
the animal needs something really bad,
digs up bones and chews them all nightand my real teeth are worn down to nothing and broken so where else would I come for repairsthan to these streets where only the animal is real?

Dr Gonzales hands me a mirrorI watch my old mouth, the yellowed worn teeth chomping, testing the bite, good, good I say, good job, I appreciate the work you did. It WAS a lot of work, intense, dedicated, with an assistant holding the UV light that hardens the buildup, sharp objects in my mouth, grinding, sterilizing, daubing, grinding, fitting for almost 2 hours straight $30/tooth"I’ll do the upper ones for free." he says& he also ground out the bigger chunks of plaque for free....and things inside us get that bad without us knowing? O YESS! we can’t live without accumulating poisons, plaques that make arterial plaque look like nothing, the only relief is children, animals, innocence we cannot hold inside us any longer & must try to touch it outside ourselves.

On the way back to the borderI stop & ask a man who doesn’t seem to care about anything at all, A donde es La Frontera? He points & tells me in Spanish. At least I understand the pointing. I feel like I’m walking out of an insane asylum. Got any money?Stick around.Buy something, celebrate, you’re not so old & ugly, the young girls will get used to you after awhile, maybe even give you a kiss forfree if you’ll just join the party, stop being so sad, stop trying to think about life & deathwhen you know it’s useless...if you don’t have any money...if you won’t stop thinking...if you insist on seeing the poverty of life for what it isthen Leave or sit down in the gutter till your face gets black& an insane smilecomes over yr face.

I get my picture taken sitting on a donkey, holding a ukelele with no strings, a serape over my shoulder, a sombrero on my head, a pickin an a grinnin, lying to the public,

el mariachi de mucho dolor’
with a smile he bought from a whore
o mariachi please lie to us again
tell us more
lie to us on the dead side of caution the way our president Dr. Frankenbush does after our brains are gone and we are still obligated to live just becuz

At the border the blind man still sits with his cassio playing it, very competently, in marimba mode, somewhere between passion and rote, I hear the music just as a woman’s breast pokes its way into my sight, full, inviting, almost falling out of her dress,here! here! It says, everything you ever wanted, why don’t you take it, please! please! the beggar at the door says, impersonating me, holding out his baseball cap

this is like a bad dream, I have to get out of here before my teeth fall out, wheel chair man with ear ornament on a chain, man walking lopsided with a cane past the hospital cheerful as he goes bumping bobbing along yup yup yuphup 2, 3, woman with sign on her breast: "beauty advisor""can you make me beautiful?" I ask"Of course." she says, smiling because she knows I want her.Liar liarHAPPY BUDDHA DOG KENNELthe sign on the van in the parking lot says and this little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home. I think, I think what do you think now, Bob,if you can think anything at all, of allthe artists & writers lost, unrealized, in small townsor big stinking cities under the stars the deaths of children within and withoutis it ok? Because if it isn’t OK, let’s just kill somebody or blow something up like Timothy McVeigh did, like he was a walking symbol of the US of A, like the Mujuhadeen over in Iraq blowing shit up for God because the cruelty and injustice of the world alreadyblew their minds