Work session at The Beanery

Adam snapped this picture and titled it "Douchebags who get no buttsex." Huzzah.

Dear douchebag at Peoples Cafe who apparently is not good at paying his contractors:

Go home if you want to Skype-sweet-talk the people to whom you owe money. No one here wants to hear it.

"Thanks, Jessie. We'll wire the money today. And again, we're most grateful."

Fuck off.

Happy anniversary

My dear, sweet Adam:

Six months ago we stood in front of our loved ones and were married by our brother-in-law. We listened to him talk about commitments and skin disorders, crossed our eyes at each other and made funny faces during erusin, and slid the rings our mothers bought onto each other's pointer fingers.

Then it was done. Then it was begun. Then it was continued.

I love you as I only hoped I could love another human being. With each day we share I learn more about the depths and foibles of the human heart. With each moment I strive to be worthy of your love.

I am yours forever. I love you for always.

LY
FBBD

Six Months

I rise early
and smile
at the dark.
I sing
while
adjusting
my contacts,
a tune
about
a train
and a gambler.
The man
at the tire store
is my friend.
He’s just
too deprived
of caffeine
to know.
I make
a note:
One red rose.
One card.

For Ray Crump, In Corners and Along Dusty Walls

We find you on the Metrodome’s fringes:
Is it open?
Let’s find out.
You’re the
clowning younger kid
on the dance floor
at his older’s sister’s
bat mitzvah.
You are free admission.
You are empty,
silent and deserted
and we are the only
two cameras
in your home.
Ray, we thank you
for your hospitality,
your history
with George Carlin
and Hank Williams, Jr.,
he of the sunglasses
and shirtless chest,
sprawled on a bed
while you
and your wife
flashed teeth
for an unseen observer.

Gender wars

Adam and I are watching this guy hit on this girl at Gaylords. Highly amusing and I wish him well, but I'm not sure he's walking out with a phone number any time soon.

ME: Do you relate to that? On a guy level, I mean? Do you look at that and just kind of go, agh?
ADAM: That's the game. It's so far from what I ever was.
ME: So it's not like a guy-relating sort of thing? Like, penis bonding?

Apparently not.

Ted Hughes, "You Hated Spain"

Spain frightened you.
Spain.
Where I felt at home.
The blood-raw light,
The oiled anchovy faces, the African
Black edges to everything, frightened you.
Your schooling had somehow neglected Spain.
The wrought-iron grille, death and the Arab drum.
You did not know the language, your soul was empty
Of the signs, and the welding light
Made your blood shrivel.
Bosch held out a spidery hand and you took it
Timidly, a bobby-sox American.
You saw right down to the Goya funeral grin
And recognized it, and recoiled
As your poems winced into chill, as your panic
Clutched back towards college America.
So we sat as tourists at the bullfight
Watching bewildered bulls awkwardly butchered,
Seeing the grey-faced matador, at the barrier
Just below us, straightening his bent sword
And vomiting with fear. And the horn
That hid itself inside the blowfly belly
Of the toppled picador punctured
What was waiting for you. Spain
Was the land of your dreams: the dust-red cadaver
You dared not wake with, the puckering amputations
No literature course had glamorized.
The juju land behind your African lips.
Spain was what you tried to wake up from
And could not. I see you, in moonlight,
Walking the empty wharf at Alicante
Like a soul waiting for the ferry,
A new soul, still not understanding,
Thinking it is still your honeymoon
In the happy world, with your whole life waiting,
Happy, and all your poems still to be found.