the heat crept up

with the rain and

when the storms

left us

it left us

with broken trees

mostly cracked down

the middle

or the sides

shaved away by

lightning

showing the splintered

insides of the sweetgums

and the silver maples

a dogwood tree

in full bloom

stared silently at its

pale children

that lay just above

its roots like

stray feathers from

a cast out angel

after the fall

it was a little

over a hundred degrees

and when I walked

up the ramp into the house

I untied the long strings

from behind my

railroad boots and peeled

the socks out from

my heels and then my

from pruned toes

I should have knocked

my jeans clear of its

hanger-ons but

I always forgot

and they fell off

in my wake

I grabbed two short glasses

from the red cabinets

one square edged

one round

and I sat them

where I leaned

in front of the empty

sink

I poured Greenhook

in mine warm as it was

and filled the other

with water from the faucet

which I poured into

the drouthy dirt of a

potted plant

that was the first in

a row of five

then I watered myself

I didn’t know a

damn thing about

plants and it was

obvious I didn’t know

how to take care of

them or

anything else

but she loved plants

from the moment

I met her ten years ago

and she loved plants

to this day

and she could grow

them as if they had

been her own hair

or nails

she used to point out

flowers in ditches

and name them

and she would see plants

on my land I never noticed

and she would name them

she is as far gone

as she is

regardless of these plants

that sit in my kitchen

that I went out and bought

and felt ridiculous trying

to choose which ones

I make no falsities there

but drinking them

one by one

reminds me of her

and it doesn’t make sense

but nothing ever has

and sometimes all you got

is the things you do

and sometimes

all you got is the things

that you don’t

and what I got is these

plants

and what he’s got is you

that’s that, in green.

Some scholars and hard men alike just might say there ain’t nothing quite as joyous as a Saturday afternoon with your curious and wild eyed and loving offspring. And never so much joyous a moment as if it be in the autumnal susurrus of fall. Be that as it may, men like me have never known it, will never know it. Haunt us it does some, comfort us maybe, but crossing the thoughts always, he said.

The father nodded to the man who sat with one leg in boot and the other, nub in peg. The train came and the father was ready for it. He nodded again to the man before squatting, gathering and lifting his young daughter to sit in the crook of his arm. He boarded the train and the man watched the headlamp of it until there was only darkness once more. He farted and jostled his balls and smoked his piped tobacco that had been cheap and drew harshly.

He knocked the ash from the chamber and replaced it in the inside breast pocket of his weathered woolen coat and stood with much of the weight of his large and over-ripened body going through his left hand into his walking cane. He stepped from the platform and walked through the muck and the mire of the rain softened middle of town and into the saloon, which was little more than a casino and opium den the new owner had started calling The First Chance. Out front, the Women's Temperance Movement held their signs and chittered and bitched at those entering and leaving and the man farted on them as he passed.

Inside the young whores smiled at each other and nearly every man. The old whores smiled at nothing. He tried speaking to one of them with a scar around the jowl that she had tried to cover up with cosmetics and then at another who had no scars but was fit more for washing clothes at the Chinese laundry than honest whoring, but they knew in their hard earned instinct that he had no money nor did he have hygienic decency and they hung around the edge of the bar and waited for the men who left the poker tables with a jig in their step or for the men paying for their drinks with dollars.

The man knew he would not find charity here or unattended beer and he walked out the way he came, this time the lady teetotalers recoiled away from him like rain that swam around knotted wood and ran down the straight grain. He growled and lunged at one who screamed like he had clamped onto her with his brown fangs. He laughed and it sounded like it hurt and it did.

A big one of them stepped between the woman in hysterics and the man. She stood a head above him and she had eaten better meals and his smile faded. Didn’t mean no offense, he said. He backed away leaving two of the same side foot prints and a straight line that harrowed a trench in front. The big one stepped back into the women who were victory clucking and serving him right.

He stood like a buzzard on the open floor of a house that was being constructed in the daytime but sat in the night like the rib cage of a dead coach-sized buffalo. The music and the arguing and the fucking was but a faint noise on the other end of the town. Usually he would be with the legless Confederates and the undesired, passing cheap drink and sharing a fire but there were none left in this town. They had been taken by disease, vice, or violence, so he stood alone.

He did not sleep in the dead buffalo at the risk of being kicked to death in the morning and wandered back to the platform. He stopped a few hundred yards short and rested on a cut tree that did not get the opportunity to see many things in its short life.

He smoked and when he was done smoking used the stem of the pipe to itch his amputation between the stump and apparatus and the catgut chords. He remembered for some reason his granny breaking the necks of chickens. Taking life as if it was nothing more than snapping fallen branches into kindling and it was the last thing he remembered as he labored to lay in front of the last train into town. He guessed it was like this.

As soon as I get to the urinal

the same door I walked through

opens and shuts orangely.

They walk down the urinal row

and stand directly behind me.

Fingers touch my shoulders.

I turn and grab the collar

of their shirt

my right hand in a fist.

It’s a squat woman

not irregular looking,

but ugly with the sad

longing eyes of a woman

who had been fat all her life

no matter what supplements

she had taken or diets she had

followed for eight day

stretches.

The sadness in her

was the same

sadness and self loathing

I’ve seen in many people

where they were just

a slave to the food.

We all are slaves

to something

but their master was

particularly cruel.

Can I help you?

I need somebody.

What?

I need you. I need you.

I need somebody. Need.

What’s wrong, ma’am?

She pushed me backwards

into the stall and began

rubbing herself on me.

I push her away but she

comes back murmuring

and needing.

I try to be gentle, in pushing her

but she won’t stop.

She lifts up her skirt

and shows it to me.

Two more women walk in.

Get the fuck away from me!

I watched you come in here,

she said.

Get off!

I shoved her hard against

the wall.

The other two women

look at her with disgust

and tell her to cover herself up.

She backs out of the bathroom

sadder than she was when

she came in.

Sadder now, I imagine

than she’s ever been.

I feel a strange guilt.

Each of the other women

take the stalls to my

left and right.

I began to urinate and ruminate

and I’m thankful they came in

when they did.

Now I know how you guys feel,

I say.

Oh, honey. No you don’t.

one of them says.

I squeeze the last few pumps

of urine out.

Shake it.

Zip up.

Dribble down my leg

and take a step away

from the urinals.

For the first time

I realize they are pissing too

That they are even in here.

Legs hiked up,

skirts over asses.

I leave the bathroom

and get in the short line

behind a Jew

and a Polock.

When they are done

and out into their worlds

never to be seen

by me again in this lifetime

I order a salmon bagel.

Hold the capers.

Hold the labia.

territorial pissings.

There is a sin

coming up second

to rape

and sitting right above

murder

and it’s the cardinal sin

of being boring.

There is no shortage

of boring damned people,

an extreme surplus of them.

They have been ruining

the world

and collapsing civilizations

since their have been civilizations

worth collapsing.

Interesting men

have always gone to war

to run their bayonets through

other interesting men

because of the needs of

boring men to feel

adequate

to grab at other

sources of power due to

their lack of being something on

their own.

Boring men

destroy interesting women

so a man with more

doesn’t steal them away

and leave him with

his dick in his his hand

and boring women

erode interesting men

from the inside

because when they

fell

In love with him for his

ways

They didn’t expect it

to be so hard to

outshine him

so they decide he

is an oppressor

and start to sharpen the

guillotine slat.

Boring people wage

terrorism

on the others of us

every day with their woes

and their boring cancerous

conversation and it chews

at the rest of our contentment

with living.

We see their rules

and their governments

and their sycophantic societies

and we decide we’d rather

be somewhere else

because if they are right

it’s too much to bear

being wrong.

So we grab

interesting tools

built by interesting

gunsmiths

and we cross the

crevasse

of fear and unknowing

and make an interesting scene

for someone else

to find

and wonder:

’How could someone do

something like that?

What a coward.

Was he sick?

Look at these scribblings

on every surface

and all those books!

He must have been sick!

Yes. He surely was.

My goodness.

Goodness me.

Anyway,

I have to get this over with.

The game is on at 7.

We (they) are playing the

(Whatever’s).’

cardinal sin numero dos.