Glass Made of Diamonds
Spring is here and business is picking up. I put an
ad in the paper saying “34 years in the valley” which got a flood of responses
from old ladies who've been in the valley since before I was born, including a
Mrs. H. who as soon as I answered the phone started in on how the county is
leaning on her to replace her old windows, half of which consist of small
diamond-shaped panes. The putty is falling out, air leaks in, and the county,
which gives Mrs. H heating-bill assistance, says they won't continue to do so
unless she agrees to let them replace the diamond-shaped glass with thermo
panes. “Nuts to that,” says Mrs. H.
“How can I help you?” I ask when she's done going off
on the county.
“Come clean my windows,” says Mrs. H. “I saw your ad
in the paper. Sounds like you must know what you're doin' by now.”
I go over to have a look.
Mrs. H lives in a dilapidated two-story house that
leans hard to the east. The paint is peeling off the thin wood trim between the
small panes of glass, and the panes themselves are splattered with paint from a
long-ago paint job.
Inside the house, the window sills are crowded with
blue, green and red glass vases to refract whatever light manages to get in.
All the windows have heavy drapes, pulled to the side and held in place with
loops of cord nailed to the walls. The place is jam-packed with old furniture,
ratty couches and arm chairs with doilies on the armrests, coffee tables, end
tables and bureaus covered with framed photos of children, grandchildren, great
grandchildren and great-great grandchildren, and in the other direction, people
born in the 19th century. You can't move without bumping into
something, and just managing to get to a window, leave alone clean it, presents
a major challenge.
“Don't get around like I used to,” says Mrs. H. “No
cartilage in my knees.” Her hair is dyed pitch-black, her eyebrows are penciled
in, and she wears deep red lipstick. She walks with an oak cane. “I just turned
96 last week,” she says. “My husband Del ain't but 92. I married a younger man.
He'll be pulling in any minute now, he's off playing his mouth harp for the
ladies down at the old folks home, does it once a week rain or shine, flirts
with all of 'em. Keeps him young.”
Just then a pickup pulls into the gravel driveway and
out pops Del, a wiry, slightly hunched man with a head of shaggy grey hair,
wearing red suspenders over a plaid wool shirt, faded jeans and work boots.
“Who's this young fella?” Del asks suspiciously when
he barges in the door.
“He's the window cleaner, Del,” says Mrs. H. “I told
you I was gonna get hold of a window cleaner.”
I stand up and shake Del's hand. “How do you do, sir,”
I say.
“I been playing my harmonica for the gals!” Del says,
and he whips a three-octave Hohner from his shirt pocket and launches into Danny Boy.
Mrs. H sits in an arm chair with her hands folded in
her lap and beams up at him. “Ain't that the cat's meow?” she says when he's
finished with Danny Boy, a compliment
that spurs Del into Red River Valley.
“They don't play harmonica like that no more,” Del
informs me when he's done playing, taps out his harmonica in the palm of his
hand and sticks it back in his shirt pocket.
“No sir,” I say, “they don't.”
“You ever heard them songs before, young fella?” Del
asks me.
“Yes sir, I have. I play a little harp myself.”
“You don't say!” says Del. “Whip it on out then!”
“I don't have it on me,” I say.
“Don't have it on you?” says Del. He finds it hard to
believe that anyone who plays harmonica wouldn't have one in his pocket.
“I'm working,” I say, an explanation that doesn't
carry much weight with Del but brings us back to the subject of windows.
We settle on a price for the whole ground floor and
set a date and a time. They don't write any of it down.
“Make sure you bring that harmonica when you come do
the windows,” Del says as he escorts me to the door, while behind his back Mrs.
H is waving and blowing kisses my way. “I ain't played with no one in ages,”
says Del. “Used to, but they all up and died.”
“I look forward to it,” I say, and Del plays Turkey in the Straw in the doorway as I
walk to my van parked on the street.
Under the Bridge
It was the middle of the night, and I was hunched
under a bridge with Charles Bukowski on the outskirts of L.A. We had some stale
rolls and a tin of sardines, but Bukowski said we needed some ham.
“Those guys over there,” said Bukowski. “I'll bet
they got some ham. “I'll lay money
on it.”
We weren't the only people under the bridge. There
were maybe fifteen or twenty of us scattered around. We didn't know what we
were hiding from, but you could sense it out there waiting for us.
“It's a dog eat dog world,” Bukowski said. “It's a
jungle. Let's go get that ham.”
“There must be four or five of them under that tarp,”
I said. “They'll kick our asses. Besides, we got these sardines.”
“Sardines!”
said Bukowski. “Sardines!”
“Listen, all we gotta do is hang on until morning,” I
said. “Then we can wash up in the men's room at the Greyhound station and you
can read some poems on a street corner and maybe we'll pick up enough spare
change for a bottle of wine and some ham, maybe even enough for a room to crash
in tomorrow night. Maybe our luck will change.”
“I blew my last twenty at the track,” Bukowski said. “I
can't spot the winners anymore.”
“There's always the mission,” I said. “We could crash
at the mission if we don't get enough for a room.”
“FUCK THE
MISSION!”
Bukowski exploded. “I've been down that road! Where's John Martin when I
need him? Where's Weissner? Where are my readers?”
“You should have stayed dead,” I said. “It's all
Facebook and smart phones now.”
“Fuck 'em then. We'll eat us a couple of ham
sandwiches and walk into the first bar we come to and kick ass!” Bukowski said. “You take the guys at the bar, I'll take
the guys at the tables.”
We got to our feet with some difficulty, stiff from
sleeping on the damp ground under the bridge. We hobbled down the hill toward
the lights of the city.
Declarations of Love
Trees chopped
into stumps.
Wise guys on
TED Talks.
The slow
burn of
hopelessness.
Stories to
make your
skin crawl.
Rodgers &
Hammerstein,
the melody
& the muse.
Compression
reduction the
shred machine.
The Jolly
Green Giant,
the unanswered
phone.
The pre-
arranged nuptial
the Tijuana
wedding the
Las Vegas
divorce.
Keep trying
keep deviating
keep winding
the clock.
Smile like
a raisin
in the
sun when
they look
your way.
Do a
curtesy take
a bow
hope they
move along
to the
next guy.
Run, little
rabbit, thru
the uneatable
grass, here
comes a
harbinger
with a
frying pan.
Pray they
don't season
you with
shadows or
remember
your face.
Let me
entertain you
call out
the organ
grinder with
his monkey
speak in
tongues raise
the dead
the question
the stakes.
Burn the
witches!
Point the
finger!
Drop your
high hopes
in the
petaled garden
of love.
Things only
matter when
you're full
of fear.
I need
so very
little &
they won't
let me
have it.
Dreaming Oceans
I.
The race
was on
the color
red the
creed greed.
They thought
they had
him dead
to rights
but then
he popped
up in
his coffin
exchanging
arias with
Maria Callas.
Around &
around they
went at
78 RPMs.
Was this
the resurrection
of vinyl?
Would that
set things
right again?
There's always
something else
they don't
let you
know about –
the effects
of success
on your
libido the
other men
who slept
with your
wife;
lines drawn
in charcoal
lines on
a mirror
lines on
your face.
A little
annihilation
goes a
long way.
II.
Things went
obsolete
before he
knew they
existed.
He went
back to
his coffin
of his
own free will,
signed &
counter-signed,
forged &
distributed
like a
declaration
of war.
He's the
last thing
left
standing still.
Soon the
drums will
roll the
natives rise
into the
ozone the
pancreas go
obsolete &
the left
lung along
with it.
All the
monks will
be crucified
meditation will
be outlawed
& the
Big Bang
will be
amplified.
He put
his message
in a
bottle &
tried to
dream up
an ocean.
An End to Injustice
An End to Injustice
I robbed banks with a mask of my own face. When they
brought me in for questioning I said how crazy would that be, using a mask of
my own face to rob banks, and they had to agree. They let me go.
But a week later they kicked in the door and tore the
house apart and found the mask. “What's this?” asked the detective, a
rhetorical question if ever there was one.
It's the identity business again. Lately I've been
obsessing on it. Just who am I?
I'm not a bank robber by nature. It's more in my
nature to work at an animal shelter. I did that, too, before I started robbing
banks. I cleaned out the cages and fed the animals, dogs mostly, strays and
abandoned puppies, and when it came time to put them down I took them home with
me instead. I wound up with a house full of dogs I couldn't afford to feed on
the salary they were paying me, and so I started stealing food from the
shelter. That's when they fired me, and that's when I started robbing banks.
I always took a dog with me, a Doberman or a
Rottweiler, they were more effective than waving a gun in the air. And then
some bank teller who got his dog from the shelter recognized my face mask, and
that's when they brought me in for questioning.
I thought it was foolproof, the face-mask business,
the reverse logic of it. But then the detective assigned to the case got a
hunch, and logic is no match for a hunch. They kicked in the door and found the
mask and found the loot buried in fifty-pound sacks of Science Diet.
Everything got turned on its head after that. I went
from being an animal-rights advocate to being someone who exploited animals to
rob banks.
On the day of sentencing (ten years without parole)
half the spectators in the courtroom wore face masks that looked like me, and
the judge banged his gavel and made them take the masks off or be held in
contempt of court. They complied, all except one man who I could tell by his
hands and his hair was black. They cuffed him and led him out of the courtroom
with the mask still on.
I figured I could do ten years standing on my head.
Before I went to work at the animal shelter I'd been a mercenary for
Blackwater, and it made me tough. I guess I went to work at the shelter to
atone for some of the things I did while I was a mercenary.
I'll do my time, and when I get out I'll look up the
man who refused to take his mask off and we'll put our heads together and come
up with a plan to put an end to injustice, once and for all.
