1. |
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pitched in the streetlight
winged shadows take flight
a murder of crows
cast in orange light; W.A.S.P. and AC/DC album covers decorating the walls. Only slightly less noisy than the crush of demin and leather at the bar. Everyone wanting a drink, or a bartender. both bartenders are guys in tight rock and roll t-shirts and hair that goes below their chin. I sit at a table with a pint of lager and my blue notebook writing a letter to my sister while paintings of famous satanists glare down at me with red black eyes. Cartoon monsters painted on the bathroom doors. The bartender leans over the bar like he has breasts to talk to customers. Various haircuts churn around by the front windows over craddock street talking loud over the in-and-out again speakers. I wonder how many people have been thrown out of those windows, how many kids have been beaten by bigger kids under the christmas-light pentagram, how many couples slow-danced to the first verse of "Cemetary Gates."
matching tattoos
black hair resting in shoulder
young dragons in love
You make of it what you will, I suppose. I feel safer here avoiding most eye-contact than in a dance club. No one thinks you're trying to steal their woman in a bar like this. Unless you are. I'm here to write and have chance conversations with ex-Welsh Army Drill Sergeants about Metallica. "I'm not even using my loud voice. If I shouted, I could clear the fuckin' room." There's more mini-skirts here than usual. Leather scoop-tops and black lipstick. Some surprisingly blonde girls and their lost-looking boyfriends in jerseys, nodding at the dj. "You'd probably hate it here," I write my sister. The first song of the evening I've actually liked comes on. The boy playing pinball starts nodding.
flapping in night winds
the tattered newsprint of a
rain-battered poster
Flyers on the wall advertise upcoming events in razor fonts. Further up, framed paintings for carnivals from the '60s and "secrets of magic." I see fewer secrets than city lights. Then there's the brown haired girl in jeans and a backless red shirt, with a mole right above her bra-strap. There's an intimacy to that I'm not used to, the paleness and the flowerprint straps just living there. It seems as if I've already touched it. When her and her friends took over the other half of my table I couldn't even look at her; I'd already seen her sitting at the edge of my bed, lithe and stunning and flawed, rehooking her bra, me watching her do this for what I knew would be the last time.
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2. |
Now It Watches You Sleep
01:46
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Outside, it’s the creaking.
Pterodactyl by your bedroom window,
eyes slits, diamond clawed.
You outran the sabertooth, dodged the tyrannosaurus, killed the raptor
with your your knife and shoelace but haven’t shaken this and
now it watches you sleep. Close the curtains, hear the breathing,
and burn your eyes with crosswords.
The pizza places stopped delivering,
Sometimes it leaves cats’ heads on
your welcome mat.
In South Dakota a man with holes in his boots
carries bundles of firewood through the snow.
His wife stays because he’s the only thing between her
and the wolverine on the roof.
he never leaves his bed ‘til sunrise; otherwise the wood floor
splinters, pitching him to the center of the earth.
You are certain of your floors and ceilings,
no doorknobs have ever come off in your hand.
Mainly safe in alleys, don’t worry about taxes, trolls or terrorists.
But the fear hits you in the back of the knees when you get home--
Because It’s right there,
raising black wings, eyes of red,
waiting.
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Freeway Park Seattle, Washington
Much like the city park it is named after, Freeway Park the band aimed at being a structured, brutalist space with flashes of grace and beauty, but more often than not ends up dirty, slightly dangerous, and full of drunk people.
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