Q. Do you think he will want to marry me someday?
A. Yes. But will you want to marry him. That is the question. Have you ever seen the movie Breakfast with the Metalheads? Probably not because I just made it up, but in that movie people fall in love with each other but don’t ever get married. And somehow everyone is still happy. Everything is art.
Q. How can I get unstuck? Not from, like, a hole or something. From a life thing where I feel trapped.
A. Oh God I was worried I was going to have to talk about holes. If you’re trapped in a life thing, you just need to get out of it. It doesn’t matter how. Well it does matter how. But only in the short-term. Well that’s not true either. Long-term too. Anyway main thing is: get out. If people’s feelings are involved, be as kind as possible. But also be direct. And also don’t be cruel. But you probably will be. Cruel I mean. Accidentally. From their perspective at least. No matter how you say it. Wowww cruel much? Look just do your best. Get out.
Q. What is your favorite kind of ceremony?
A. I enjoy many ceremonies. Wedding, death, racquetball. But my favorite is the little ceremony of choosing jewels I do before stepping out for a tremendous evening in California. I go to the downtown casino and sip soft on a lemon martini (aka Diet Sprite). I order Chicken a la King and pretend I am dining with the incorrigible Minta Doyle. She tilts her head in my direction! She is laughing at my jokes. I am pleasing to Minta. And now I am joking with the diamond club members. I am being, in all seriousness, a weisenheimer. I order a sixty-dollar gravy tower and forty-thousand finger fries. I think about my future. Will I be made in the shade? Or will I feel the heat on Beat Street? I stare hard at my tower like a jellicle cat, dipping my finger in the ceremony, holding my Sprite flute, simmering. The tower was too expensive. Freaking A. It was like one little thumbprint of gravy.
Q. How do I learn to write poems?
A. I don’t even know what poems are. Not surprising I bet. Like what are they. All I know about is mental digging, like literally ice-picking your spirit, until something blue and painful comes out. People laugh at what comes out of me. Other times they cry. Is this good? I do not know. Does the scale tip to “Good” for me? I do not know.
On a personal level I am conflicted about my digging. There are mental holes now that I can’t seem to plug. I did a lot of digging once. Frenzied. I was just cracking away, stabbing at my spirit garden with none other than a common five-fingered hoe. So many holes appeared. The holes were true & meaningful. They connected me to the world. I had discovered a universal thing in holes. But you can’t un-experience the holes, once they’re there. You have to live with them. Poems fill holes at the same time they create them. Is this good.
Q. What would you do if you were trapped in a giant Cheez-It and couldn’t eat your way out?
A. Gimme a break! I would simply adjust to my new home. Yes I would mourn the past. Yes I would cry for my life before the Cheez-It constrained me. But that was then. This is now. And so I would face the truth, which is: I am hemmed in by the ridges of this enormous snack. And this is Life: to understand how one is hemmed. I cannot escape this unusually tart cheddar prison. And this is joy: to gather strength from the halls of tartness.
Q. What are some things I can be grateful for? My life is all wrong.
A. This world is a calamity. Our lives are popcorn. Still: we can be grateful for our crap situation. Why? Because we are tired of crying.
Plus, you know what? Crying never helps. Generations of humans have cried. History is basically just relentless torrential crying. In castles, in caves. And writhing in pain, asking for an answer, carrying each other’s bags, speculating on the future. What horror will visit us next? The people of History wondered. Oh, that one! I thought it would have been the other one. But no. It is this new special one. A special new horror designed especially for us. What benevolence! What novelty! A time of true Thanksgiving.
My Gratitudes, Past AND Present:
I have eaten a donut in the rain. I have seen dogs play-biting on the banks of a natural American river. I have been kissed well. I have been in the presence of a magical nude. I have seen twinkling lights in a forest. I have felt the queen’s soft butt at the flowery margin of the island. Sunrises, sunsets, airport gift shops with cherry soda and skeleton muffins - I have seen and felt these too, my friend.
I have heard an orchestra with strings that sounded like melted chocolate truffles. I have read the work of the new rising generation, and I approve. I have had arguments in sparkling cities. I have gotten hopelessly lost in Chinatown. I have been late, running like an absolute lad, for the Roosevelt Island Tram. I have cried in public, in private, in the arms of someone who didn’t understand me. I have sung Penny Lane into a crypt. I have stayed at hotels with no soap only “body wash.” I have been swept up into a fantasy of argyle skirts and patchouli, God knows I have heard the brittle sounds of these deranged incessant sirens.
I am a Capable Jason. I can press a bolt of blue satin between my two veneers. I can try for years to find a brick of light in the dark. I can do a half-hug, half-back-pat to my parents’ neighbor whose yard friggin sucks. Like it is too well-manicured. Massacre the shrubs for once, God! I can swarm things. My body can swarm. I can hand you an almond pastry and say Bless your hurting mind. I can reconcile the past. I can telegraph the future. I can light your broken birthday candles and say Go.
i love you lord birthday. never forget