On Display

Where I live ...

... the birds soar in circles above a dogwood, elder and misshapen. A trick of the eye and I see a mother tenderly cradling a monkey skull.

Down below my window ...

... stand two Dumpsters the size of Jeeps, freshly painted, one green for trash, one white for recyclables, both stinking of warm beer and old diapers.

The apartment houses circle the Jeeps, and a parking lot of real Jeeps, and Escorts, and Civics, and sports utility vehicles neither sporty nor of real utility, just vehicles, good for speeding to work and weaving on the highway and on the weekends during halftime zooming to Starbucks for a light-ice iced quad venti four-pump vanilla latte with whip and one single half-caff grande extra-hot nonfat extra-caramel caramel macchiatto.

Every day ...

... my little Rubbermaid container (green) fills with discarded banana peels and cream pies gone bad.

And every day ...

... my little Rubbermaid container (white) fills with empty seltzer bottles and the cardboard packaging my rouge and foundation come in.

I save all the red rubber balls, even after they've gone old and brittle, because they exude a cheery cherry glow to my window sill. Like the emperor's family overlooking the Coliseum's dust, they are audience to my parking lot of Escorts, Civics, unsporty non-utiliity vehicles, and the two Dumpsters and their stink of human consumption rising from their open tops.

Every day ...

... I put myself on display.

And every day ...

... I put on my nicest suit, pressed by the Korean cleaners with Anglicized first names. And I tie on my nicest shoes, gleaming like a freshly waxed apple, and then my best tie, polka dots proud for the world, and I do my hair up right and dabble the makeup on my face, and when everything's just so ...

I take my Rubbermaid (green) and Rubbermaid (white) downstairs, and cross the parking lot to the green and white Jeeps (Dumpsters).

On display for the world, looking sharp and feeling like a king.

In goes the trash. Banana peels and cream pies. Sweet, almost sickly, masking the acridity of someone's paper bag of cat shit.

In goes the recyclables. Seltzer water bottles crackling into shards of ice against the dark jugs of red wine and coffee tins and someone's paper bag of clumped cat piss.

The setting sun beams down on me, a halo about my feet. Up there, they, my neighbors, my audience, in their box seats, their window views, bedrooms and kitchens and patios, and down here, me on display.

I bow one direction. Then the other.

And the applause.

I bow too much at an angle. I trip on my shoelace. Sprattle down to the asphalt.

The laughter.

Erect myself. Dust myself off. Grandly, one knee, than the other, and then my arms.

I say! Good word!

Laughter. Applause.

Exit, stage right and up. To my apartment. To undo the tie, strip off the clothes, scrub off the makeup.

And sleep with their applause and laughter ringing in my left nostril.

Daffy Nips the Nipples

With the Dubya Administration preparing this country for an endless era of military intervention, unilateralism, juntas, backstabbing, intel failureship, and, incidentally, the easy dismantlement of the Bill of Rights, the people of this fine country should accept the able leadership those thirty hicks in Florida voted for and just get fun-kay. Brew some herbal tea, start an insta-log in the fireplace, and snuggle on the couch with that special someone to watch some high-grade military porn:

• Bush Junior
• Weapons of Miss Destruction
• Embedded Reportage
• Missile Inspectors IV
• The Gulp War II
• Show Yer Tits 'Cuz This War is Over
• Guerrillas Gone Wild
• Big Twotage in Little Bahgdad
• Liberia, Here We Cum

Subj: Hiatus, Re: Time & Space, Msg: It's Your Fault

Our sense of time is spatial. We say the grocery store is ten minutes away, not two miles. (And everything nearby is two miles away now, because our sense of the spatial is distorted entirely.)

A year, two years, just a day. Being gone for so long feels like no time at all. Means nothing to me whatsoever.

Listen to Lalo Schifrin for important news. Miles Davis, in the background but always front and center. Pancho Sanchez, hollow beats full of emotion. All painters with time. Time means everything, space, very little. They play in Los Angeles and you listen in New Dehli. Twenty-two years after the fact. Time, nothing. Space, gone.

You think a year's a long time? Your fault.

I'm back.