It’s around that time of the year
when the weather starts to cool down
a little by eight or nine o’clock. It makes me a lot more willing
to go out and listen to five or six different kinds of music
from just as many wildly different neighborhoods
and street corner hideouts that advertise online.

I might even be in the mood to hit the top
of that gravity-deficient hill on Mercury Street to watch
the fireworks jab from the left and then swing a haymaker
towards the sand and grit sky.

Nine o’clock every night
from August until the end of November.
Always from the roof of that old roller-skating rink
no one ever went to unless it was a middle school field trip
or you needed to buy strong drugs from warm, familiar faces.

Personally I called in sick on field trips
and didn’t start trying the good stuff until years later.

And I was halfway around the world by then.
Getting stuck in mazes made of long, wire fences and hoping
I had just enough left to get over to the safety of the streets.

Before the guard dogs could do even more damage.

I was in Singapore Circle. Which as we all know is just two blocks
away from Hollywood, Japan and Vancouver, Wonderland.

Halfway through the third novel I’m writing. Working my way back home
and back to the beginning. Back to this girl I loved
sneaking away from her husband whenever she could to see me.

She always wanted to go to church.
I always took her to the movies instead.

All that holy water and all those beautiful paintings
being sick to death of living in the middle of the glass
was more than I could handle on a mostly empty stomach.

This was a long time ago.
It’s a dirty trick that most good things are.
It’s a rotten magic show that I can find something wrong
with my three favorite songs, cold beer and a few
of the best storytellers in the business.

Ask me again in two years.
I’ll tell you it was the best three hours of my life,
and why-oh-why did those old friends have to try and beat
three trains at once.

I never thought I’d be working on goodbyes in my mid-twenties.
I also didn’t think I was ever coming back.

At least there’s still plenty to do
around this time of year. Plenty of new faces still coming through
to be dumbfounded by everything I take for granted.

10/08/2010

Posted on 10/08/2010
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