Posting some new work here, from my new writing. I’d like to dedicate this to my friend, writer/historian Woody Minor, with whom I was speaking on the phone the day this actual event happened, and I commented to him in some awe that the pelicans looked exactly like great pterodactyls, and we talked about them for a few moments, while I pocketed the check and wondered what to do with my life, about whether to cry or drive off a cliff or just keep swimming. Thanks, Woody.
Remind me, friends, to tell you about the time Woody came to my place for a Christmas party, and caught on fire. Wood burns. Really.
Over Lake Merritt
I come down the steps of the bank building,
invisible in the evening rush,
a check in my hand for the money from the house
that is no longer mine, the life
that is no longer mine,
pinwheeling, careening toward whatever and who the fuck,
from some bliss and pain and secrets,
dead to their world, they dead to mine;
pelicans wheeled above,
pterodactyls on the hunt,
their reptile legs tucked under,
their cold yellow eyes,
silent but screaming that aik aik that I hear
when I can’t open my eyes at night, when I am awake and yet asleep,
when I reach for what I had that is gone,
when I waken and am cold.
When I rise and am silent.
Cheers aye, on a sunny, cold December the first.