Water tapped, falling forgotten from the faucet. Mode Morse saw himself crawling down the sink drain toes first. A little wiggling at the hips and shoulders, one last look at the dated kitchen utensils, and a final pop as he pulled his round head through. A damp, echoed place that no one else would think to get to. A good stiff bed made on the blades.
Instead he told himself “Good Morning” and swept crushed pill powder off of the floor. He soaks carpet stains with a crusted rag he kept in the cabinet under his drainy day dream. He pushes a mop over dried up louse grey stains. He hears his grandfather stirring in half-sleep. Mode breathes deep the freshly bleached air and heads to the bathroom.
From the linen closet Mode pulls out an armful of ragged off-white towels. Crouching in front of the toilet he lays the towels down over stiffened yellow streams and feather chunks of grey hair. He lifts the arm supports and folds two towels underneath them. For good measure he drapes another over the back of the seat. From the space beneath the sink he unhooks a boxy funnel. Clipping it into place he steps back from the revised toilet, a cold throne decorated for the disabled.
Mode steps into the hall outside of his grandfather’s bedroom. On the wall beside him hangs a collection of aged polaroids. The nearest to Mode’s head is a picture of his grandfather teaching him to swim. Standing tall in an above ground pool holding Mode just above the water by his fat baby arms. “Grandpa?”
The news is erupting from the TV. It sounds pleasant, the words “catastrophe” and “tension” sound pleasant, coming from the dulcet tones of a BBC anchor. His grandfather was asleep again. Mode watched the rise and fall of his chest. His grandfather was still a big man, still. But in that cavern of a chest there were tar pits as far as the eye couldn’t see. There was a struggled sputtering sound when the old man inhaled. Mode’s hand squeezes a spongy shoulder, “Grandpa.”
The old man turns over, blue eyes wild and lost. He blinks and parts his chapped lips, a beaded thread of saliva stretching between them. “Do you need to go to the bathroom?” Mode asks.
”Your grandmother is out in the living room. Can you bring her here?” His voice sounds like it’s been coated in dust, as if he’d been asleep for years. Mode looks for fresh stains on the sheets, “You were dreaming. Let’s go to the bathroom.” He tugs at his grandfather’s forearms.
”A dream?”
Mode curls his arm around his grandfather’s thick waist. A withering tree trunk. His grandfather cranes his neck to try to see out to the hallway, “It seemed real. Secilia looked very beautiful.”
Mode tensed, his stomach shrunk. For a second he swims in nauseaus reverie, mental waves of moldy evergreen. He shakes it away, slides his shoulder under his grandfather’s humid armpit, and hoists the cottage cheese body up onto its feet. “You mean Glennis. Grandma Glennis.” Mode breathes in sweat and rancid breath, the smell of aged slumber. The house has a constant smell of curdled milk. It was sour and he’d grown used to it by now.
Together they wobble to the hallway, wobble left into the bathroom. Mode eases his shoulder out and holds his grandpa by the waist. Slow, shuffled baby steps as he backs him over the toilet. The old man hunches down, his underwear sagging above the rim of the thick plastic seat. In his frayed face creamy clouds had thickened over his eyes. He grips the support bars with spotted hands. Mode turns his face to the wall as he pulls the worn elastic down from his grandfather’s hips. The old man sits on the edge of the seat and scoots toward the back, aligning himself with the wide funnel. He rests his arms on the stainless steel bars. Mode steps into the hall leaving the door slightly ajar.
[On the Next: Pisses taken, feeble escape, the giggles of blond children]
Note: Okay, I had really special plans for you guys. Really big, reallllly special. However, mommy had too much to drink and terrorized tumblr support when I got locked out of my account (I was actually right clicking), and then had a little too much more to drink. So sit tight and for now I give you something fresh cooked in the troughs of my whiskey stew. Happy as clams you’ll be, I swears.
Neighborhood
When I was a kid there was a boy who lived across the street.
He told us his name was Betsy.
My mom told me I had to call him that.
He did gymnastics across the front lawn.
Boy Crazy
There’s a picture of a man and a picture of another man and a man in the middle painting more men. There are many men in close quarters. Four walking through the house always. There’s a man drawing hands. He draws hands like he’s in love. Men don’t die. They rise as machines or sit like flowers. My men are like Achilles or Ajax with today’s troubles.
Entitled
It was never supposed to get cold here, he thought. He had expected warmth, demanded it. He was never supposed to be homeless. Not a boy like him. At least not in the winter. His birthday was coming in two days. He held tight to his sense of injustice and kept himself warm. At times he thought no thoughts and looked to his surroundings. Then he became so cold. The coldest he could ever be. At these times he thought thoughts of warm cars and diner fries. Problems, problems.
When this is all over, he told himself, I’ll buy all the friends I had a large daiquiri with a steak. I’ll build my own house with a leather couch after sailing some seas.
I have a really big thing coming you little monsters. This is really important to me so don’t fuck this up.
P.S. If you guessed sex tape you’ve just won a three day all expenses paid slumber party in my hobbit hole. During your stay you’ll learn how to do a number of Noelle Things; like being a successful alcoholic, joke dancing, and saving the economy. All by watching me! Little ol’ me. Opa!*
Lots and lots of birds flying and shitting over her head. The people pass her swinging plastic bags around their wrists. This girl is hungry. She needs a bathroom. She is sitting on the side of the road in a neighborhood she does not know. She has not slept well, but she has the sun. The girl likes the heat. Today was supposed to be Sunday. Tomorrow will only be friday. This girl is not in lust, this girl tries to be in love. Is it okay to still call this a weekend? When she met that tall tower, that dark-haired somebody; she shuffled somewhere between “nice to meet” and “my name is” while he squeezed her extended hand. How terrible it was for her. She looked at his shoes. Boots. She would like to live with brown boots. And oh he can sing. He can move and coo and shake all foundations with his karaoke. Such an angel. Such a big, tough brute. You don’t go home with this one. You play pious. How her purity reigned in that bartered bar stool; with a straight back and tiny, delicate sips of beer. Elegant muses, she thought. His pants were splashed with something. Yes, he would like this persona. He must. Just look at him. But she didn’t. She didn’t, but she did. Must not seem needy. Must not seem wanting. But she had to check. Is he looking yet? Yet? Now? Then it happened. He stood by her seat. She had waited. Stayed put in on thin gap. He orders whisky and she hates her beer. She stretches her arms into the bar. Maybe he likes hands. Hopefully he likes hands. Later, in the cold shower, the girl ponders on which cosmic mystery will deliver him to her. She bleaches her hair. Tomorrow she will buy new clothes.
Three objects: A note of exposure, a dark record player, and an ink-soaked sewing needle. All of them are gifts. When she gave me these things she was wearing stale make-up over her freckles. She read from a sheet while pulling on chunks of her hair. A dollar is rich. Rich in dollars. Dollars for sandwiches. Sandwiches dropped into gravel and grass. Glass is broken here, here, and here. Here where daylight is very short. Short of breath as we walk to ride. Ride a bike while grinding teeth. Teeth I forgot to brush. Brush and pull, tap, wink, whisper. Whisper to my friend in a photo booth between flashes.
A very boring woman is what she grew up to be. Of course. They’re so sick and dying in that house there.
Did the blood I have with me make me crazy? Likely, yes. Did the blood I drank make me crazy enough? Not as much as it did others. The stories people tell; the nights of too much liquor. Those did not mean enough to me. Trying to jog my memory with all eight legs only to reach out with a slippery grip for solid ground.
I know one reason for my crazy. My belly is bloating up under the pressures of my ramen noodle diet. I seek to get fat off nightly vitamins. I look for stress, rejection, injury to trigger an over-adequate diet. I’ve talked so many times about how tired I am.
I remember the day when too many people became “fucking-so-and-so”. These prodigal fuckups. It was that one quick night, when I and everyone thought we knew what we were doing. I remember: a handful of bites and scrapes that will never wear off the skin. The night I tried to prove something.
Skipping ahead to an end with demented GPS comingling with sinister time in a whisky bottle. No cigarette is enough. Yet everyone’s lighter goes missing from their skinny pockets.
And for the hangover: must you be everywhere I choose to go?
Pasta is a luxury. Alcohol is a dream. There are cigarettes and sad, watery stews. There are windows to look out of while we cook. They are nailed shut.
Someone grabs my hand and swings it to & fro. I let him by my next drink. He speaks of drunken things. I leave him to pee outside. He wasn’t lovely, and neither am I.
We went to a messy warehouse to make friends among the vegans. We went to backyards to befriend the smart dressers. I’m so desperate to be a friend that I won’t tell anyone how much I miss eating Taco Bell near the junkies.
There’s a lot of cocaine in these noses. It’s hard to keep up if you don’t jump in. And then there’s so many things in common. So many me-toos.
My only window is curtained three times. This is for the morning fevers when my eyes are coated and the smell of syrup makes my scratch my skin clean. When the air conditioner broke my hell flooded this earth. And here I am now.
I can’t find words. I’ve never been so sharply sober. Never has it been so sunny and I so tired, hungry. I started out well enough. Small house, dirt and yellow. Embracing poetry. I started out well enough with solid intentions. Between the palms and parks everyone starts out well enough. Enough for anyone so small and so simple to be happy.
I’m long past remembering. The inheritor of bad blood and bad behavior.
People pass on in their fun fury. I turn away from the clusters and the alcohol and the seductive, dirty red lights surrounding the place. I’m tired. I’d rather go on a walk. I’d rather watch some film.
I’d rather my clothes stay put and we talk. Conjure up your favorite painting, your favorite book. Order a pizza and settle on Budweiser from our own cornerstone.
The light on the world must break on us because now you’re out of cigarettes. The rain is thick but we must push into it. We open an umbrella in the thicket of college brats. Your eyes itch, my hands burn. Staying in bed must have been better.
None of us can sleep and that helps, that none of us can sleep. Did you think I had the confidence? Do you think Ginsberg had the confidence? Do you think Hemingway had the confidence? I guess Hemingway might have.
What can we be called? Lovers in doubt? Two soldiers standing tall. Writers with no publication.
Blood so very thick and warm. Be patient. Neither of us has an out of the ordinary sort of anxiety.
I opened that bottle for you. With its label, the only reason I bought it, revealing itself openly. With my flexible face I hoped you would forgive me for the problems that will surely come. Would you like me better with a higher waist-line and big superfluous glasses, or naked with all my necklaces?
I’d prefer cigarettes with that umbrella. The grass stretching and offering a domain for the tasting of salt. And the breeze, how much I care for the breeze. How much I think of when I look up and away.
I intend to be very big with big words and big money. How quickly I’d try to spend those millions. All on cheap food and Belgian beer.
How I would force my money into the faces of the rich. Show them with my mess and my unbrushed hair, show them how much they wished they had known me when.
The name I will make, the things I will see. I’ll spend the money and it will all be over in a week. I’ll spend the money and remember how terribly lonely I am.
Less than two months. For me. Some need five. Some need years. Some few know from the start.
For me a handful of weeks. I see now how the clockwork jumps during awkward moments. A small chat you’d sooner forget. There’s a certain way the the roads get chocked like veins. All the cells clotted up there. In the middle of the whole mess.
That sloppy way the populace stumbles to its own death. All the shameless ways I do it myself. Every three steps the smell of sultriness. Then spicy food. Then garbage. Leaky garbage.
Down is central and north is mid and south is river but east is river.
