December 2023

Endgame again- That’s what Monk says

New Work Pending / With the usual Holiday Holy Ghosts

Sunday Night Of The Heart

While I was working at this job, where they didn’t

hire me, teaching teenagers lessons that I never learned,

defining words I half understood, in a class that was not

mine, I fell in love with a girl, half my age, I went over

to the window as the classroom went silent, I got lost….

…..in the Sunday night of the heart. Full moon as a

pock parked stooge, slung like a bone tinted tombstone in

blue and black. A few frizzy haloed ropes of vapor hung all

hopes by the neck, until the very nature of the night was

the snap of the till lip. The charmless chime of a celestial

cash register ringing up a big “No sale” for the heart.

There is the sound from a pay phone ringing down

the corner, the next block over, underneath an empty

street light. The persistent echo is a reoccurring

hallucination, of a red shark whose true ruby tail lights

don’t search the night for him anymore.

So now it’s the deep six stroll on a splintered

bulkhead where an unsteady soul is walking on the dock

in the dark looking to avoid the weak plank, that cracked

stringer, while the inky black water chopping below almost

looks like a good solution.”

Somebody take this wrecking bar out of my hands

and point me back towards the shore.

“I waltz all over your planet and I’ll kick dirt

where I want.”

That’s what Monk says. I like it so much that I slap him

on the back so hard that there is a POP in the air. But

the bravado doesn’t last. Soon the mumbling starts. And the

eyes of the night get blasted inward with rum and orange

juice, that turns so sour and very yellow and wastes your

time while a set of wounded eyes asks, “How my doing?”

And you reply, “ I don’t know, what are you trying to do?”

Shrugging we both turn to watch a drunk play the cigarette

machine like it was a cross between a jukebox and a one

arm bandit. Then the bell went off, louder this time…

….and it brought me back to the window, and the

blackboard and the class, who wished that the teacher would

snap out of it and talk to them some more. The liked it

when he talked to them and not the night, at this job he

never got, wishing they were all his students, using words

he half understood, teaching lessons, he never learned,

and that girl half his age he once fell in love with,

all knew better, but would have to wait years for the

Sunday night of their heart.

10/84-3/95 From Another Rubberer Eden