Alone With Somebody

Summer is ending for beautiful kids I'll never meet in places I'll never go to. Well, doesn't that just come down to changing leaves and being unique.

Tonight, Friday, Saturday, and then Sunday night I'll be dying my hair. My bathroom will look like a body washed down the bathtub. My hair will look like I shower in strawberry juice. Salon people look the whole long way down their noses at me.

A old mouse-nibbled paperback is lying around the house. It's Of Mice And Men, and that's deep irony for me, anyway. I met a mouse. He poked his head out the space under the ceiling tile whose twin is in the Tavern, turned around and scritched all over in the dark up above. I didn't name him in case I saw him in a trap in the morning. All kinds of things get scary in the night. Excitement and fear wear big grey ears and a strong tail.

Nothing's made it into the poetry notebook for a while. Those polka dots up top, those are, or were, a photograph of the cover of my poetry notebook. I'm so glad I've finally got lines to put in that book, it's so darn cute.

Have you ever bought drugs just to think about hands they've been through?
Ever thought about how they grew up on a farm somewhere too?

I haven't, but I didn't. Have you? Did you? It's about some pretty boy who won't admit life has changed yet, I suppose. I need somebody to name Riley, and a hero's as good as anybody, isn't he?

You're kissing Rafe and there are butterflies in your street
Do you remember your girl back home? She remembers you
Riley, you told the mirror over the bar you wouldn't cheat
And you'll come to me when you see what you're about to do

Now where did the "I" come from in this story? Just sympathetic narrator, I suppose. But how did things get so damn personal?

I mistook a Canadian dime, a Mexican dime, and two coins that are at least partly Greek to me for American dimes. I need to pick a color of thread to sew a scarlet button to a scarlet ribbon. I decided The Scarlet Letter was a bit dense for me. For all of Monday, school will seem fresh and relevant, and then that will be the end of that.

You're here, but you're so sweet in denial
You're like Amish kids trying modernity
And is it worth their while, and is that a fair trial
And what does it all mean to you anyway?