Remnants of the past and present
passed to me over memory-carrying
textured wood
in the bar
just shy of midnight
The journal’s cover has a leathery disposition beneath
dry fingertips and Fate, a
sanguine movement about him,
barely can hold himself up in
rain-soaked bliss,
asks for a drink of my fernet and I say
“You don’t need it,” and
he smiles coyly at me
“Let’s split a cab,” he says
“I’ve got a guy on speed dial”
But the driver was far,
soaking in his own leathery disposition like
cheeks wet with ocean moisture on a
hungover Sunday morning in the Richmond
the sea targeting my pores with reckless affection,
it cares for us in ways we don’t understand and
still, she struggles
the sea and me
Her
melancholic waiting for another hour
a different day, the
inevitable year where
she will be more plastic and less salt
overflowing with carbon in her
too clogged sink
take the fucking drain out
the one that catches the conveniences of life, the
I-tried-to-care-but-it’s-going-to-end-up-there-anyway game while the
pissed off voter guide convinces me I can do something
Imagine her drain was filled with chicken gristle and
broccoli stem, the butt of a lemon that
didn’t make it in the lemonade, the
tea strainer leaving stains on the porcelain sink
it needs to be bleached but
bleach gives me a headache
You know they pour bleach on the sidewalks
in the morning
on Haight Street
just below where the hippies
crowd in corners next to windows
dressed in tie dye, saying
“Society, you’re poisoning me!”
on their signs, from their smokey
cannabis breath, loose tobacco stained teeth and
organic nectarines juicy with the essence of life
they slice a little piece into their companion’s
kibble bowl
wag their tails a moment
sigh
and then return to the inevitable passing of time
And I write this in
Fate’s journal
alcohol turning my soul into
its own leathery disposition
where ramblings of ocean plastic and sickening bleach are
saved by a juicy nectarine and finally
the cab driver arrives to pick up the remnants
holding us between his little four walls
I wonder what his fate recalls
or if he recalls at all