Right now, I laugh out loud
After reading Bukowski's
The Wavering Line
Look up and applaud at my own Broadway show

I peddled my bike to catch the play Pylon @ the Firehouse Theatre
Missed it, or, actually, it started on Thursday and it's Wednesday
So I peddled back
Enroute to Powells Bookstore
Took a detour
At a posh alley with bench to reflect

"Got any cash?"
Asks the short sagging old woman with sagging hat resting on her silver hair to match
I saw her on the way to the play that never happened, well the play other than my own, that is
I see her from afar, her velcroe shoes and black polyester pants on the sidewalk
Me in the alley, on the wooden bench
She's asking passerbys
"Got any cash?"

I've seen her many times
Daydreamed of taking her for lunch
To hear her tell her story
I saw her the other day in Whole Foods Market
She had her green canvas bag bulging, slung on her arm
I peered inside as I walked by
Spotting celery, no wine

What is her story - I thought to myself

I yearn to put down this notebook, now, right now
And see
Where she has wondered off to...

Her name is Alice
She made some wrong decisions, she stated
As we all do, I reply
I talk to her for a moment about poetry, as I see she doesn't want to talk much about herself
Not very often I meet a poet, she says
We're all poets, I say
She offers her hand, asks my name
Lindsay
Her left eye is glossed over
And seems to be stuck in the upper left hand corner, squinting and pale, cloudy
Her right eye is squinting as well, but clear and a darker shade of blue

I tell her I've seen her often
Always wanted to talk with her
Tell her she's beautiful
She nods
I can tell she is lost for words
I take her hand again, tell her to have a good night
Good night, Lindsay

Because I missed my play, which I only had $15 for
I was able to give her $5
Which she accepted with glee
Placing it in another sagging cap with sequences she clutched in her left hand

I was also able to give Jason $6, before Alice
What he and his friend needed to get back to Seaside on the Oregon coast
He recited me a poem, having no idea that I was on a mission to speak to the old beggar woman
He spoke words about God and his thrashing human experience
Forgive me father, for I will not think that I have sinned
Because I am in love
And while I agonize
I am alive

I tell Jason I understand his tribulations
I tell him how I was enroute to talk with the old woman on the corner
As I point to her silhouette
Before I knew she was Alice
I tell him how I abandoned my notebook and backpack on the empty bench
In front of Pete's Coffee - closed
And a bar playing top 40s while people in strapped high heels and suits laugh belligerently

Jason tells me to be careful
His admonishments given with a twinkle in his eye of a madman
I wanted it all, he said, so I turned to drugs and violence to reach the edge
It drove me loony

I understand, I said
But on the opposite side
I had a white carrot of purity dangled in front of my face
It told me if I was a saint I would reach enlightenment
Nope
I was a madwoman

Two sides of the same coin
The smooth edge of that coin is The Way
For me, the human experience
The poetry of emotions

Jason and I leave it at that
Him and his friend, Dave
We shake hands
Bow to each other
Walking backwards in parting, holding onto the energy

I turn to see the old woman, Alice
Who tells me she made some wrong choices
Wrong is only in the eyes of the beholder
Maybe her cloudy eye is stuck in judgement
But that is what I see through my blue eyes

The late August wind blows my striped scarf towards the street
I take the call
Gather my belongings
And walk up the block to unlock my bike and head back to the Northeast
Alice is now on that corner, two blocks away from our previous interaction

I bow to her
As I bow to my internal audience
My Broadway show
My black and green I-Path sneakers pushing down on the pedals of my bike
Rolling across my stage
Good night - have a safe ride home

I keep looking back to check and make sure I’m still alive and that my life is still there
Like a new, fresh mama who keeps checking on her baby to make sure its still breathing
Then holding her hand to its heart to make sure its still beating
Lifting her newborn gently out of its crib to lie in mamas big bed on mama’s chest
So they can both keep each other alive
Mythological organs containing a hero’s journey are behind this human skin
The trees hung heavy with fat raindrops on the leaves
I didn’t think it was raining, until the wind came and the branches shook
Water couldn’t clutch the slippery surface, sliding off and onto my forehead
Into my hair
The wind came and the curtains danced
The fan in the window wasn’t on, but the wind turned the petals
Love me, love me not, it doesn’t matter
Ashtray, stacked books, crystal ball, Kansas coffee cup, a flute, candles, ducktap
And change in a broken bowl with Chinese calligraphy scribbled across it
All these things, and yet all nothing
No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind
So, even in the midst of chaos, in the midst of tremendous company, one can still keep the solitary mind, inseparable
My parents called me puss gut, or puss gut skin bank
I never questioned it
It was a term of endearment and it made sense
Especially when I would finish a whole box of Ho-Hos all to myself
In one sitting
Reaching my dirty fingernailed chocolate and cream covered hands into the box repeatedly
Until it no longer held weight - empty
The weight transferred to my stomach
As I nonchalantly pushed the tip of my blue jelly sandles against the side porch floor
While on the swinging bench hung with chains that moaned
Back and forth, back and forth
Then clutch my belly I did, my puss gut
Using my tongue to push more chocolate and cream out of the cracks and crevices of my teeth
Hoping for some saliva watered-down sweet, sugary leftover satisfaction
It’s just me here, dancing with the gods in my mind
The archetypes fill my flesh
As I continue to turn my head and check
To making sure that I’m still alive

Patsy, oh sweet, lonely Patsy
& your bitter-sweet tormented soul
That you know doesn't belong to anyone
You claw @ it until your fingernails bend back and break, crack, splinter
Your bike is too small
Your knees hit you in the face when you ride down back streets
Keeping to the side with the elongated shadows
To stay cool
Your helmet, oh dear Patsy, is too big
It tips down and covers your eyes
I am afraid you will get hurt
You jerk your head back
Over and over
Because you can't seem to figure out how to adjust the strap
And you leave it, because you believe it
Is a metaphor for life
Yeah, it may be too loose, but better than too tight
Patsy, do you understand balance?
Your knee caps are indented with teeth-marks
As you ride by my house
Passing through the shadow of my front-yard tree

“Where should we hide it?”
“How about in that drawer?”
Leah stashed the butcher knife in her vanity mirror which was located next to her bedroom window on the first floor, the only floor, looking out on the backyard and into the shaking woods that surrounded her house on all sides. That night we planned to climb out that same window and quietly make our way across three neighbors’ shadowed yards to Heather Weidemann’s pale yellow trailer, where we planned to kill her while her overweight-tap- dancing-clarinet-playing-innocent-body lay sleeping. No real reason did we have for this sinister plot – Heather was our friend, to some degree anyway, she was our neighborhood friend and we were bored, so she became our culprit – bullseye and bombs away. The motive was for the thrill of designing a strategy, scheming it up, picking out the clothes we would wear – black of course, with nylon stockings over our faces to disguise our identity. This idea was inspired from my older brother Adam, who had dressed up as a robber for Halloween the year prior. We both knew we weren’t going to do it, but that was never mentioned, we built up the energy playing off each other’s imagination. When night fell, we fell…asleep in our popcorn-stained pajamas and soiled buttery fingers watching Disney’s The Lion King. Our limbs slowly slid off the couch as we sleepily returned them to our sides only for them to descend again and again throughout the uneventful hours of darkness. We lived on the dusty, coughing, pot-hole laden back roads of upstate New York, and like my mom would always tell us, we had to create our own entertainment, just like she had to when she was our age, so we took her advice and ran full speed ahead. We didn’t fully grasp death, and we surely didn’t comprehend what the act of murdering another human being with a butcher knife meant. Leah’s younger sister Trista, whom she shared her room with, found that knife in the drawer a couple months later, when our mission was long forgotten, strangled by the string of a child’s short attention span. When questioned, Leah nonchalantly used the rabid raccoon that we had thrown rocks at just days prior as a justification. Leah, my older sister Lisa and I had balanced ourselves on the rotting beams of the dilapidating barn down the street as Trista yelped and squealed bellow. Perhaps she was one part fearful that the raccoon, with its frothy mouth, would sink its teeth into her plump skin, and one part certain we were going to tumble to our death as the moaning edifice collapsed, its remaining skeletal structure caging in our shattered bodies. Leah claimed she kept the knife in the drawer in the event that the raccoon stopped by for a visit. “Didn’t you see that crazy raccoon’s glossy eyes?” She retorted, widening her own eyes. “It might have followed us home and is waiting in the woods to have revenge,” puffing out her chest to show her bravery and playing off Trista’s trepidations. It became a dead subject, as the knife was returned to the kitchen, and Leah and I our shenanigans. Trista had flaming red hair, which screamed like an out of control infant, as did her personality. Chubby, awkward, and stumbling in her lumpy body, she tried to follow Lean and me in our expeditions, which she usually ended up becoming the victim of, to her tragically broken dismay.
I met Leah on the number twenty-nine school bus in first grade. We were five years young. She sat next to me in the seemingly gigantic black leather seat with her oversized orange t-shirt that was posing as a dress. Thick turquoise blue stockings covered her scrawny juvenile legs and beaten up black converse high-tops her feet. Unruly springing curly brown hair resisted being tamed by her single red barrette, keeping it out of her slightly rounded face. She was a beautiful little girl with dark skin, one might think her to be of African descent, like my mother did the first time she met her, but she wasn’t. George was our crusty, morose bus driver. He was old, grumpy and bald – except for the Saturn ring of white hair that haloed his scalp. If he deemed the noise level becoming annoying to his rickety ears, he would take his wooden baton and slam the metal roof of the bus with it, which penetrated our immature bones with a jolt of attention. The surprise subsided and dwindled without much effort, as we resumed our wild antics and youthful frivolities. Leah was my best friend besides Krista Johnston.
“Hey, psst, Lindsay, look in here.” Leah leaned over and nodded her head for me to look into her forest green L.L. Bean backpack with someone else’s initials embroidered on the front. After squinting for a good glimpse, I honed in on a pack of Marlboro Red cigarettes (which I would come to know well in coming years) and a cowboy yellow lighter she had stolen from her mom’s sagging purse. It was sixth grade and Leah, Heather Weidemann, and I were sharing a leather bus seat that reeked of putrid funk. A smell I can’t seem to shake, like my miniature nose could sense the coated entrails of the cow before it was mutilated to become stretched into a pew to hold pious children on their way to becoming perfect images in the eyes of God. She and Heather had made plans to deviously sneak into the bathroom and test these mysterious symbols of curiosity to our young investigative minds. I inquired when, with a quivering nervous voice, while a joker-like grin spread across my pimple-strewn face. Oh darn, this was just the time I was to have my trumpet lesson – a sense of relief came over me, but not without a sting of regret from the rebellious side that was maturing within me, as well as the peer pressure that was starting to squeeze and compress my pubescent body. Leah and Heather ended up getting caught by a teacher who was allergic and sensitive to cigarette smoke and conveniently happened to be walking by the lavatory as they were taking their first drags. Just down the peeling linoleum hallway was I, attempting to control the sound of brass between my blameless lips as “Hot Cross Buns” belched and heaved out of my horn in unison to their unsuccessful delinquency. They were suspended for four days. My mom raised an eyebrow of disapproval at the news, as I acted shocked, showing complete confusion that my friends were capable of such disobedience. At the same time I profited off their misconduct to embellish my saintliness, which helped me in coming years exploit my parent’s naivety. Mom would catch me, by the help of Lisa my bitter, bad-tempered older sister, a year later. Although, because the circumstances of Lisa’s tattling, she let it go with a strangling hug, calling me her baby as she refused to loosed her arms, rocking me from side to side with her watery eyes swaying along. She was beginning to realize the parental grasp on her children was waning, as I was the youngest. I left that same night to go Liz Kelley’s house, where I would resume my tomfoolery and experimentation with the limits of authority and the novelty of adolescence.
We had highly active imaginations, Leah and I. When we were ten years old we sneaked out of Leah’s house for the first time, two years after our failed attempt at murder. Slowly descending down the ladder of the bunk-bed, we kept our eyes on Trista’s bulging body under the blankets. We tiptoed through the darkness, out of her bedroom at the very end of the narrow picture-littered hallway, past her parents locked bedroom, past her older brother Noah’s bedroom, where he perhaps was sucking inconspicuously on his chicken wing bone stash he kept in a Ziploc bag under his stained-sheet bed, through the living room, and out the rickety metal screen door, carefully letting it shut silently with the utmost concentration – people didn’t seem to lock their doors at night in the backcountry, or shut them in this case. The fresh air enveloped our skin as we breathed freedom into our lungs. Once we were down the gravel drive we spilled out onto Turkey Hill Road and rejoiced in our escape. The moon was nearly full, so we had enough natural light to keep us comfortable, and decided to sit in the middle of the road in front of Weird Wayne’s house, kiddy corner from Leah’s, where eleven years later he would be arrested for growing 80 plants of outdoor marijuana. He had a totem pole about two stories tall made out of large plastic jugs and other garbage that shone eerily against the moonlit sky. To the left of the totem pole was an enormous garage with the solar system painted dramatically with vibrant colors on the outer wall facing the street. A cemetery of rusty dead cars that had “shit the bed” and other dismantled and rotting materials were strewn about the property, which I hesitate in calling a yard, since patches of dead grass, rocks and overgrown weeds don’t necessarily warrant that label. All sorts of myths were invoked about Weird Wayne and his mystifying ways, which we loved to ponder, as I still have yet to meet him face to face, and probably never will. I like it better that way. Making up my own idea of his appearance and mannerisms, rather than having them shattered by the perhaps mundane drab truth of his character (which happens all too often) added to the mystery.
“What is nothing?” Leah asked. “I mean, if the Earth was to blow up, it couldn’t just disappear, the pieces would have to go somewhere, but where?” She made a gesture with her hand signifying the Earth exploding, laying her undersized palm out to represent this confusing nothingness. Trying to wrap our ten year old brains around this concept was a challenge, but something began burning inside me that night, as I looked up at the fiery stars and contemplated my home, the Earth, bursting open. I wondered aloud if we would infinitely fall through space with the stomach-dropping feeling of being on a roller coaster ride forever. Sharing those times with Leah were my first memories of dissecting this existence for hours, into the early morning, as later we would share cigarettes, pot, and LSD in those same stale back roads, still grappling over the same ideas, each passing year of life lived adding to the building themes of how did we get here? Why are we here? What is this? And an array of other tangential examinations into this human experience and the enigma of being alive at all. We also did our fare share of shallow gossip too, no doubt, but I learned at an early age there was more than just who the bitch and the hot catch of the minute was as Leah and I, and, on other occasions, friends from outside the neighborhood, would talk simultaneously with the cicadas and bull frogs on those nights filled with fervor, birthing passion in me I still nourish and cultivate to this day. Sometimes we would play ding-dong ditch, but instead of hiding in the ditch, we would run into the Mulvaney’s cornfields as the stalks would snap and groan at our late night disturbances. The husks with their refreshing aroma filled our nostrils. We would watch through the arrow-like rows which stood like soldiers, as we waged war on conformity, holding back our laughter at the sleepy-eyed community peeked out their doors in confusion and sometimes hostility - if we were that lucky to be rewarded with the satisfaction of getting a rise.
One thing I loved about Leah was her tomboy quality. She didn’t seem to care much about her looks and it didn’t matter because she had a beauty to her that transcended physical appearance. She wore her hair the same way everyday – pulled back in a low pony tail collected at her neck. Her unmanageable tresses were an enemy she tackled with a rubber band, and she didn’t have the energy to devote to any other maintenance. Old-man wool sweaters with v-necks and faded jeans from Goodwill were her preferable costume. She would wear them until the bottoms were frayed and the knees were worn and ripped. When the elbows of her sweaters wore out, she patched them herself, which added extra character, and deepened the old-man-possibly-bum quality. Three distinct freckles speckled her face - one small one on the end of her nose, one under her left eye, and one slightly off-center to the left on her chin. She had quite a rowdy laugh when you got her going, as she would lung forward spewing forth cackles and clutching her stomach. She would fart in front of anyone, especially boys, and I respected her for her seeming indifference to the opposite sex, as she would wave her hand fanning her foul emission. She wasn’t shy, and I was indeed the opposite, so she filled my void. She was my muse. Like some adolescent version of Jack Kerouac and Neil Cassady.
We shared our first job together at Tom Wahl’s, which was a fast food diner-like burger joint posturing as a 50s throwback with an antique jukebox and black and white checkered floor. It was located in Avon, two towns over from where we grew up. Avon swallowed up America’s youth, either spitting them out sopping with the juices of addiction or killed them, as I would later attend two funerals for friends who couldn’t escape the unyielding clenched grip of heroin. I sometimes wonder how I was ever saved from that bottomless pit of a town. Whenever we would leave Tom Wahl’s we reeked of fryer grease, Wahl sauce, and rubber from the gloves we were made to wear, which left a white chalky residue and ate away at our nail polish. The stench hung onto our hair and fingers, lingering long after our shift ended, refusing to let go. I was the first one with a job there, which my mom forced me to get so I could learn about the “benefits and responsibilities of saving money.” I had the strictest parents out of my closest friends, but as I got older and met more people, I learned that my parents were not even close to firm in comparison. They always supported my interests, for the most part, and still do. My mom bought me a spell casting book when I delved into witchcraft at age twelve and would drive my friends and me to the cemetery down on Rowland Rd. to use the Ouija board and have séances. Leah and I carved our names into a tree in that cemetery, which was owned by the Mulvaneys who also had a family-run farm on Clark Rd. (the street my house was on), perpendicular to Turkey Hill Rd., connected by Rowland.
Leah came to work high on acid once. Rita, our skeletal boss with sunken eyes, short thin mousey brown hair, and a pink grateful dead bear tattoo on her ankle we decided she didn’t deserve, assigned her to work the front counter and wait on customers. “You have to switch with me Lindsay, please, I’ll do anything” Leah begged. The dining room was the most sought after position because you were absent from Rita’s evil eye of discontent and shrewd bitter dissatisfactions. I agree to switch under the condition that she smokes a joint with me after our shift. It was settled, and Leah zombied-off to the dining room to stare at the checkered floor with pupils dilated like black holes. She circumnavigated the ketchup-stained rag in the same spot over and over as “Lollipop, lollipop oh lolli lolli lolli, lollipop, bah dum dum dum dum” by the Chordettes vibrated out of the sparkling jukebox and into her mesmerized ears. Leah, Amy, Jamie Lee, and I, who called our selves the “four best friends,” all worked there. Whenever we ate LSD, in the beginning, we did it together. I would always be the one to cry, they knew when it was coming too. I would get all sentimental about the love I held for my family, how hard working my dad was, and how he never got the recognition her rightfully deserved, how lucky we were to have each other as friends, with my chin starting to tremble and my face getting flush. “Oh, here she goes again” they would say in unison, as Jamie would throw a New Kids on the Block pillow at me, Joey McIntyre’s face meeting mine with a thud. I wept because I felt like life was killing me with its beauty and if I didn’t express it; it would sting overwhelmingly in the lost labyrinth of my web-like insides. I even sobbed discreetly whenever we would watch The Wall by Pink Floyd. Biting my lip and hoping no one would notice as I cascaded through past memories and future fantasies that were roused by the films heavy themes and deep, often times contorted subject matter. “I don’t want to be just another brick in the wall” I thought to myself, as the children with warped masks shuffled single file through the factory and onto the conveyor belt to be churned into mince meat representing societies forced compliance. I imagined the wall of my life enclosing on myself like the rag doll cartoon image on the screen and was relieved with a sigh of satisfaction when the children began breaking windows and turning over desks in revolt. Textbooks were set aflame, burning away the lies of a history misconstrued by the blurry lense of elitist propaganda. We would have to ask special permission to obtain the movie from Amy’s dad Harry, who was stout with a silly grin and an afro. He requested that we never smoke pot with anyone but him for two reasons: 1. “You never know what people might put in their weed to take advantage of young girls like yous,” and 2. “I have the best herb you can find around here anyways,” which, admittedly, was true at that time. His pot twinkled and shimmered with the smell of a rotten skunk or cat piss, which signified its superiority from the stem-n-seed “mexi-brick” shwag with a musty odor we were used to elsewhere. He kept The Wall in a safe place out of our greasy derelict hands. We pretended we didn’t know where it was, but we did. He would slip it into the VCR and possibly sit with us to watch a bit, if we were really lucky, he would pass around a joint and lean back to reminisce; as his daughter and her best friends were taken on a psychedelic journey he himself undertook years prior, unfolding layers of depth to our ripening early teen brains. Our minds would break open and spill into multi-dimensional streaks of resonance with what I would later describe as the divine recollection of the cosmic consciousness latent in everything, as we played hide and seek with our awakening selves.
When is the moment when the split occurs? Like pieces of driftwood Leah and I had no seeming attachment to each other, after spending so much time floating down the stream together, the current shifted and our lives took on a separate flow. There isn’t a specific moment. It’s an illusion. Just like film, which is captured in segments. When sped up it becomes seamless, without being able to see the dividing lines. I began dating Hoot when I was 15. He also worked at Tom Wahl’s, lived in Avon, and was a punk rocker with a mohawk and a studded leather belt, which I loved. I spent more time with other friends and him, mostly in Avon. Shortly after her LSD experience in the dining room, Leah was fired from Tom Wahl’s. Showing up late, often with an increasing disinterest, didn’t last long with Rita. One day Leah snapped an offensive comeback at her and she pointed her boney finger at the door. Leah threw down her gloves and apron with pleasure. We smirked at each other as she pushed the chrome door open. I could feel the fresh air on my face, yearning to join her, but resisting. I heard news of her parents getting a divorce, which came as a sort of relief. Her dad had a ravishing temper. One of the first times I had a sleepover at Leah’s, he accused her of losing the key to the garage and wouldn’t let us in the house until she found it. He screamed belligerently at her through the screen door, the stench of his hot alcohol breath seeping out of the holes and rips as he told us we had to sleep outside if she didn’t find it…I kept my head down as he roared his admonishments to Leah as to what else would happen if she didn’t find that key. “I don’t give a flying fuck if you have a guest with you or not Leah. You had better find that goddamn key.” We searched frantically, but to no avail, so we capitulated and started putting together a bed on the back porch. Leah kept apologizing for the situation, saying that she swore she didn’t lose the key, but I really didn’t mind. Anyhow, I didn’t want to let on that her dad frightened the shit out of me. I didn’t want to sleep anywhere near where he was. I liked sleeping outside too; it was an adventure. As it started getting dark we learned from Noah that her dad found the key in his pocket. He never said a word to us. We slept outside anyways – to my relief. Her mom and siblings moved into an apartment complex in Livonia, the town our school was in which was about a 10-minute drive away from Turkey Hill Rd. It became a popular destination to hang out at because her mom let people drink and smoke pot. I would occasionally find myself there. Leah and I would reminisce about old times and make the redundant hollow statement that we should hang out soon, which never came to fruition. I noticed from afar Leah taking on a different form. The longer I went without seeing her, the more shocked I was each time our paths reconvened and I gasped inside at her new costume, much different than the ripped jeans and vagrant sweaters of past times . She started going to cosmetology classes at BOCES, getting French manicures, wearing makeup and clothing picked from manikins in the windows of shopping mall America. I had this feeling like she had given up on our days as a derelict duo, so I gave up on her too, and didn’t see her again for five years.
I was home visiting from Portland where I had been living for two years. A new sleaze bar had opened up in Hemlock – the one and only bar in that desolate town. It was stuffed with townies of all ages, chugging down cheap Labbatt beers, their drunken lips sucking in vigorously deep drags of Marlboro Reds in hopes the ashes might reveal where they went wrong. It scared me to remember my gangly roots. I went with my sister Lisa, whom was another piece of driftwood in my life. With my hair in its third year of dreadlocks which were twisted up in a bun, I caught Leah’s silhouette through cigarette smoke and thick karaoke lyrics getting tangled in my skin. She told me how she was planning on moving to Arizona soon to work at a salon, as she clutched her mini leather designer purse and twirled a ringlet of gelled hair with her manicured finger. I had thought of her on different occasions in Portland when someone would inquire about my past and where my questioning was first born and raised. I would hear the echo of mine and Leah’s conversations and I came to appreciate their importance as materials in the structure I had built, my temple. I expressed this to Leah that night at the Hemlock Grill, thanking her for those times which opened me up to a deeper sense of appreciation at such a young and fresh mind; before the tainting had begun, or before I was aware of my conditioning. She smirked and giggled, as I got the impression that she stopped questioning long ago…I sometimes don’t know which is worse. My heart breaks open now and then with love and despair, anger and remorse, irresistible attraction and worship of this human undertaking. I again become sentimental, my chest tightening to hold back those tears which would send pillows launched through the air in my direction.