machete goes bang bang

verdun

 The fumes from my grass mower make it so I can’t breathe. But I don’t mind. I like how I get dizzy at first and the way the fresh air and gas mix, like a nose cocktail. The friggin’ bunnies ate my daffodil buds again. I really need to get some traps. Making sure my mower doesn’t cut up the flowerbed, I step over the headless green shoots and keep marching back and forth between the endless rows of white crosses. The graves look good today. I think Mark may have started using that new cleaning product I read about online and suggested to him. My mind starts to wander through its daily list of thoughts. What happens when one dies? How will I die? How did they die? What am I going to have for lunch? And what the hell is Jose doing with the hedges? They really shouldn’t be this short.  I stop mowing and look back at the work that I have accomplished. Row 1-25. Not too bad for three hours in. I look ahead of me and see the rest of work that I still face. “Ok, guys, stop barking commands, thought you were supposed to be dead,” I chuckle out loud to the silent whites that nip at my upper thigh if I get too close in passing with my mower.

My wife is a pretty decent cook, I must admit. When she decides to do it. I eat the chicken salad sandwich that she made for me. I did something right. Probably fed her cat or said something that she liked. That makes me feel good that I made her feel good. I eat the rest of my lunch under the big oak tree in the middle of the memorial site that is dedicated to the strangers that came from another country to help us fight a war that wasn’t even their own. I love Capri Suns, but I hate the sound of slurping the last bit out of the plastic juice bag. I do it anyway because taste wins over sound. It’s nearing late afternoon by the time I get to the expertise trimming or as my boss calls it, the pube trim. I don’t like his sense of humor. It’s too crass, but I like how he laughs at his own jokes. I get out my sheers and bend to my knees and start clipping around the base of the white marble crosses, those little tufts that are just out of reach of my mower. Once this close everything changes. I feel as if I’m giving the dead soldiers long overdue haircuts and I can almost feel their relief, as if I’m scratching their heads.  Sometimes I talk to them.  I make sure no one is around, but I’ll talk to them. “Jean Duprois on row 54 said he likes it when Jose makes animal figures out of the hedges, now don’t tell him this, but I friggin’ hate it. It makes me feel like he looks at you guys like it’s a circus and that’s not dignified. Don’t you agree?”

By the time I’m done with my work for the day, it’s around the time of day that I tell people to come by and visit. The sun is peeking through the trees that outline the property and it makes this golden light, like somebody put a light fabric over the sun, like those hippies do to lamps in the movies. The shadows from the crosses are long and the white has now turned a light copper, as if to blend in to the sunset. This is my favorite time. I see two bunnies hop onto the field, but I’m not mad, in fact I’m happy. At least my boys have pets.

morning after

The morning after is never real. At least, it doesn’t feel real. The sunlight blasts what you thought were your sexy, night ghoul attempts of romance novel quests into a futile puddle of moments peaked-climax only by closing your eyes, an instant smash of skin chalk boarding skin, spitting into each other’s mouths to prove…what? That we are not 13 anymore and can handle spit swapping without gagging. All is not sadness however, the flesh unites what the soul cannot do and the birds remind the puritan brain demon of that. “So what!! It’s life!! It’s lust!! It’s love!!” You go to pee. It burns. Your vagina screams and you grit your teeth. Sucking in air, because if he heard you moan he would be proud. You don’t want to give him that too. Dab your vagina gently because that’s what she deserved in the first place and you saunter back to bed, naked and tossing your hair, just what they teach you in the movies. He smiles and opens the covers to his warmth. You take it because it’s truly not comfortable sleeping naked. He breathes your hair, inhaling deeply and grinds his soft nether regions into your cold ass. “Want me to warm that up for you,” a joke he thinks is brilliant. You roll your eyes to nobody. He keeps grinding and you work your legs because yes, it does feel good…to stretch, to feel your aching limbs creak in awakening. You know the routine. He reaches for his spit, wipes it on you, you help spread your dainty lips and viola! Cum supreme before the coffee is made.  He starts slow because that’s what his girlfriend at age 17 told him to do, because it’s gentlemanly. Your vagina is sore because it’s not used to that much sex in so many hours and is so puffed up that you think hornets had swarmed your honey pot in the middle of the night. However, you can’t help but be turned on. It’s the small things that he doesn’t know that make your pulse jump from your wrist to your clit. His breath on your neck and the way his hands grab your wrists and his upper back arching to go deeper into you and the freckle on his collarbone that stares at you that you would never see unless you were this close and naked in this particular position. You cum. He cums, but not in you, on your belly and chest and you flinch because it’s hot and surprising where it lands. You turn your face pretending to moan, but it’s to save your eyes and face from getting sperm torched. He lays on you, lower back sweaty and he breathes out exhaustion and ecstasy. You’re proud how fast he came. “You have the tightest pussy.” The catch phrase that all men have picked up, as if they all agreed that was the best line to use when they didn’t know what else to say. You smile and laugh as if he had said it in context to your cat. He asks what’s funny, dubious that you are laughing at him, which you are, but you cover it up, “I keep it tight just for you.” Now he laughs as if you were the greatest girl in the world. And you both play your parts as you both wonder who’s going to get up first to end the morning after.

                      

thugs and rainbows

my friend Nikki taught me how to do the pout face, smokey eyes properly and she’s one of the most creative individuals i have ever known. here is one of her mix tapes that reminds me to keep it true. her face ain’t too shabby to look at either. get on it. http://8tracks.com/thelittlebukowski/thugs-shed-no-tears-motherfucker