pillow v. 1: my girlfriend's alright

pillow v. 1: my girlfriend's alright:                              My girlfriend is alright in telling me things,                                             I didn't know about...

valerie's violet morning apparel

                       Valerie's violet morning apparel,
                               silken nightgown and sable camisole folded
                                  neatly upon antique dresser-drawers of
                                         velour curtained bedroom upholstery.
                                             Brass-studded chambers of dawn's illustrious fornication,
                  "If you lie to me tonight, lover, it will be cuz I asked you to"
                                supple frame and rose-smitten cheeks flushed to
                                            incarnate hues of pallid complexion.
                       Sullenly reposed upon a gilded antique love-seat beneath
                                 marmoreal pillars of an olde colonial sun-room
                                bright rays of golden sun illuminate afternoon shadows
                            along wool damasked counters of opaque varnish.
                 Tranquil rays of warm iridescence dally gently into Victorian windows
                          of eighth-story colonnades,
                              below a towering browned arcade of weathered architecture,
                               off shallow eastern shorelines
                               luminous cycles of evening commenced
                         sudden gales of rain to sweep in from the north
                            onto our vast Atlantic seaboard.
                   there is hope for us, enduring frigid tempests of inhumane meteorology, sacrificing tell-tale legacies for drunken midnight promenades homeward
                           sidling up early April pavements, to dingy upstairs catacombs
                                 lit by candlelight one Thursday night
                                    lighting cigarette filters and chucking 'em
                                        out your attic window onto
                                             gritty neighborhood streets
                                                 you and your sisters clothes
                                                    me, I don't need a rosary
                                                      I got nothing
                                                         in my head
                                                             that's mine
       
                             
                        You and I, commiserating by residential mantels: whilst
                             prudently nurturing embryonic tombs of daffodils plucked on high deserted plains, springing enchanted seasons into sulfuric vistas of arboreal phosphorescence, bucolic burials between dusk's scythe-like cusp in nineteenth-century penitence. An epileptic fog has been lifted. Ascended, reversed, and transcended:
                                shimmering white sheathes of
                               hypnotic gardens below moonlit eclipses of emerald effluent .
                     Blue-lemon moon and red-yellow sun spread infernal shadows windward
                       down county freeways of broken photography as
                  suburban anecdotes resound avuncularly in
                                    local barroom vernacular
                                        years ago
                        auburn boughs enveloped our teenage courtyard
                    we frolicked lucidly around prime-time perimeters,
                       skinning our shins and feebly falling down
                                inevitable rabbit holes of young adulthood
                           On the weekends, we'd lift our sunday prayers to callous pastimes of weekday futility,
                                  It is the evening of our lives
                                 perishing  upon earthly chambers of carnal adaptations,
                                     lastly you my love can't hear the
                                           peal of god's perpetual bell thrust
                                                  through my chest imploding and
                                                             destroying what I called my love
                                                                  and my life of
                                                                     course
                 

dancing with a woman at the bar

                              One Summer evening a few years back, within August's fiery hearth, red glowering heat illumined a pink-pastel horizon, while off in the distance; freight cars rattled helplessly down long narrow railway tracks, and for those no longer living, this is where it all ends.
                             I sat at a local counter next to a pleasant looking older lady seeking employment at Kellogg's warehouse, mumbling in deluded apathy to herself and whoever may listen "just a nine to five shift is all I need damn-you" shaking her fist at the barkeep, wiping her painted-violet nails on a balled up bev-nap. We sat at a far end of the tavern beside a unisex bathroom, as the door swayed out and in from trafficking locals; routinely pushing methadone and amphetamine.
                        A rural city outskirt town assumes its own borderline personalities once you've stayed long enough. Enduring pointless mindsets between onslaught seasons of dissipated failure, myself included being flagged from this establishment many times for threatening behavior.
                        A dated jukebox dinned uselessly in a dim smoke-filled background, probably repeating some contemporary country song about heartache:
                               "Don't break it................ youuu jusssst......... may lose it, come on shake it I jusss.... cannnt... refuse it................"
                                        Earlier that day, cement sidewalk lines blazed in sparkling noontime, below sky-vast chambers of ultraviolet sunbeams, embedded footprints enveloped a Main st. bus-stop perimeter, prior to grey evening clouds creeping in at a later hour when nothing matters.
                       We all walked the neighborhood plank before, blind folded, bleary-eyed, knowing not love nor empathy in barroom hearsay, only lies of lust-filled encounters and deceitful anecdotes. Tongue-tied, tormented and blistered- feel death drawing you in long enough, you almost start welcoming it.
                       Staggering homeward one dawn, mental confusion began rearing its futile engine, countless promenades down this dirty alleyway feeling busted, disgusted and entrusting strangers to personal treasures we gather together in vacant dreamworlds.
                              One late Tuesday amid happy hour, sometime during the fall, I recall leaves of auburn boughs oscillating downward gradually, descending silently off rows of wooded maple, resting lavishly upon gritty street clefts of a cul-de-sac near my apartment building.
                                   later that night toward closing-time, I couldn't help
                                 noticing a petite younger-looking woman sitting solely at a booth across the bar. Appearing comfortably at ease to me; an unsuspecting aura about her, portraying someone,somehow, immediately unaffected by the pressing urgency of the situation. We all have it coming, for most of us sooner,                      
for her maybe later.
                         I, a degenerate patron out-of work; strung-out on dope; down on luck, cash and food-stamps, seeing her I didn't care about any of that. A familiar euphoria pervaded my hollow psyche, due to apprehending this beautiful lady before, perhaps in a prior existence we sat amid golden cornfields at dusk below a crescent moon, enduring lunar cycles of each other, as soft steady gales blew in off the cool atlantic,   whirling seagulls glided above an off-season boardwalk, as early mist rose from white-crested foam of a hypnotic ocean. On the browned warm dunes we sat indian-style passing a whiskey flask,
                      glaring into each others pupils, exchanging subliminal treacheries. I yearned deliriously for intimacy with this lovely creature sipping  low-shelf bourbon-manhattans in her work clothes, (always an extra cherry)
                           I nodded into another opiated daze:
                             Seasonal pastures, behind our adolescent farmhouse, a towering grey silo formidably representing paternal abandonment not far beside us, husks of lemon-yellow sunflower stalks swayed to steady breezes. Hedged grasslands growing dewy frost in winter whiteness, intermittent thunderstorms rolling in off the northern coast of  Maine. Our youthful hours dwindled as heaping sand between pallid fingers, sultry afternoons beside a running brook and you in a two piece violet bathing suit. Your rosy complexion glistened before me as never-ending rainbows materialized way-down our irreproachable timeline, its was like our existence never began until that moment,                                                                                                                                                                      
                              probably looking intoxicating,
                                        I approached her casually,
                                            sat my ass down right beside her
                                                               and asked her to dance....
                         

A Wicked Generation- Where are you climbing

inflections, innuendos, and heartache

                                           weekday episode
                           
                                    Another cruel weekday episode, rechecking into the ER- beneath somber mid-July clouds. I walked these arid neighborhood streets months prior, dolefully searching for work and finding none, just being released from county prison; a pale male in his early thirties, confounded and thirsty. Poor, tired, sick of myself and all I called my own. When you mess up in a town like this the district police aren't your friends, no matter how much clean time you had. I'd hold up my NA key tags and jangle them cowardly in front of long grim visages of local law-enforcement officers, pleading before being taken into custody, "uh, ya see now? at least I'm not on drugs."
                                   Early vagrant afternoon, awaking past check-out time on dingy motel bedspread to  Portuguese maid rapping vehemently on wooded door, bewailing four-letter words in vernacular Spanish. I arose that day hopelessly weary, fighting a prying headache brought on by strong drink and lustful hymns of incriminating deceit. A couple of nights and already turned the room upside down,
                                        into a solemn pig-sty of throttling alcoholism. Balled-up paper towels and sordid beer tabs enmeshed upon maroon carpeting. A black and white television blaring out useless information on how to tighten my abs into a six-pack- then ambling to motel vestibule sink to purge my guts out.
                                  The thing here is when somebody's in the grips of something like this, you can't see the way out, but there is a way in, entering a hospital emergency unit, into detox and eventually rehab. Nobody wants to do this again.
                                  I hated my life, the social despondence acquired through reclusive indulgence; justified my past lifestyle by maintaining dead-end jobs as a convenience store clerk, or running food at an up-scale Japanese cuisine restaurant off route 309.
                                       We all believe a thing like this can happen, nothing tying me down to life's struggles, situations or abnormalities.
                             
                                      2)    feeble attempt at adult relationship
                                   
                              On Summer Tuesday evenings during happy-hour; I'd be seen pawning broken anecdotes to exiguous drink-pouring barkeep at familiar sawdust tavern, we drank for oblivion; every one of us.
                              Previously that day I worked a lunch-shift waiting tables at a casual city sidewalk restaurant, the owner- a middle-aged Jew entrepreneur who flirted with some of the younger waitresses; I didn't care about him, nothing was farther from my mind. I lived with a woman, a girlfriend whom I didn't love and probably never will, what I'd cling to and dearly love about her, were the things reminding me of my concupiscent self, the time we spent making love, frivolously romanticizing over 3.2 %  beer and stale cigarettes on our apartment living room sofa-bed, perpetuating genuine names we'd of called our unborn children. I detested sharing a mattress with her due to unresolved abandonment issues brought on by a traumatic childhood. I'd be up every night sniffing amphetamine and recklessly pouring sour bourbon down my sallow throat, fulfilling a self-inflicted prophecy that would come true sooner than later, driving me inevitably to death by overdose,
                                                    but that is a different story,
                               Family and coworkers told me I needed help and they were usually right, urinating a couple times onto dirty piles of clothes in dark clefts of our bedroom, not a big deal to me cause I was aiming for the laundry basket. Amid climatic weeks at this place; I developed a mortifying habit of blasting The Best of Don Henley record, replaying all through the night on weekdays, flaring the already irate working-class tenants tempers.
                                                Torture was waking up on that sticky hard-tiled floor every few hours in need of more, my girlfriend left weeks prior, this required a long time to grieve. When I'd  awake in bed, for a few seconds laying supine and bewildered,  playing  an amusing tape of personal tragedy around in my aching cranium.
                                             I pushed her away, mindlessly repeating similar buffoonery until one ordinary day she packed-up and left,
                                               what was right for her and for me,
                                               we'll never know together
                                               one thing I know
                                               getting sober is
                                               never to treat a person
                                               how I did her,
                                               much unnecessary heartache
                                               never-ending
                                             
                                                   
                                                I
                         

Dan Pollock-Rollin' in the mud

Dan Pollock-Her recovery