snoitisnarT

Sorry to leave abruptly. There's a rhythm to this; I'll get it. I imagine a You: When I don't write, You get pissed. When I get pretentious, you feel shame; you don't forward the site. You stay away, but only for a bit.

So go ahead, pretend I'm real.

I'm staying with my father, have for months since I got back from Paris broke and 40-some hours awake, startled at the width of suburban streets.

I explain for myself if not you.

I don't mean to present this as romantic or deliberate or other-than-fuckupped. I came, I wrote, I floundered. I had some idea that I could write truth, so no one read to say I sucked. I sat ripping pages out of Writer's Market, nothing to smoke them with. Phillipe loaned me a couple grand to relocate: "Come to Paris." Whyever not? About the time the money left I left my address book and passport on a car in the Rue de francs bourgeois long enough to get a couple car-lengths away and turn -- oops.

The Embassy folk Place Concord felt I'd behaved badly. The Embassy must be a fun place to work. "You meet the strangest people," as an elegant ancient man with a curling handlebar moustache told my aunt Monica one time on a bus in Culver City as she leaned over and glanced at his sketchbook to verify that he was, indeed, Salvador Dali.

The embassy does filter the people entering. But then, I qualified -- a blue-eyes-no-Qu'ran thing, I suppose: as an American citizen, I had a right to know why I couldn't return home.

"All you have to do is bring in five Americans who do have ID's to vouch for you."

"Can I get them to come into some office in Los Angeles?"

"Don't you know anyone?"

"I'm American."

"The United States Government will not issue a passport with no way of
identifying you."

"Can I get a dozen Frenchmen to say I'm not French?"

"American citizens with identification. Do your best."

Now I wish I were back at le Beaubourg, thankful again at the grey rain slanting outside, proud owner of a chair with a view of two library stacks. Do I miss it? Or does seeing the rainwater jet through the handcarved gargoyle mouths on Rue Saint Denis give me a way to avoid being in my father's home in Lakewood CA speaking Aeromilitary with you --

-- and dealing with my job for ECorp, at LISA, where I classify the documents of said industry in a language which contains just four verbs, none of which involve leak, break down, irradiate, brainfart or fuck up.

No no no: moi, je suis poete: so I've just got to find what rhymes with incident.

Dust Angels

Dear Angel of Dust;

I always wanted to write that. Nathaniel Mackey wrote that. He wrote it in Bedouin Hornbook and maybe the rest of the trilogy. I should have brought a copy to the ducks today. I could have sung it.

Like roadside dust to settle myself I settled to watch the ducks today. Again. Then pedalled in darkness, glad for the rocks and gravel vibrating chill thru my shoulders from the tines, glad for darkness.

What if Mackey didn't want religion, just a book? What if he never wanted to write a book, but no one had written it or someone left it somewhere, let the leaves scatter and damp in algae and birdcrap.

The leaves I stole from the office I left on the spokes of the bike, dry, pinned by the keys.


Thank you for coming to a second post when I wrote you nothing in the first.

I must have known something when I felt guilty to take this job. I'd walked into the Voltage office, the temp place, and told them I needed a paycheck. I felt I implied that I would do most anything, and the agent smiled behind her Moneypenney dark frames as though that anything sounded just correct.

"This writing," she mentioned, and casually, "Does it ever take, well, a journalistic air? I mean, ah, pieces for newspapers, or --"

"Oh, no no, just poetry," I played a hunch, played a false modesty as though to hide false pride, "a thing about how words fit together." She smiled. I suppose I fit some part. From the stubble on my face when I'd gotten off the plane I had carved some affectation of a goatee, and as I spoke to her I had crossed my legs comfortably in a way that should feel faggy this side of the Atlantic.

"No, that's OK. That's fine," she said. "It's just. We've sent people before. They're funny over there."

I'll get to funny, but my father's keys are at the door, and he doesn't need to know.

And there isn't time. Was there? I've mislaid it. Dear Angel of Dust these four thousand years whoever ever else?