The Impossible Dahlia

I once met a girl from Biloxi:
Eyes green, hair red, girl foxy.
She wanted to talk
But I sputtered and balked
At that age I hadn't the moxie.

She had a great story that I have told elsewhere and will tell again sometime. Suffice it to say she seemed mythical to me. She seemed to have stepped out of the real world, where fantastic, dramatic things happen, to visit me in this half-warmed echo.

I have always been sick with jealousy of other lives, and I believe that always made me eager to love. Love promises some kind of vicarious indulgence in another life. I used to say that I fell in love not with people who were like me, but with people who were like I wished to be. By turns this meant beautiful, smart, cold, bitter, carefree. Perhaps this is always why opposites attract, this curious, wistful impulse.

There once was a wistful Wisconsan
Who wept when he pulled out his johnson.
It had a tattoo
That read, "Love me do?"
But lacked room to put a response in.

Large Cheese

There once was a lady from Minsk
Who had an identical twinsk
I once was her lover
Or was it...oh brother!
That other young lady from Minsk?

I don't know whether I have an unusual ability to produce limericks or merely an unusual desire to do so. I understand there are, or were, clubs for people with this affliction. Unfortunately, they were not what is now called a support group, but actually encouraged this behaviour.

Is it really so joyful and gay
To follow one rhyme scheme all day?
"There once was somebody"
Grows all fuddy-duddy
When writ out A-A-B-B-A.

Simply Radishing

I know what it is to be a stranger in the world. I know the uncanny sense of unreality. College, a set of halls lined with burnished oak, gleaming like a mausoleum, gleaming with the unhealthy glow of enormous tree sections in museums of natural history. Those vast cross-sections with arrows captioned "Da Gama discovers Pacific" or "Liberty Bell forged." The hall seems wrongly preserved. To walk in it, to weep in it is like fucking your grandmother. All I remember are empty, dull halls.

Think of the creeps and beauties and fucking future leaders of the world who left their slime trails here. Think of the waxy buildup from their horrible, fragrant breath! I don't want to touch anything. I might be infected with anything, anything at all - malaria, disease, jealousy, who knows. Oh the dramas, the melodramas, the historico-tragedies, the tragicomedies. Maybe the whole thing has the stench of death because this is the place for the most hopeful, the most possible, the most capable. And what do they find in life? Corporeality. Deep, deep in their hearts of hearts are their greatest dreams, their keenest wishes - to fly, to see the beginning and the end. The oldest man on his oldest day lying in his oldest bed dreams of soaring and believes he can.

Dirty Covers, Clean Book

Adam Zwoelf likes his job. He likes the power, but not in a gross, cartoonish way. No shades-wearing, no name-calling. He likes to carry the power in his easy gate, coiled like an Eastwood - almost charming, yeah, charming, like James Bond. Beautiful and dangerous.

Sitting outside Club 420. A poor fellow hobbles out, filthy with drink, drunk with filth. He walkishly falls over to the patrolcar, his OU Ducks hat stuck to the top of his hair like the last deck of a triple-scoop. "Waagooooo!"

Adam's out of his door, sprung up like a jack-in-the-box. Suddenly his beanpole physique has become intimidating.

"How you doing?"

"Jus goin home!"

"You going home? Okay, you go on home."

He waits ten extra seconds, following the sop with a serious stare no more threatening than a gun.

Back in the car, on the laptop, thumbing through arrest records,checking e-mail. One from Lt. Funfeau, heading to Shakers after the shift. Shakers. Adam loves stripclub names a heck of a lot more than he loves stripclubs. They're kind of prostitutes, especially nowadays. Grinding on you, groveling around for your money. It's just so fake.

A pest of kids giggles its way out of the darkness and runs up to the passenger window.

"You have - You got - Do you - stickers? - any stick - ers?"

"Sorry, I'm all out. Better luck next time."

The kids giggle off back into the black. One little girl, maybe twelve on the high side, looks back at Adam. Then, with that creepy fake flirtation, "Thank you sir!" Big smile, gaze held just too long. There's something really, really wrong with kids today. I swear it's worse.