burning

The car door flew open over the Sidney Sherman Bridge,

½ mile high in the sky

mom was angry I was going to jump out.

I wanted away from that stupid day-care with rusty slides

where little blonde girls cut their legs open

and we played Bloody Mary

in the bathroom spinning, spinning around.

And that school where our pervert principal pulled our pants down to slap

our bare white ass with wooden paddles.

I made it to spelling bee champ, practiced words they didn’t use in our income bracket.

Houston, you cesspool of an industrial town.

Death - your toxins, your Liverpool of alcohol and pedophile tendencies.

I went to your churches in search of God and found metal head boys

living near the port who’s fathers smoked and drank and worked long hours

at the chemical plants only to come home to their fat sweaty wives.

Pretty, pretty faces and blue eyed fat sweaty wives.

They beat their sons down as the factories spewed

and we were never beautiful enough for their elite disease.

We were stick figures with fuzzy-headed hair balls.

We were pale freckle faced freaks hoping for something more.

Maybe we would get out of this town one day; maybe we could break the chains.

I remember the bomb shelter we found, walked in, dad and I.

It all went black. Dark and red.

The stinky death beneath the monstrous toll bridge

high over the ship channel. The barges boat in their goods.

They tear down the amusement park - after many summers of season pass,

of smoking Marlboro reds like tomboy summer camp.

Hoping I’d meet that rebel boy, you know the high school drop out

who plays guitar beneath the street light outside his 1960 cottage home

while mom and dad fight over the phone bill or electric

or who gets what if there’s a nasty divorce.

‘I get the f*&king weed-eater.’ ,

‘what if you move into an apartment which is all you can afford on your restaurant salary, you won’t have any grass. I get the f*&king weed-eater.’

‘You’re evil.’

I hear his guitar like my own personal soundtrack.

I wish you’d hold me at the drive-in… God never came,

only white vans and selling newspaper subscriptions or waiting tables until a decent job.

I waited in line for the Gunslinger, and it twisted a knot in my gut.

rode the Texas Cyclone roller coaster until I vomited, over and over,

dropping from a mile high in the sky until the bladder lost its senses,

won the big stuffed animals from the hula-hoop toss.

For Lucky Strikes and my stupid friends whose tits were bigger and maybe

they were more Germanic or more complacent or didn’t mind if they ended up barefoot and pregnant with some ignorant east side guy in a trailer home park.

Through cigarettes and midnight Denny’s and 24 hour coffee-shops down the street from the airport, playing “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak over and over again.

Thinking maybe someone will fly in any minute for coffee - boots on the bench and snap-open suitcase.

So I got on a greyhound bus and rode off. To Lodi, to Los Angeles with a drunk roommate. Losing my record collection of classic rock, rock operas, garage, and punk, to San Francisco. Met couples on the run, lonely mothers who’s children moved out or went off to college. Lonely men on their third divorce. There were swamps and beaches and deserts and novels. The trees bent over the roads and bar bottles clinked outside pool halls while we had sidewalk curbs and sandwiches for dinner. They were silent.

Black.

Disgust your sex.

Blood.

Disgust your porn store and wooden swinging door like an old saloon and watch you bring girls in one by one, entrap them with promises of a new world. 
We used to sneak into the Hyatt Hotel downtown in the late nights, right before they closed the underground tunnel and play the baby grand piano, pretend we could play, pretend we were meaningful, weren’t just one more mouth to feed in a city of millions, pretend we wouldn’t be trampled.

Blue eyes sparkling with hope.

Pale skin glowing like ghosts we climbed ladders and ran through parking garages.

All these years

I lied in bed until a rash, drank and puked until I ended up in rehab,

ran and screamed until I lost twenty pounds, hid away for a year.

midnight beach trips, camping in the woods.

The cedar trees hover over like Sasquatch.

The closest to warm to hold me and blankets, buy more blankets turn the A.C. up and cover with piles of blankets until the sunlight goes away. Until the day is gone.

They break in and steal your Les Paul when you go to the movies.

They steal mail and bikes and hearts.

We roasted marshmallows and I realized after all of that, I didn’t feel like telling any stories. Only Memaw rotting away in an old folks home,

her skinny body and hanging skin in a ball like a little child

talking to her stuffed animals as if real babies.

‘You’re a pretty one’ she says.

I just don’t feel pretty any more, youth cute, like high school prom.

After all these years, after birthing two children,

their big fat blue heads popping out and into the world to breathe life.

I want to go back – back to the beach and the tunnel and the drive- in.

And when I’m buying popcorn you’d invite me to your car,

the one you finally saved up for after working for 5 years at that horrid video store cause your folks were suburban types.

You’d invite me to your car, I’d lean the seat back and think on all those years -

the Masons and their Rainbow girl ceremonies with basements

wearing wedding dresses while reciting Masonic verse.

You’d reach for my hand.

Hell, we’d make out, crazy mad style like adults.

Like Bonnie and Clyde and Jesus and Mary harlot

and it’s like long hot “where the stars at night are big and bright

(clap clap clap) deep in the heart of Texas”.

Deep inside it all.

And if they come with flashlights or security guards, we’ll speed out stirring up dust

as an old race-track pro would, the guy who never won the trophy

because he was boozing it up in the pits for two hours,

and always came in second.

At the Drive-In, the drive-in movie.

You and I.

20 years later.

I’m going back to Cali, I’m going back.

(I don't think so).