Rome. 2016, March. Hadn't seen him since the '90s. Drunk on being away from the States, drunk on red and white wine, and a stomach gorged with in-house pasta, bread, and anything else I could get my hands on. Alley, restaurant. Trevi fountain checked off. Young Italian girls waving Americans in to their restaurants. A brothel feel. I want to go into the story about the two Italians fighting over the check. The owner and a drunk patron. I want to go into the gelato after, the air of Rome, the bricks of the alleys. But I can't. Rare to see this profile written in first person, but this is different. Like Rome is different. Lost there. Must gaze upon the Pantheon during the first rays of moonlight. 

Lost there. Around a blind corner I nearly walked into Cornell. The man was tall. I'm 6'1 and he loomed over me. We glanced at each other, I registered the situation, and kept moving. GPS called me a moron in code, so I followed Cornell and his wife, and their little girl. I wasn't listening but I was. He was telling his girl about how life is in Italy. I heard, "In Italy..." then the crowd around us absorbed the rest. A few people took fast second looks, and then went back to their tables, their drinks, their own trips and lives.

     In Rome no one cares who you are. 

     Quite a beautiful feeling.    

     Rome is different.

    Crossing back toward where I had to go. Losing light. The Sun becoming the Moon, and I'm standing there then, staring at the street that I would cross to my hotel, to give up, but I'm feeling too fine, and I'm in Rome. I'm in fucking ROME. Not to sound incredulous. I put my phone to my ear to hear the directions, looked down the street. Cornell. Giving me a skeptical but not-so-sure stare, a sideways check. It would appear I was following them, but I wasn't. It didn't bother me. I laughed ahead. Rome is different. He disappeared down the street with his family, and I realized I'd been going the right way the whole time. Turned back, walked and thought about it. I could have had a conversation with him, I could have dropped one name. His parents lived next door to my friend's parents here in West Seattle. He'd skated with Cornell, and once told me he and his parents would watch Cornell mowing his parents' lawn from upstairs, even after Soundgarden took off. We could have had a conversation away from the music, the words, just two dudes from here laughing about the suddenness of meeting in Rome with such far-reaching connections to the past. What stopped me from shaking his hand? I would like to fall back on ego, but it was only ego in the sense that I didn't want to be a fan, a number, even with a rare connection. 

     But the truth is I am a fan. And though I don't believe in regretting something you've already done, I should have shaken his hand. I didn't have to tell him that his lyrics were brilliant, his voice one of the most distinctive in all remembered time, or any of that bullshit people like him, the few of them, hear and have to deflect or appropriate when they're out in the world. I also simply didn't want to interrupt him or his family while they walked in peace as the Moon rose over Rome. 

     I found the Pantheon, young moonlight. Breath stolen. 

     This morning I awoke to a text from my buddy, Dave. Four words and an abbreviation: Dude, Chris Cornell died. WTF?

     Tap google. 52. Suspected suicide. No matter, he's gone. They all go, they don't live long enough to see themselves shine like the rest see them. And they don't care. Sitting here now, blasting Louder Than Love, and sending my best thoughts to his family. 

     Bukowski once said in a letter, "Death isn't a problem for the deceased, it's a problem for the living." Or something like that. Looking back on the dead artists of the last few years, Cornell hits pretty hard. 52 years old.

     Much love to his people. Hands All Over just started. I need more coffee, and to kiss my dogs. 

     Outside it's grey and bright and warm. 

An old Navajo walked out of the station eating an orange. I nodded to him and smiled. He said nothing. He stood next to me under the hood.

​“What is it?” his voice was angered, aggravated and aggravating.

​ ​“I don’t know.”

​“What happened?”

I told him. He walked away slowly and came back with another. He got behind the wheel and cranked it. His buddy stayed under the hood. I walked inside the station and bought a drink.

They were standing over the engine, laughing. His buddy had one tooth in his head. I asked the first one what was wrong with it. He wiped his hands down his shirt and shook his head, smiling.

​ ​“It’s very bad.”

I stared at his friend. He nodded and smiled. I looked at his tooth.

​ ​“How bad?”

The other one answered. He was the boss.

​ ​“Head gasket’s blown. Much money.”

​“How much money?”

​“We’ll do it for nine hundred.”

I only had six hundred on me. I told him.

​ ​“Nope. Fix it here or we tow it to the junkyard.”

I had the extra key in my wallet.

​ ​“Alright. Fix it here.”

I asked him how long it would take. One solid day. I took my bike out and rode into town, into that place.

The car lots there were useless. They either had nothing I could afford or anything I would trust. I rode back. They had the van on the lift in the garage. I found the boss again.

​ ​“Listen. I really only have six hundred dollars. Can’t we do something here, I mean, we’re both people.”

He scowled.

​ ​“You’re not my people. Nine hundred dollars. That’s a good deal. Somewhere else you’d pay twice as much.”

​“Well, I don’t have it.”

He looked me up and down.

​ ​“Where do you live?”

I shook my head. He smiled.

​ ​“Maybe you can work here for the money.”

​“Where?”

He laughed.

​ ​“I’ll make the call. Job’s hard. Very hard. Maybe you’ll quit.”

I asked him what it was. He uttered one word: digging. He told me I could sleep in the van until I paid it off, but he would charge me a little extra for rent. I thought quickly about catching a bus, but there was nowhere I wanted to go. I couldn’t hitch a ride out with my bike and my things. Arizona was not an option. I told him to make the call.

I slept in the van that night in the garage. It was still dark when one of the Indians banged on the door.

​ ​“Get up! Time for work!”

I had the sheet of paper with directions and set out on my bike. It was a four mile ride through the dusty roads and paths. I saw the site. A long, long line of Indians on their knees with narrow shovels trenching into the ground, a truck going slowly in reverse with a giant spool of cable they laid carefully into the trench. They were shirtless and moving quickly, and the foremen screamed at them. They were an endless line ripping a tear in the desert, the line of dark red backs and elbows moving like a long machine. I was my soul after death and I was standing at the gates of Hell.

I found the lead foreman and told him who I was.

He yelled.

​ ​“YOU’RE LATE!”

I tried to explain. He threw a shovel in my hands.

​ ​“Three feet deep and two wide. NOW!”

I squeezed in between two big Indians. The foreman ran up and nudged me with his boot.

​ ​“NO! You bring up the FRONT!”

He walked me up to the front of the line. It was a long walk. The Navajos peered at me with my shovel, and they jeered me. At the front of the line the foreman pushed me to the lead. I’d had it with him. I turned and held my shovel to swing at him. He jumped back and pulled out a long blade. I yelled at him.

​“FUCK YOU!”

The line burst into laughter. The foreman laughed with them.

​ ​“Just dig, white boy. You’ll quit before an hour.”

He put the knife back in his boot and walked away. I dropped to one knee and saw the ditch. I would work the day then sneak out with the van before the Indians came back to the shop. I began digging. The other workers laughed. Their laughter made me angry. I dug furiously for an hour. I made sure to stay in front of them, to beat them with a widening gap. One of them yelled at me to slow down. I heard his friend.

​ ​“Don’t worry. He’ll get tired.”

I thought of all the things that sickened me. I found a reservoir of hatred inside my arms. I dug on. Three or so hours passed. It was time for everyone to drink.

​ It was a long wait for the water ladle. There was a huge steel trough and we all lined up to drink from that ladle. When my turn came I took two or three gulps then another foreman grabbed it.

​ ​“That’s too much, white boy.”

Everybody laughed. They still had ten minutes. They found corners of shade by the trailer and sat. I walked back to the ditch and kept at it. They yelled at me to take a break. The foremen told them to keep quiet, that they were disgusted that a white boy was making them look so bad. I kept digging. I was yards out from them. They had to cut their break short. They were moving as fast as they could, but I had plenty of hatred in me. At one point a foreman blew his whistle and we stopped. He ran over with his tape measure and stuck it in their part of the ditch.

​ ​“Too damn shallow!”

A big worker stood up and looked at me. He ran his finger under his throat. I asked him if he was tired, and the line howled. I kept going, faster and faster, delirious from the heat. My skin was burnt.

​

After the next hour everybody hated me. I didn’t care. I would never see them again. We worked until dusk. At the trailer where I had my bike chained the tires were knifed, and they were watching me. I paid them no mind, picked up my bike and carried it on my shoulder up over the hill where they couldn’t see. Then I set it down and collapsed. I watched the hot and dead sky turn circles over my body, and I remembered the pier in California, meeting Greg, my genius painter buddy from Vegas, and Roll, another genius painter who had just moved to Vegas from Florida, and they were in town by the pier, and we rode our bikes all day, practicing new tricks in front of the ocean. I remembered back further, to jumping on a Greyhound bus from Phoenix to Venice Beach, with three hundred dollars in my pocket, the first time I’d left home. I liked it there, and I lied about my age to get my first construction job I had found in the paper while drinking coffee in front of the ocean with my first girlfriend. She was seven years older than I was, with plenty of neurosis. Her name was Kim and she lived by the beach there in Venice. In six months she became the enemy, and I escaped her one morning while she was asleep. On the hot dirt, I thought forward from her, to a beach house where I had been a renter, living with an after-hours alcoholic and her lazy eye and her husband, Cliff, who was a psychologist and latently homosexual, which occurred to me on the hot dirt was the reason he always had a pipe in his mouth. I remembered leaving there, and my laundry getting stolen from the dryers in San Diego, and I remembered going to jail in Tijuana and being beaten over and over. But mostly I remembered nothing, and it was supposed to be dusk but the sky wouldn’t budge. I heard the rumbling of tires coming behind me. I picked up my bike and kept going. They blew by, yelling, hooting, flipping me the bird, leaving me in a cloud of dust. I set it down and walked it. A mile before the station the two mechanics pulled up in an old car.

The boss nodded at me.

​ ​“We fixed your van.”

I stared ahead and nodded. I felt him look at his buddy and smile, then look back to me, “See you in the morning.”

I nodded ahead. They wouldn’t see me in the morning. They wouldn’t see me again.

The van wasn’t in the garage windows. I walked around back and dug the key from my wallet. I threw my bike in the side door and sat behind the wheel. I could see the last traces of sunlight crashing into the desert. Then it was dark. I turned the key. It purred. They had done a good job. I crawled in back and laid on the couch. The van had no wheels, they had it set upon jacks.

I received a phone call from my buddy sitting in a bar out east this morning. It went something like this:

“Dude, I just got a fuckin’ text from my girl saying that we’ve grown apart.”

“No shit.”

“A text. Not a phone call, not a fucking note, a text. A little square box of transmitted text that basically put me on a bar stool at 10 a.m.”

“How long you been seeing this one?”

“Like three weeks.”

“Grown apart is code for she wants to fuck someone else, or she already has. Not to make you feel worse, but that’s all that is. Especially after three weeks.”

He went on about their time together, then got around to listening for a minute. He made a comment about how I should write about it one day, about people in this attention-deficient age, then said not to waste my time because they’d only read the first few lines and go elsewhere. His boss called. He ignored the call to wrap it up with me, “I should call him back. Thanks for talking. I can’t remember how long it’s been since I’ve had a real conversation with someone.”

We hung up and I thought about it. Last week I had a long conversation with a good friend who has a lot of shit falling down around him, but when we hung up I felt the same way, it had been awhile.

There’s a guy I see every morning when I walk my dog. He walks his dog right past me, and every single time the motherfucker gets within hearing distance, he pulls his phone from his pocket and looks into it like he’s texting someone. It’s been bothering me for awhile now, but I always forget about him after a few yards. Friday I remembered, and I watched him after he passed me. And sure enough, every time the prick passed someone, out came the phone. I understand not being in the mood to talk to anyone, but there is a true sadness and isolation he gives off, and it’s common today. But I will say this, with elements like him removed, the day was beautiful. The water of the bay was black chromoly and the birds dive-bombed the surface then shot back up eating in mid-air. A really hot Asian girl jogged past us in red shorts that let her perfect ass bounce freely up and down, up and down, -all the sun and all the life of the bay and its air moved with a warmth that transcends all the petty things that burn me out. I came home and checked my email, then plugged in the old electric and typed letters to some people who had been on my mind the last few months.

The devil staring back

winking

waiting

savoring it all:

I'll be the featured kill

down there for a good

long time.

“Texas is like a white trash Canada. It should feel like its own country, new and different, but it feels inbred. You seriously feel like a psychologist when you have to stay here, you feel like a genius in a field of retards.”

He leans forward and lights a cigarette. Coreen stares at us, “Oh. That’s not true at all. Texas has a lot of beauty to it. True, it has some bad qualities, but anywhere does.”

“Don’t try to sugarcoat a redneck shit sandwich.”

She shakes her head at him and looks over to me, “Oh, I don’t want to have to elaborate.”

—No time to elaborate. The fire and wind and flowers are fusing. I check my watch and wipe off the back of my neck. The cherry sunsets of Venus are lost, the vastness of its lemon iron heart is lost. Streets streaked with penny gold and laced velvet windows are gone now, gone forever, and where they once stood is now a city with a blank face. Sun dead and grey, fields which harvest nothing but replication of dirt and weeds. We have been left and forgotten here. Left to breathe, fuck, and rot. Which is fine. I imagine it was always like this. It was always a displaced sky. I smell their skin from across the room, sulfuric and salty. I remember Angel’s take on the ocean. She said it was delicious. I saw it for the first time in 6 years with her. We had parked by the pier in Pismo, and I’d tasted her stomach beneath the bloody wind. We had intercourse in full view of the water, and I convulsed into her from behind, holding up the back of her dress, yellow and bright, while she gripped the rail at the end of the pier. Two bums were fishing off the side behind us. We were quiet and heavy there, and gulls made hungry swoops close to us but the fishermen on the shore threw stones at them.

Angel rests her hand on my knee. We’ve been driving since Albuquerque. From there we had driven from Stockton. I’d met Angel while she was there with her parents. We had a three day fling. Her father was stationed in Germany. Her mother was from Spain. Her real father was doing life in a Spanish prison for murdering her mother’s lover, a teenage boy she’d met on the streets of Badalona. Her stepfather met her mother by chance somewhere in Europe. He’s from Stockton. Her mother was poor, and she married the bastard because she and her daughter were almost homeless. Angel is seventeen. I’m twenty-seven. Her stepfather used to stand in the shower behind her and masturbate. He never had sex with her, he said he was waiting until her eighteenth birthday. When Angel told her mother about it, her mother hit her and called her a liar. Angel is heartbroken over her mother. Angel’s English is broken and hot. She called me collect from Germany for half a year. The phone bills were insane. I didn’t care. When they flew back over before summer, Angel ran away from them and we hit the road. We’ve been on the run for weeks. We’re sitting in Dallas with my brother and his girlfriend. They know our story. Angel and Coreen have bonded like sisters. Coreen had similar problems with her mother’s husband, but her mother pressed charges and left him immediately when Coreen told her. The guy took a deal. He’s out now, but he’s out of the picture. Coreen and my brother are in their thirties. My brother builds houses. Coreen works at her mother’s cafe. Billy met Coreen in Phoenix. They lived there for a year. She wanted to move back to Texas.

Billy’s a tough motherfucker, but when it comes to Coreen he’s a small child. Coreen’s a tall, healthy Texas girl. She burns up any room she walks in. And now I have Angel, and Angel’s one sexy bitch. I hate to call her that, but she is, she’s the ultimate bitch. She’s tall and sculpted. Her skin is bronze fire. Her coal hair hangs in her face when she sleeps. Her lips are red and full. Her nose is flawless. Her eyes are deep black. When I watch her I can see God Himself rubbing his thumbs across her frontal lobe, smearing her brow with golden skin. He has a long beard with blood and flesh wiped across his smock. He crafted her as a completely separate project. When she talks my skin jumps. Her fingers are long and slim. Her feet are arched and smooth. Even her toes drop me to my knees. Angel loves me. Angel doesn’t love many people, maybe no others. She grew up hard and mean on the streets of Spain. She’s seen more death and disgust than any American. She likes to lick my eyes. I fight to keep them open while she does it, but I hang strong. She tells me my eyes are the doors to Heaven. She won’t let me cut my hair anymore. It hangs down to my chin. She bites it while we fuck. She tells me when we stop running somewhere she wants me to give us a baby. She talks about how beautiful the baby will be. She’s seen the child in her sleep. It is a boy and he is a perfect mixture of us and God. I don’t believe in God, but I don’t tell her that. I obsess over her ass and her thighs, over the grip of her sex. She sleeps nude on her side. I watch any available light carve around her body. She owns the Sun and the Moon, the ocean and the earth. All is her slave.

Billy lights two cigarettes and hands one over. Coreen doesn’t smoke. Angel won’t touch them. I take the smoke and blow rings over the table. Angel smiles and breaks the rings with her breath. She squeezes my arm and rests her knees on my lap. She turns eighteen in nine days. We’re getting married at the time of her birth. Angel’s mother became blind for survival. The prick she’s married to is in relentless pursuit of Angel with her. I know he married her mother to get Angel. I know he wants my head. They have the cops involved. He’s playing on that soldier bullshit. He’s an upper-ranks man now. I know it drives him batshit to think about my mouth in between Angel’s hot ass cheeks. It doesn’t matter. In nine days she’ll have my name. I only have fifteen hundred saved in my pocket. Billy is going to pay me cash to be a laborer. Angel is fine with being at the house with Coreen. She can go to work with her and help in Coreen’s mother’s shop. I don’t think Angel likes Texas. But she understands. One of my buddies lives down in Morelia, and he told me when I get some good coin saved up I can slip across the border with Angel and live there. Nobody gives a fuck about us in Mexico. Coreen goes into the kitchen to make drinks. My brother and I are flying on mescaline. It’s my first time. I’m sweating bullets. Angel laughs at me. I tell her I’m thirsty. She gets up and walks into the kitchen. Billy watches her ass, “Goddamn, man. You better hold onto that shit.”

“Tooth and nail.”

The girls come in with the drinks. Wild Turkey and water. Billy leans back with his drink, “So this cocksucker has a bead on you?”

Angel looks at me.

“Jad,” I say to her. She rolls her eyes and sets her drink down. Her breasts are fucking perfect. Her shoulders and neck, all of her screams at every moment. My brother glances into her dress. Coreen slaps him. He laughs, “His name’s Jad? Fuck, man. He was born to be an asshole.”

I put my smoke out and wipe the air clean for Angel’s face. She kisses my neck. I pick up the glass, “I bought the car off this dirtbag in Modesto. I transferred the plates and title in Reno. I insured it in Medford. It took a few days of zig-zagging, but we appear to be heading north.”

Billy smiles into the ashtray, “That was smart.”

“I’m not worried about it. If by some fucking chance they find me first I can say I had no idea about any of it. I’ve never met him. I’ve seen a few pictures. He doesn’t look too bright. But you can’t be sure.”

Angel picks up on some of the words. I rub her knee, “But if I can get a few months of straight work here, we’ll be alright. We can coast off the money in some Mexican shithole by the water, and come back in a few years.”

Billy takes a long drink from his whiskey and lights another smoke. A drop of sweat plunges from his brow into the paper. It wears the paper away and the tobacco creeps up to the surface. He laughs and sets it on the table, lights a new one. Coreen grabs the empties and goes to pour the refills. Angel kisses me and runs after her to help. Billy and I stare at each other and sweat. He peers over my shoulder. I look back and watch the guy across the street park his truck on the lawn. Billy laughs. Coreen sets the drinks down on the coffee table and lets the dog out. Angel comes in and takes her place by my side.

Closed minds

vacant of eye

conflicts, words

pettiness.

People only go as far

as their hearts have worth.

I climbed a mountain and sat there on a palm shaped rock, looking out over the towns. The whole world was something, or it was supposed to be, and the faces were supposed from something, but everything had fallen short because the two of them were tangled together and helpless now.

a night after WORK

aligned behind

this glorious brown

violence-

Sears Communicator

Lucky Strikes

2 for one at the Shell station

the friendly Middle Eastern clerk

who once had the beard but changed it to a police mustache

personally, I preferred the beard

but I am not fucking him

I don’t think anyone is

and no one is fucking me currently

or recently

but he let me slide on some change

and I came back and put the milk

in the fridge and set the coffee pot up

with water and a fresh

filter full of grains

so tomorrow all I have to do is

wake up and hit the

switch

and on the wood floor of this place

you would be able to see clean clothes

and scattered short stories

some poems

and my dog chewing through one of

her pig ears

all in perfect synchro

with the Dazzling Killmen over the CD player

these keys moving, roaring, slightly

off beat with the

whole picture.

on the floor

lines divide

themselves

into areas

the area of the poor

the diseased

the areas of talkers

the areas of dreamers

of suicide

all multiplied by the sorrow

I sit in the midwest and

and smoke reds

on a sunday morning

garbage strewn across the floor

death sitting in every

corner of the place

60 bucks in my wallet, a dog,

enough possessions that I

would need

a car to move them

2 days of eggs in the fridge

sitting in the midwest

on a sunday morning

hating my instincts

and

the days here

and the nights here

keep blending, melting together

into one long haze

divided by the lines in my heart and belly

divided by vacuuming the rug

and sleeping in stints of hours

multiplied by the sorrow again

as the dryer bangs away in the next room

as a cricket sings electric in the dark

below my floorboard

as the locusts gather to shed in the late summer

with the lightning bug retreating

while my body

deteriorates from lack of nutrients

the dream hardening

each day of flatness

the dryer banging away

somebody should secure

that damned thing.