Sunday, March 20, 2011

I Miss Larry Brown

I wonder what it would have been like to have a beer with Larry Brown. You know good and Goddamn well that Joe-writin’ sonofabitch was more real than you or I either one could hope to be. You know he was.

I wonder. Driving around in that pickup. Fishing cold beers from the floor cooler. Or sitting on barstools at the Paradise Inn or wherever. Him looking like any other wiry Southern boy you ever saw. Only he could bring a man to crocodile tears with a couple sentences about an old man rocking a baby on a porch.

I met him once. I did. He was kind and elusive and uncomfortable in his coat and tie. Didn’t make much eye contact when he signed my copy of his book. And hell, I wanted to cry right there on the spot just knowing the words he had bottled up in him.

That’s about the highest compliment I can pay a man.

Spring (in Three Parts)

I.
Fucking Spring, Man. In one fell swoop, you—only—eclipse a season-long funk. Oh, I’m still slow rising from Winter’s coma. But already my lungs expand with visions of open-mouth kisses and sundresses. Women of all ages bloom on every tree, drift suggestively down streams of subconscious, light upon my shoulders, chest, and back in drizzled sweet showers. From my forehead I push back long and damp thinning hair with palms singing of potential potential. Yet no one sings, laughs, cries to me as do you.

And your ladies. Ever your ladies. From this porch lovingly lined with bourbon, books, and cigar smoke, I see rippled puddles from whence they’ve stepped. And, Sweet, I’ve no doubt inside lie dainty wet footsteps having been padded gentle to ease for once and all last season’s coma.

To rise.

II.
It’s like when Ol’ Townes built that houseboat in Heaven. I dare you to command a better image. Be you drunkard or no. You can’t do it. And I can’t do it.

But that doesn’t mean I’ll quit trying.

Goddamnit


III.
And now (all thankful and shit) the weather is conducive to my vices. Whiskey and cigars on the front porch.

I feel, suddenly, as if I’ve returned home.