Trailer

On my way back from Boulder I broke down
in South Salt Lake City the day before Memorial Day
the Mustang threw a rod after a rough go on I-70.
AAA towed me to Best Western and then I rented a U Haul and
drove back to Eugene listening to Bobby McFerrin.

I wound up selling hotel packages to Houstonians
for hotels in Houston in a boiler room above the UO Kinkos.
for four hours a day and each minute
was eleven hours and each day was twelve.

So then Rosco at PersonellSource asked me: mill or the office?
I said office because I had heard about the green chain
and I did not want to pull it.
Symantec took me into the Bon Marche building and
I corrected Australian addresses for their APAC ERP implementation.

I lunched with my dad each week and ate falafel.
Proud of my eight hour days and corporate cachet
he told me I was in the top percent of Eugenians. And at work I learned
in some remote Australian states mail is stuffed into a bag that hangs on a tree
and typing Bag on Tree was OK for the database.

Jessica liked the money
and we ate burgers and she never slept at the trailer,
even though the bed was large and comfortable.
So I often stayed at her place.
Her building had beach volleyball courts and I sat on her terrace and watched
the undergrads set shot in the sand.

The lady at the machine shop was convinced I rode my car
too hard. The rod broke through and messed up a cylinder.
It looked like Twombly took a hammer to inside of my engine.
I eventually pieced it together and I sold the cherry red
convertible to a Salem woman.

In the house above the trailer, my mom was in pain. Her hip
was bad and she did not want surgery so she had assortments
of pills and I found these very little ones—
They brought me back to the top of the first Flatiron rock
where I used to bark in happiness.

BQE

The car burned in flames on Meeker near Union Pool
under the elevated expressway and this scene:
bar goers walking almost dancing around the fire.
Rachael didn’t go near it
because of what she’d seen in action movies.

The burning didn’t bother me because I had dropped cigarettes into gasoline
and it never lit.

Wild dogs sneak out the bushes in a pack past Utica Av
along the LIRR Right of Way towards Canarsie
tails swinging against the traffic.

Cutting my hair with a straight razor my barber told me he chewed his iPod last night
and explained it to me:
You know like when you’re wasted and you just gnaw on it.

I agreed with him telling him I also chew my iPod wasted.

Tonight below my window, it’s less picturesque at 3am:
one kid on the east end with other kids on the other end
holds a wiffle ball bat. Duct taping the holes
gives the ball
more movement. Hollers erupt as a hit
smacks off of the decayed awning.

Above the flames, one collision complicates driving over the BQE:
An 18 wheel broke through a grate in the left lane broke
its steering column. Jackknifing the whole thing.
The sound won’t go away.

This morning I went jogging past
the fish distributor and performance artist’s warehouses past
the site of the largest structure fire in a decade
like a torn down Lego castle, hills of rags heaped underneath
instant ruin.