Footprints on the Windshield

There's footprints on the windshield
ten little toes
footprints on the windshield
without their clothes
I tell myself I'm seeing things
tricks playin' on my mind
but there's footprints on the windshield
I know they sure ain't mine.

A butt-end in the ashtray...
ain't seen you smoke.
They say it keeps hands busy
that ain't no joke
you been drivin' in the bush:
deep valleys and tall pines—
there's footprints on the windshield
I know they sure ain't mine.

footprints
walkin' on my heart
them footprints
leadin' us apart
footprints...

The music is romantic
the station's new
but since I didn't pick it
I sing the blues
all the wipers in the world
will never dry my eyes
not with footprints on the windshield
I know they sure ain't mine
yeah, footprints on the windshield
you know they sure ain't mine.

papercuts

you open your diary
and there i am:
your imaginary friend
who's walked far

talk to me
tell me what he's done now
stack your triumphs on my head
drape the lei of your tears around my neck
and beckon me with fingers wet
from the well of yourself

close the book
to gather dust
till the next entry swells you heavy
to give birth in my ear;
lift me again from the pages
if only to admire your reflection
in my eyes

Downslope

The leafy hair of summer turns
the freckled face
of fall's
forest floor;
A white beard
not long in coming—

White wine and firesides
Scones and Montovani
Ice-hung windows and
____the twilight-flavoured woods;
these genteel trappings
____of waking hibernation

Don't call
Don't knock
Don't ever be
____ever so
____bold
Unless your name is
Spring.

Mix in the Pudding

So we made eighty-five dollars worth of chocolate pudding and we fucked in it. I wouldn't call it a romantic weekend, but it was certainly interesting. I think the whipped cream was a little over-the-top, though.

Corrigendum

The light from the reading lamp seems harsh, as though if given enough time it could set the newspaper in his lap on fire. He might not mind. His eyes are tired from busily not reading the same page for half an hour.

She has descended the stairs at last and is preening in the hallway mirror. He forces himself to raise his head, crane his neck, and look at her. She's more mature now, and somehow thinner, but she still looks like she did 17 years ago. But only to the eye.

And she is humming softly to herself. Something swift and full of promise. He wonders if it was like this back when he couldn't see her... when he was sitting out in the car, humming the same way, waiting for her nightly debut.

"Will you be back this evening?" he asks. His stomach knots, punishes him for his temerity.

She turns and regards him, and offers him a sloppy, silly smile of dismissal even as her eyes dart away. "Yes, of course I will. It's only a meeting to work out a few last details." She closes her hand on her clutch purse like a venus flytrap, suddenly and definitively.

The ice wiggles in his glass as it farts a trapped bubble. He takes a deep breath, wondering if he's drawing in the liberated air with the scents of rye and cola. He forces his expression to brighten; he says, "Knock 'em dead."

"Oh, I will," she smiles. Whether she's being ironic or rewarding him for playing along isn't clear. She blows him a kiss and her heels clack as she marches with determination along the hardwood floor, a model in a wrap about to turn on some private catwalk. "I shouldn't be too long," she calls.

No, you shouldn't, he thinks. You shouldn't be going at all. But she is. His throat tightens and his eyes sting and he suddenly feels like he's outside himself, considering the plot of some soap opera. How will it end? Divorce? A gunshot? Will she give it up out of boredom or disaffection or some latent sense of loyalty, guilt, love? Or will it never really end, simply trailing on and on forever like some bad cough you can't quite shake?

The car starts. Leaves. The garage door comes down. From the wall, the ticking clock watches him, taunting him with each second.

Hunting Snoopy

Whenever I hear someone say the word iditarod — which, I admit, isn't all that often — I have the overwhelming urge to quip, "Yeah, me too, but I was in college and going through kind of an experimental phase..."

But Whose Is It?

Something is up here

I've had the vasectomy,
but she's still on the Pill

Something is definitely up here...

You Lead

It was 1:15 in the morning and Bobby was discovering the expression 'if you can't find it, grind it' didn't only apply to driving a stick. It had its uses in the back seat, too.

She put her hands on his hips to guide him (they were too close together for her to reach much else), and panting, he steadied himself and followed her gentle direction. And like a penitent in Purgatory, the gates opened for him and there was Heaven...