2:58 p.m. This past weekend was Valerie's birthday; unaccountably, she decided to hold a birthday party at Murray Lake, the local reservoir, local to me, that is -- it's 300 miles away from her and all her friends. Nevertheless, she wanted to hold it near me. I picked her up at the train station on Friday; her hair was redder than Lucille Ball, which brought out the mentholatum blue of her eyes. As she got into the car, she said, "There's no point to having any kind of long-distance relationship, friendship or whatever; there's just too much pressure for each time you see one another to be 'special,' you know? Don't touch me." (I wasn't touching her.) "Relationships just fizzle out," Valerie said. I didn't respond. She started crying. "I stopped taking Prozac again," she said. "You don't want to listen to this, I'll shut up now."

When we got to my place I went to bed and slept for a few hours. When I got out of bed, Valerie, who had spent the time picking things up and placing them somewhere else, said, "We can be close this weekend, but afterwards I don't think we can ever speak again."

I hadn't planned on speaking, so that was fine.

Things happened, things happened. Basically I slept a great deal. Strangely enough, on the day of the barbecue all her friends from LA did come down to Murray Lake for the barbecue. It was a supernaturally bright Sunday, and everyone shone as if they'd been freshly scrubbed and licked by Jesus Christ's puppy. We rented a rowboat and drifted across the reservoir; we did that for a long time. I sat in the bow, or the stern, or whatever: in that little pulpit where the archer or ball-turret gunner is laid, solitary and watchful. We did that for a long while, Valerie's Vikings and me. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

At any rate; I wrote all that as an introduction, or whatever, to this poem I emailed Valerie this morning.

Tuesday occasions limerick
Perhaps because one's still sick
From Monday's travails,
And all that entails.....
Think of it as treat, not trick,
 
Though a little late for Halloween;
Hello, my baby. By this letter, I mean
To send you my love,
And a psychic back-rub,
And other metaphors -- none obscene.
 
Hello, my love. How are you?
I admit, I feel transparently blue.
It's the weather,
And the lack of something better
To arrive home to (in other words, you),
 
How I wish we'd wrap our day in paper, and take
Our parcels upon rowboats on Murray lake,
Where steadily we will row
Without anywhere to go
Until we arrive at the picnic we would make;
 
There we will float in ukelele and guitar,
There we will dance, clumsy comets among  stars;
And then, Valerie,
I will draw you close to me,
And never again will we seem so apart, so far.

At any rate. I'm dying. I don't know how to tell anyone. My medication is rather pricy; far too good for the likes of me. I spend my Valerielessness practicing postures for my Piet�, vogueing from grotesquerie to grotesquerie. And so it goes.

the Funny Show

agriculture poem

my life in the ghost of Bush

time-lapsed (part 1)

unreconciled

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Images are taken without permission from the fine and trusting folks at Folk Arts of Poland; please purchase something from them. Background music stolen without permission from Epitonic, Basta Music, and just about everywhere else my unscrupulous hands could grab something. No rights reserved.

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