SUMMER WEDDING

Congratulations on
your engage-
ment.

I don’t know who told me,
it’s not like we have
the same friends
anymore.

I wish I never
found out.
I do.

You may not kiss the bride.
Part of me dies in front
of my own eyes,
as I spectate it.

You are the performer in
my mind, an image, the
character there on my
computer's screen.

I see this as
wonderful
news for
you
2.

I get out the letters, and
the old photographs.
The physical things
I’m left to look at
when I’m feeling
— nostalgic is
not the right
word.

On your wedding day,
I am not there. I
wasn’t invited,

wouldn’t go
if I was.

Physically, I
am far away
and that’s
fine.

I play out the day in my head.
You, walking down the aisle
all smiles. Happy, I see
and your family,
they are so
proud.

They’ve stopped thinking about me.
My name, it doesn’t come up.
It’s not just that I’m not
there, it’s like I never
was there.

Your eyes and my
eyes make contact.
There's that
sparkle I've
seen
B4.

It’s not for me,
though, it is
for him.

It will never
be for me
again.

THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN SPEAKING

On the plane the intercom comes on and wakes me up from the dream and because I try to pay attention and listen to a woman’s voice ask if there is a doctor on board, a nurse, an EMT, anything, to please push your call button, and then, thank you. I wait. I hear a ding and then nothing. The few people I can see crank their heads up and down the aisle. The woman on my right puts down her Brad Meltzer book in her lap and the poor binding comes apart and the page that begins Chapter 32 comes out and she doesn’t notice, it won’t affect the plot. The page slips down her skirt between us. She curious about who is hurt, who’s dying on the plane she’s flying. And I'm wondering if this means we’ll have to emergency land.

INFO DESK

Five women, scantily clad in their loose and light dresses with their breasts showing just so much with their skin artificially tan and their teeth artificially white and their hair artificially highlighted and their wrinkles tucked and their eyes half closed walk in, one's looking directly at me, still walking, approaching, her hand coming to the counter, she's still walking, and she lightly taps the top of my hand with her finger tips.

If my grandfather had a Linkedin profile in 1963 it would look like this

Royall George Smith

Vice-President — Copy

Lennen & Newell | Marketing and Advertising

Experience

Vice-President of Copy

Lennen & Newell

1956-Present (7 years)

  

Copywriter

Young & Rubicam

1952-1956

Copywriter

Kenyon & Eckhardt 

1950-1951

Copywriter

Benton & Bowles 

1947-1950

Copywriter

J. Walter Thompson 

1946-1947

Skills

copy     fiction      building contractor

Education

University of Arizona

1937-1938

USC 

1938-1940

Yale 

1945-1946

Groups &

Associations:

Advertising Writers Association

Activities and Societies:

Aluminum Heart (Doubleday)

Columbia Journalism Review

FOUND NOTEBOOK

The following haikus were written on a reporter's pad soon after Steve and I moved to Portland at the end of 2004. The pad was kept in the bathroom of our apartment. Steve's in bold. 

You showed me respect

for my mother and women, also work ethic

You would shake your head

Your wife needs some help 

I walked away from Grandma

Don't hate me for that 

I shall do my best 

Will it be enough for you 

if I stay true blue?

I want all the time 

to think about the one time 

that we connected.  

Twenty-five years old

psychotic relationship 

Who knocks this time?

Life that is ruined

forty-dollar desk trade back

 message: I love you. 

Who could it be?

Jerry and Rachel Nobel; 

they want to meet up.

Vacation from pride, 

gestation lasts for 3 months, 

elation, can't hide.

No need for comma, 

just let sentence go, flow. 

OK, how bout now,

THE KNEW YEAR

Last year
was left sitting
in the next to
best seat in the house.


In front of it was
a shot glass
of spilled whiskey
(re)filled with beer.


2011 was
left alone with
the coats.


They're seated
three: his, hers, his.


Not seated
but standing:
he, she, them.


In the new year,
the vision forward
eclipses
the rear view—
periphery seems
                wider.


This year
a better seat.

PIN ME DOWN

Pin me down, all the way to the ground. Hold me near, I'm not going anywhere. Occupy my time, it's no longer mine or yours but ours. Get a hold of it now. Take the sheet, I can't feel my feet; the blanket too, I cannot rouse another. I feel nothing, so let me do the touching. Pin me down, all the way to the ground. 

ROOFTOPS

On the roof, there were pine needles. Not many at first, and then there were a lot. They concentrated above the porch, had swept down and packed the gutter, giving the eave a little visor. The weight of one pine needle is not that much. Like a tissue or a toothpick. But a bunch? Wet and in one place? Certainly looks heavy. The house and the tree were almost one until Ramon went up there and cleared the pine needles off.

There's a hole in the roof of house next door that's abandoned. Someone's boarded it up, but one night before they did I saw a family of raccoons pop its head up through the hole and look around. It was dark out and what got my attention was their attention if that makes sense. Their eyes aglow and all alone, they were like a light on in the attic. I scurried away, neck cranked the whole time, scared they were following me.

There's a house that shares the wall with the park that's up the way. The park's like this house's side yard. On the rooftop of the house a white sweatshirt hung from an exhaust pipe as if it was a coat rack. It was like the man who owned it had come back from somewhere he'd been and put it there. He was looking real comfortable up there in his short sleeves, putting on a new floor down. Made up of shingles.  

THE MAN WITH THE COUGH

Sam woke up early. It was dark. He was awake but did not want to get up. He didn't know what to do if he got up this early. He had nothing planned. So he laid in bed next to his wife and thought. His thoughts jumped around to past instances, to probable futures. He took very little away, and, in fact, he was brought down a little by the missed opportunities of the past and the dreary reality of the future. The thoughts kept Sam awake for the next hour or so until the alarm radio went off and he got up to turn it off and went into the bathroom and turned on the light. After he went, he let the dog outside so she could go, he put on a green hooded sweatshirt, shorts and socks and shoes. It was still dark outside when he put the leash on his dog's collar and he stepped out the front door — turning the lock on the door handle to make sure he wouldn't be locked out when he returned.

Outside, Same stepped off his porch, walked down the pathway to the stairs that lead to the street  above his house. He waited to make sure no cars were coming when he committed to walking down the street on his way to the park. As soon as he turned to sidewalk, Sam heard a man up the street cough obnoxiously. Sam looked up to see the outline of the man and thought he was coming towards him, down the road to the intersection where Sam was to turn and cross the main road to get to the park. Sam walked quickly to create distance between he and the man. When he got to the intersection, which was lit better than the road above he waited for the light to change, and when he crossed the main road he looked back to where he thought the man should be so he could see him, but he couldn't. And after he was safely across the main street Sam looked back again, he kept his gaze on the other side of the street, but still the man was not there, which Sam thought was weird.

Sam got to the park and his old mutt took a poop where she always does, and Sam bagged it up and threw it away. Sam walked across the park and lifted his knees high, galloping to wake up his tired bones and muscles. When he got to the other side of the park Sam stretched up high, then down low, then in triangles like his father-in-law had taught him long ago, fully extending his right leg and bending his back to the right, then extending his left leg and bending his back to the left. All the while keeping his hips n line. Sam did this a few times being mindful of his breathing and looking up every once in a while in the dawn light to check on the old mutt. When he was done stretching, Sam called the dog over, put the leash back on the collar and left the park, going a different way than he had come.

The man with the cough spent no more than a moment thinking about the noise that had come out of him because he felt so alone in the early, dark morning. The cough broke an impregnable silence. The man thought he was alone until he noticed down the ways a bit someone walking toward the street light, a man with a dog. With a brisk pace, he man who coughed didn't think  the other soul had heard him— how could he not?—but either way the figure was walking away from him and not towards him. When the man coughed like that, which he did as a way to clear a thought or to get a new thought started, he was walking down the street that morning returning home from an early morning walk, one he regularly takes when he wakes at the early morning hours to become, as he put, anew. Everyday is a fresh start. A reboot. That was the cough that morning as he made his way home. That was the punctuation on that thought. I'm going to start over today and get things going. So, he slipped through the door he had left unlocked, took off his shoes and socks, his shorts and red hooded sweatshirt, and got back into bed with his wife.

When his wife awoke to the alarm radio she did not immediately get out of bed. She listened as National Public Radio's news broadcast discussed national politics, natural disasters and war in the Middle East. A science piece broke the rhythm of the otherwise depressing but captivating delivery of the voices coming from the clock radio, which read 6:05. The man's wife did not roll to physically wake herself, she laid in a comfortable, close eyed state, on her back, breathing calmly listening and waiting to mentally transform from the dream world from which she'd come. And the man with the cough watched her and waited until she did open her eyes and turn her body and notice her husband looking at her on this new day.

PORT SIDE

SAN FRANCISCO TO SAUSALITO FERRY TERMINAL — "Walk your bike. Hey." This is the authority, calling to a tourist no doubt, wheeling his rented bike off the ferry down the boardwalk, which is not that filled. There's enough time to write this down with some penacity with a Stylst. Those with tickets also have: an iPad, a Cannon camera, fedora. a throaty cough, and a bouquet of flowers. At the front of the line white earphones are in. Saddle Bikes are pushed off the ferry as we wait. Everybody's on the boat except the voice in my window ear. The redhead found her seat. 

PORT of SAN FRANCISCO. Oh, there's Coit Tower, the Pier and Downtown. The Warf. And waterfront lights. A can of beer opens in my aisle ear, and a conversation I can't make out. Chips from a bag crunch. 

Toes and legs–
... Blow up the place.

I can't make out the rest of the sunset that's Golden Gate's direction. Boat sounds up and to the right. Lights are blinking, light green and going. The broken conversation is not immediate but Roger. 

That's Alcatraz out there, all lit up and alone. 

"Who's Waterman, tonight?"

Double stripe. Double stripe. 

As far as you can see, Baby. I voice the images by the window.
Is that enough?
Yeah me, too.
He's as nervous as me. 

The redhead got the red wine. 

There goes Jail Island, a ghost of a place.

A rope wavers on the deck, white and outside. The water's a different layer: midnight, a texture, curved,  arcing below the Bridge, orange with light, connecting two lands where I live and work. 

And now, City sits back and behind. Lights in the distance. Forward in time.

"WHO SAID SOMETHING ABOUT SLOWING DOWN? WE HAVEN'T SLOWED IT DOWN... WE'RE LUCKY WE LEFT ON TIME. ONLY ONE OR FIVE MINUTES LATER."

"Go down to Vietnam." The conversation is lighter. Vietnam is mentioned again, and then, "SAUSALITO AHEAD." 

Hammering this in, One asks, "Is it CAR-uh-beaner? Or is it Ca-rib-een-er?"I miss what's next

"Now were talking, Ron."


"Get out of here.

"Waaooh."

And that and this and this. Followed by: "Yeah yeah yeah."

"Know what I mean?"Then, ?  and ? and ?

"So, whattaya gonna do next? another asks.

"STARBOARD ... I'm sorry, PORT SIDE ... Left-side exit."

We're not moving. True light, man. The engine stops.