BILL
CASSIDY
The Secret Love Letters of William
James Cassidy
THE SECRET LOVE LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES
CASSIDY
every button i press
seems to shock me, especially the elevators on floor 6.
birds get stuck to my hair with static
cling, stop chirping, direct me with tad pecks to
43rd st
to meet their kin, heckle the binocular watchers, relax in the nest but always
fly up &
away before we get there, leaving bread
crumbs dangling from my eyebrows. the
arab construction
workers point them out to me and i forget to say
thanks and then want
to go home but home is always so far from
where i stand still and get sick of loneliness.
ms. englert still
tries to shove cucumber in my pockets keeps me around to shave her legs,
wash greened plates and watch reruns of rosanne and the honeymooners. the last time i
collapsed from laughter was when i was addicted to airplane glue this wasn’t an immature
thing then probably still isn’t if you’ve
been able to bury your pretentiousness,
your anti war buttons. men are wearing
skirts and women aren’t wearing anything,
everyone in here wishes they were home
masturbating. in your dream last night
you saw a devil and a turtle and i was there, wearing my bib stenciled whale’n
willy,
shuffling a deck of cards, there were 3 tv’s, bowls of ice cream and you boring
everyone to saw dust talking about it, not
caring because you know you’re right.
later in the day i
think about movies, never french, only thing to think
about during
nervous fall downs in the south, where
knees have been worn to loose thread, to
move to scandinavia,
finally rid sunlight be the best-looking son of thing in a whole
entire region. food leads to dithers and
clumsy embrace and everyone has lost contact
with their cousins. he eats olive loaf to
be different, blares obscure blues on a mission
to dig things, stretch his arms in public,
fake a few yawns. his mother is almost dead. death
doesn’t hurt. it’s morbid: heaven. crimp
your facial hair and see if anyone mentions this to
you or tactics to get into a 4 star school
or what the locals hang on too. you don’t know
mom anyways. and yes 8 track players are so
vintage. you are groovy. grandpa was
alive 80 something years never used the
word groovy, maybe read it in
life magazine or time magazine, sports
illustrated, no one tells me have
a groovy day or groovy i
love you. what lacks in the scene is you have no fairies
in the scene or widows but a baby and
alcoholics, your nose and ears are getting mammoth
maroon bellies. what lacks in the scene is
me talking behind peoples backs. down on stoutness
cause he’s so better looking his wife
straps on to most rod shaped things. make funny loads
of $ with pansy whippings & talk about ny being good for a thing being that there are
no mosquitoes around or they at least never
bite. no snakes. never will i gobble you
up, lick my adams
apple and again sorry for making your rent $ faintly smell of
smoking. being a child i
learned so much vocabulary from watching wrestling on
tv and so much sex
from wrestling matches in the basement, in tights and jumping
off sofa on to glass bottles. yes i know your last name isn’t cash and yes i know
alabama doesn’t exist,
they are giant mutt dicks, intimidated by men dressed in
yellow. haven’t you ever seen easy rider,
yes. nobody wants to hear a story if it
starts with where you work. or about the
books with blue covers only because there
were blue lights all around and thank you
notes, birthday cards, news years eves.
thanks for the hello and thanks for having
me and thanks for bruising me and thanks
for nothing exactly. you and me aren’t invited and we walk into
most rooms stoned.
we cake on makeup and hostess talks so loud
the walls would be covering
their ears. what we know about language
means shit for your brains
this because brian
doesn’t have shit for brains he’s got a real head on those shoulders,
no one can remember what we’re smiling for.
no one sees brian anymore. over the few years
learning how to ride a bike or waking up
going to sleep hour-long naps breakfast time
reading about sex tapes in the post and
feeling like i look like a llama. so boring the
nature
of things and preaching zen
is not zen. the trees are chopped down we eat
them like we eat corn chips. leaf through
the classifieds and circle, call up then
hang up. her mechanicals are covered in
snow, juicing me in cavities. and everybody
downtown is dressed up for the navy, these
kids are rich. her body is jiminy but i
promised to stay celibate until dawn while jason is on a scavenger hunt for gloryholes,
hookers in long island city that take out
their dentures, teeth go platinum. while your
definition walks single file and your pet
ferrites bite their toes. officer jones is buying
his mistress roses, wife groceries. calling
his smokers cough a cold. catching those rat
bastards that stole the nativity scene last
night and painted swastikas onto pizza hut. she
learned the word ne’er-do-well and calls me
it 2 or 3 times. she reminded me that when i’m
a father to make sure my kids never use a
roller coaster as a metaphor. when we dressed
like indians last
winter and made a museum out of our clothes we never thought we would
find what we were looking for and we
didn’t. we keep building it though, things out of
plastic, faint mush. when thunderstorms
come and we stupidly run around in the rain.
when he wears his wife’s panties. when we
levitated the houses in dallas. when we choke each
other to feel like we’re underwater. act
out on making squirrel hats. use our hands as cups.
& when we decide to use the word love
and then write down the word love & then don’t
discuss what this means. when we decide to
use your menstrual cycle as a reason to skip
town. trade each other names and to throw
giant flat rocks at soldiers during fleet week.
ending up in the hospital with 17 stitches
and stuck there because i shredded my social
security card and birth certificate in ms. englert’s garbage disposal. still not wanting to move
into the woods because writing a novel
about trees sounds so snorefull, there still isn’t any
autobiographies in science fiction. neither
of us boxes, spars with shadows. he eats rats when he
needs too. the buried haven’t dug in so
long, the saxophones sound sad, beggars beg. i want
both the burrito and the pillow. you to
bring them over. and the dead are dead & anyone who
first thinks worms about the dead will
never be a worm. is no worm. eye contact is not a selfish act,
sexual intercourse with out rub, ears are
speakers. saxophones sound so ny. drub a bag, arms
windmills, our heads carbonation. lifting
our own body weight. 125lb naked. 126 clothed.
overhearing
some stranger with my hat saying i love you to
the back of a woman’s head. jason
is acting cool somewhere with sly snapping
fingers, hard assed vodka. maybe we learn to fight we
learn to love yet later when i took the gun, changed my name and scooted you to the
side. the doctor
or cop with the chaplin
mustache, the blood just not staying inside. the kids shopping for
sex. i still
wasn’t imprisoned. so the jungles turned to rain forests and you were only
around for 42
xmas’s. but love was
written down. left handed and right handed. love was sketched on the brick
walls, the pale skin, chalkboard, the
subway side, crunched foreheads, labia sag, the traffic lights
and i walked to the
bus stop knowing the buses weren’t running. i waited.
i waited. i wait there.
you taught me this. focused spectacles,
spoke this already. you taught me not to look back after saying;
goodbye.