BAD JAZZ

Portland Snow

Just wanted to let you know
that I've been buried
under a dusting.

Please don't laugh,
it hurts enough already.

Chicago Snow

Everything feels like
a question mark erased
and re-written until the page
has become transparent
and torn.

Cambridge Snow

So farewell,
I'll see you in the spring when
you find me in a black of ice,
and then take me home where
I'll thaw slowly
in your sink.

You were curled up in a cocoon of blankets and we could both feel the cold sneak in through the window and tiptoe its way across the floor like a cat burglar. On the other side of the room, in a sleeping bag, I held my breath for as long as I could before asking you if I would be a player in the movie of your life.
"Yes," you said. "And when it comes out on video it will be shelved with the silent melodramas. Now go to sleep."

Every time I climb the ladder into another mysterious blaze, I press my Jesus wallet firm against the lining of my jacket and know that things will be okay.
Jesus and I are down you see.
Interlock the fingers on both of your hands and then you’ll understand how tight we are.
I get up pretty early, around five thirty or six, and Jesus is always there, sitting at my kitchen table, humming to himself. He’s a big music fan, classic rock mostly. I usually come straight out of the shower and I see him sitting there, repeating the second verse to “Holy Diver” as he pours his Frankenberry cereal into a bowl and plays drums with the silverware. After I mix up my protein shake and join him at the table, that’s when we start chatting.
“You should be proud of yourself Dirk,” Jesus says to me. My name is Rob but he likes to call me Dirk. “I just thought about it the other day, when everyone else is running out of the building, you’re running in!”
“Just doing my job,” I say before taking a sip of my shake.
Jesus throws his head back a little and laughs a mid-range, snorting kind of laugh that is usually followed by a phlegm-dissolving cough.
“Well, you could be one of those assholes who gets paid six figures to play solitaire on their computers all day. You’re the guy around here everyone should look up to.”
He opens his eyes as wide as he can get them and grips firmly on to my shoulder.
“YOU are a lord and savior.”
“Aw Jeez,” I say to him. “You’re the real good guy. You do ALL the good things!”
“You know Dirk,” he says as he fills a #1 UNCLE mug up with scalding hot coffee until its tide threatens the brim. “I’m mostly talk. All bark really.”
Then he starts laughing at himself, that same weird piggy little laugh.
One thing Jesus is always trying to do is set me up on dates. He brings the subject up on Friday mornings, the same mornings when he brings over a big pink box full of pastries, the flaky kind that ooze fruit filling, that he gets from this cute little Italian place in Eastie. He’s always telling me to take one, but he knows I can’t touch that shit. It all goes to my waist.
“I look at you and this is what I see,” Jesus says. “I see a guy who’s good looking, has a stable job, a manly, heroic kind of job, a guy who takes care of himself and has a nice one bedroom apartment with a Jacuzzi in the bathroom and a great view from the roof-deck. But where’s the love Dirk, where’s the love?”
“Jesus you sound like my mother,” I tell him. “She went on for half an hour over the phone the other night, ‘When are you going to get married? What ever happened to whatshername? Did you get the saucepan I sent you?’ On and on and on and on!”
“Your mother’s a smart woman,” Jesus says as he points his finger in my face. You wouldn’t believe how nice the guy’s nails are. “You think I’m bullshitting you but let me tell you, if I wasn’t telling you this for your own good, then why would I even fucking bother?”
I bought my Jesus wallet at a gas station I stopped at on my way to visit my sister for Thanksgiving. When I saw it I got a real kick out of it, the weepy eyes, the crown of thorns, the emblazoned cross. I took it down from the rotating wallet display and giggled like a little girl, wondering what Jesus would think if he was there.
“Whatever you’re thinking right now I doubt it’s very funny,” the guy behind the counter barked at me. He was frowning hard under his thick, burly mustache, the kind that completely devours the upper lip, and sticking out from under the rolled up sleeve of his red and black checked lumberjack shirt I could see a crucifix tattoo bordered with a message that read: JESUS SAVES.
“Jesus Christ died for your sins mister,” the mustache man continued. “And frankly I don’t find that too amusing!”
I struggled to keep a straight face. It took all the strength in my body to prevent me from busting out at the seams with a guffaw powerful enough to send the mustache man clear across the store, right smack into the Little Debbie snack cake display.
“You’re absolutely right,” I said. “And Jesus continues to do good things for us on a daily basis!” I didn’t tell him, of course, that such things included finding the particular brand of olive oil my sister likes (it’s really hard to find in the States) and dropping by to feed my cat Chim-Cham when I go away for the weekend. I figure he’d just have to get to know Jesus himself.
Jesus went nuts over the wallet. I showed it to him over breakfast a few days later and he did a perfect Danny Thomas spit take with his coffee when he saw it.
“That shit’s just crazy,” he laughed, holding the wallet in one hand and cleaning up after his spit take with the other. “Why do they have to show me crying like that all the time? Am I completely devoid of dignity? COME ON!”
I keep my Jesus wallet in the pocket of my firefighter coat because it’s when I’m out on the job when I think about my friendship with Jesus the most. When I’m thinking about it (about how he can’t get enough of the Monty Python DVDs I gave him for Hanukah one year or how he always insists on being the designated driver whenever we go out to Hooter’s) I know that if a ceiling should fall on me, if I should be consumed by flames or taken over by smoke, that I would die a happy man, a man who knew how to live the life because he had a friend that helped him live it. A man who had a friend in Jesus. Feeling that wallet under all the layers of fire-retardant lining brings it all home for me.
Because Jesus and I are down you see.
Interlock the fingers on both of your hands and then you’ll understand how tight we are.

If there is ever a chance that we're all
in the same room togher it would be
a hollow kitchen with exposed pipes.

News at Eleven Delayed Until One Thirty

I

I blame pesticide resisudes
for everything that makes me
undesirable as a human being.

Though I’m sure the children of the crop-duster
have it much worse than me.

II

The officer came through
on the hood of the woman’s car
flashing red suggesting to her: “Stop, if you want to”.

It’s always the girls from the bloc countries
who seem to cause these kinds of accidents.

III

Sunday afternoons are intense
with meaning coming in from a street
youthful in 100,022 ways.

And then the excitement declines
into a comma.

There will be poems 'n things up here soon. Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by.