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Nutshell Kingdom: On Spring
2006
I attempt a quiet enjoyment. I ponder St. Francis and watch the wrens build a little nest. I look into Chaucer (Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote/The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote) and Basho (Roses of Sharon/At the roadside/Perishing one after another/In the mouth of a horse). I sit still or do my laundry. I drink water glass after glass knowing that the storm will blow in this evening, probably when I'm out driving, and it will sound like incessant rock and roll, and it will build into a thirst that says 40 ounces is never enough: I want to smoke and sing and charm women in their early twenties into taking off all their clothes and lying still and bashful in hotel rooms while I read Basho in translation or Chaucer in Middle English to The Ramones off in the background on a little portable boombox I brought for just such a thing until I, we, are running down hotel hallways, dodging the housekeeping cart, stealing toilet paper to clean up a margarita mess in Room 402, God we're drunk and later I know I will fall asleep in the shower and the blossoms will be blown off the trees and that cat that howled all night will be good and knocked up and there will be little birds chirping for regurgitated worms in nests and I will have missed it all, again, too fucked up and coughing up a couple packs of smokes to boot. The room is hazy from drawn curtains and the pay-per-view channel has girl-on-girl action at ten in the morning. I write a little reverse haiku:
When I finish my ice cream,
I have but one thought:
I wish I had two ice creams.
