Roach

The mouse appears and reappears, becomes a fixture in the apartment without uttering a sound. We name him after the super who will never bother him. Cold mornings turn into spring at the turn of a dime, flowers burst from dead earth and frowns peel from faces at the speed of jackets falling off backs. We drink margaritas like we used to but nothing is the same; it passes across our eyes but there’s no point in mentioning it. What would you do with the words if spoken?

You spend a day at the top of the world, Manhattan at your feet and all of America spreading out beyond. Sit in the window with the sun in your face and connect the dots of the island, the streets that look so insignificant from above but that amount to all you know of life. There’s a slight stir in your chest.

It’s too soon to say when it may thaw.

Had a Few

He writes from India, sends pictures and feigns humility. You ask about the road conditions in Rome and pretend right back. Various trips lie scattered right ahead of you and you hide under the covers with your guitar, I forget to cry but remember to beat my fists into a pulp, it evens out. Spring lies in wait, just underneath the surface it gains strength, it tears at your attention but you are busy losing your appetite over unsurprising news. This isn't how I meant for you to find out. He says he's reading Kerouac and wants to pick strawberries for a life; you smile in recognition but outside your window it is frigid and gray, you fear the blossoms will never come.

I don't want to run, now, I don't want the world to take me away and scatter my spirit into the air, I just want to sit at this typewriter and bleed, I want to close the doors, the windows, the noise around that only serves to distract me, I want to fight the only battle worth the wounds, I tried pretending normalcy and humanity and how easy it is but how useless, no you can have this body, this matter, just let me sit at that desk and pour, let me burn burn burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, I opened the good book to remember and seventy dollars fell out, I believe life is trying to tell me something. I'll listen now, I promise.

I am ready.

and Honor

Friday night on the west side and while you forget how to maneuver a body, it finds its way home without you. Turn left on Leroy, right on Fourth, walk all the way to the neon fish sign and fall into bed with your clothes on. Text your farewells without spell check, warily.

Tomorrow it will all look different. But home always looks the same in your sleep.

Mince

Thursday morning and the fire department climbs your stairs, weary fire fighters stomping around your kitchen and seeming superfluous. You stand in your stained hoody and sleep-drunk eyes, trying to assess danger. Is this the moment I blow up and all the things that used to matter no longer do? They leave within the minute, and you live to see another day. Count your pennies, again, again, do you think the numbers will come out different if only you do it enough times? Refresh the search for airfare; wonder, is this what it means to be delusional?

But you feel saner than you have in years, calmer, relieved of the air in your lungs and the tickle in your temples. No matter the outcome, somehow it will all come up roses. The air is frigid but the sun shines like spring. There's a mouse in the kitchen, she writes in despair. You giggle and buy traps on the way home.

Nothing scares you, anymore.

Scare

Your sea legs wear off, get used to the same view outside the window. Rummage through cupboards full of food it seems years since you bought, look at yourself in the mirror and see someone only vaguely familiar. The plants revive, eventually. You look at maps of other worlds and wonder what'll come of them. Look at words of other times and wonder if this is when you step up to bat. Count your pennies in terror, but a note in your pocket reminds you you are doing exactly what you said you would, and how strange it is to be happy. Norooz rolls past you in a giddy feast, the equinox tilts in your favor and, as it does ever year, erases the dark clouds of an entire season in your heart. You set up alerts from a botanical garden's cherry bloom watch and grow impatient for whatever is to come. When this storm finishes pummeling you, when the Fates have grown tired of their games and leave you out to pasture for a bit, when the grass grows green again and the world is yours for the taking, where will you start?

There is a film shoot outside your apartment. The view changes, even as you are looking.

Grand

Gray sleet on gray streets, we roll across the Verrazano-narrows and crawl into Manhattan on a Saturday afternoon to little fanfare. The grand old music hall smells of beer and bleach, the floor is sticky. Early in the set an amp blows, there is minor chaos and major cheer, the audience sings along with reverence. I stand at the back of the room trying to remember every turn, the way the drum vibrates in your chest, the happy spirals in your head. The after party is all giggles and clearing days of unspent riders, I take the L train back to the island with bags full of crackers and beer. Forget my keys (forget to need them to begin with) and have to call my roommates to be let in. My room is as I left it: a cup of coffee sprouts new life, a plant barely hangs on to its old one. Everything is quiet, nothing moves. New York knows you need the space and retreats to ambient noises.

You love it that much more for it.

Kodachrome

Preserve the memories 
They're all that's left you 

The building is a hundred years of farmers markets and railway storage in the bricks; in the slow songs the high beams hum with the hush of the crowds. After the show the line to tell your story is hours long, it wraps around the coat check and the exit into the next bar. We just got married today and we wanted to come. They sing along to every song and you have perpetual tears in the corners of your eyes, just waiting for the final straw when you can no longer hold it in. The bass player yells her joy madly in the green room after. The singer has another beer and says I am happy. You crawl into your cot and realize it may be the last time. Vow to sleep the perfect sleep but your blood is on fire and you think you may never be tired again. Lie staring into the darkness.

Lie wanting for nothing.

Tower

Capitals look ordinary up close some times. After the show we trekked through an empty downtown to see the supposed center of the universe and they laughed at how small it was up close. That's not what it looked like in the movies. We still jumped when the guards yelled at us. Spend the night sleeping outside the club, a rap battle erupts in the street outside, but once the curtain is drawn around the little cot how quiet it all becomes. It rocked so much last night, I dreamed we were on a ship. Set out alarms for a new city. So close to returns back home. 

Do you want to come with us for the next month, too?

Perfume

It's been a long hard year

But when you sit at the back of the club,
in an awkward spotlight,
and the walls smell of old beer and cold Massachusetts winter,
with your belongings tossed carelessly on a cot in a bus in the street outside,

your blood vessels seem to dance,
your spine aligns and
everything is in its right place.
Tomorrow is a new city, and the day after,
and you
wish the road would never
end.

Bolt

The storm rolls in, envelopes the city in the middle of the night with that eerie sheen storms set in the sky; thick heavy snowflakes fall into the streetlights. By the time we wake for morning, it's all turned to slushy ice galing in all directions come nightfall the streets are merely wet, bare. You pack your bag and how light you seem, that ticket in your back pocket again. To say yes, when asked. And to be able to return home, soon again.

I woke this morning with a terrible sourness in my chest, itching to be displeased, counting pennies and failures in little piles, until it dawned on me, again (again! again! how often must it before it etches itself into your skin and remains?), I am exactly where I should be, doing exactly what I meant to. I burned my arm on the riser, but nothing hurts anymore.

Stellar

Clocks move forward, a great storm approaches. The city lies still in the sunshine; everything feels like spring. The newscasters speak of little else. You cut our hair in the bathroom sink (again), see the spiraling twists and turns tumble out of your depths and onto porcelain. Water the seedlings but move them from the window draft. There's still opportunity to be buried alive.

Finish Line

10 hours until Daylight Saving. A deceptive sun streams in through your windows; outside your walls New York is freezing but you play along with its ruse. Refresh the tracking of cherry blossoms in the Botanical Gardens. It laughs at you. No matter. You know it will come.

The bus breaks down somewhere outside Detroit, you repack your bags to find them again. Think to yourself that as lost as you seem, isn't this exactly how you planned it? Re-read old words from another life, I don't want the home of my own, all those things, the money, the securities, the vacation days you have to plan months in advance. I want the simple Life, the pure essence. To struggle is to live. You haven't been this bored, boring, lifeless in years, and realize that you barely even remember that feeling. A young couple sat next to me on the flight reading Kurt Cobain's journals and talking about some gig in Brooklyn; he manspreaded and stuffed an inordinate amount of carry-on into the already crammed overhead bins, offering me slices of pepperoni with a smile. Words form in every quiet moment, they dance around you as you walk down Second Avenue, they keep you company in transit, in sleep. You are doing everything you said you would do. The rest is just static.

SEA-EWR

Seattle rains, it washes away with the floods, its residents unperturbed and you, a snowflake, buried in the swell. I walked out to the cliffs to watch the sea hit the shore, to see mountains at least and something of the Great Beyond but all there was was cloud cover. I walked a thousand steep steps to the beach but there was nothing but monochrome outlines. The kindness of strangers grated at me, the sensible outerwear, the long silent days and nights; how I've longed for the rumble of a bus night, for a little madness and adventure. They write from Chicago and you count down days and hours.

At last the common motions of another unknown airport, at last the comforting smells and sounds and you look out the panoramic windows at the rain with contempt in your heart, but no matter. An hour later, in the dark American night, 10,000 feet above glittering cities and clear skies, how at ease you feel, how grateful for both the journey and its end. The road remains safely underneath you. You may have veered off track. But you know now at least how to return.

God damn, god damn

All is quiet, still, cool, dark. You sleep until mid day, the phone incessantly buzzing trying to wake you but you are indifferent to its lure, you are a million miles away and only slowly making your way back. How strange to have a fixed address, I putter around making coffee in a quiet kitchen, take long showers, marvel at silence. I ran up and down unknown hills, stopping to look at crocus blooms and seas of daffodils in sunshine; the birds chirp and everything feels like spring in that way that New York never remembers to. The bus careens down snowy mountain passes; they send pictures and I don't know what anything means yet. I walked around a neighborhood market earlier and it was the most normal thing I'd done in ages.

But normal only pays the bills, it doesn't set your heart on fire.

And all you want to do is burn.

Lumos

Crosswalks painted rainbow and as you pull around the corner, the pastel blue bus still stands there. Reliable as ever. You play a last gig, stand swaying at the encores and drink a last beer on the bus before stepping out sad into the night, into a car, into suburban quiet calm. The clouds lay heavy on your brow, but you hold on to hope that other things may find their way. They leave at 2, arrive in Fargo some other day, waking up on the road and grumble eyed making their way to mountains again.  You wish desperately you were there.

Count the days until you see them again.

Pike Place

The rocking bus becomes familiar, the way it creaks and sways, and when its stops are intentional. You sleep late but wake just as you roll into another town; it spreads out around you for just a few minutes before you are in it, the others wake too late and are disoriented by the narrow alley. There is sun, though the forecast said there never would be.

Make your way west to the ends of the continent, stand at the top of the hill and look out over the bay, the wharf, the ferries: everything looks cold, menacing. Eventually the rain comes, but by then you are safe in your house on wheels where the smattering drops cannot harm you. One last night in this refuge. Scenes and stories lie in wait, unprocessed, raw, they long to be put to paper. All of America spreads out ahead of them and you will not be there for it, but elsewhere. Mourn the loss. Make the most of the bits you have.

It cannot rain forever.

Dharma Bums

Wake to the rumbling of a vehicle in motion, softly rocking back and forth across a mountain pass. Hours ago you stirred when the great beast started, quiet city morningscape giving way to the pine forest curves up north. The sunshine follows you as long as it is permitted, but finally must relent to the great grey blanket that is the Pacific Northwest. Somehow coffee is made without a spill; I drink great bowlfuls through the day, reading Jack's ponderings of a fire lookout and finding the ultimate meditation in monotony. The rain comes at last outside Lebanon but is unwilling to commit. Our arrival time moves slowly ahead of us.

You try to remember who you are even as you dissolve in the road, but perhaps that is the lesson entirely. Here is America and you do not doubt the ground beneath your steps. Do not doubt the beat of your heart in your chest.

Running with a Heart on Fire

Palm trees give way to rolling green hills, smells of the sea, bridges for miles, careen into the Bay with giddy faces and sunshine on stacked white lego houses. You remember the city through a fog, one long, strange, drunken rampage and you don't know where you woke up, only that you sat at the airport feeling bowled over the next day. We took a ferry out across the waters, looked at a prison in the middle of the ocean, ate ice cream in Marin county where the money pretends to be laid back. While waiting to dock back at the port of San Francisco, you tell them maybe I should move to California, but you know as well as anyone New York always pulls you home. Later, during the encores, you look around the sold out theater and think how West Coast they all are and you want nothing to do with it. Close your eyes and listen to the last fading lines of the chorus, let the audience take their pictures and ask timidly for signatures, sit on a tour bus drinking rider wine and saying farewell to the opening act before they drag their instruments back down another steep hill and wait for departure. Curl up in the cot where time cannot touch you. Wake up to the sounds of the road again, underneath your bones.