Prose: Of Idaho joking dogs and sustenance, my girls.

                                                                        (artist: ilprosa, milano tx)

tonight is a night of hedonism

cookies and beer wolves and space music

reels and reels of old time film 

sirens and the flashing red freneticism

all subject to the authority 

of a neon sign topped high rise bank: "regions"

river down there floating greed and love

i am floating something too i am alive

garrison keillor was in town today

the streets of upside downtown shreveport

texas avenue where it meets its angle

usually dormant of autos needing a parking space

was filled bumper to bumper (think houston texas 1984)

"the cars like dogs in heat nose to ass"

and elvis's original guitarist was a guest

the man the louisiana hayride the love of the matter

contained in those tales embedded 

in one little big man's life 

i came to the south for respite

from the brutally cruel desert heat of Arizona

where doctors hold burning cigarettes 

to the lips of their dying cancer patients

and behavioral health technicians abuse their clients

in the way I used to fish casting again and again

until I hooked the poor things by the lip

with sharply barbed viscousness

the medical pros at the arizona state hospital and the hooks

are really the same thing

in these eyes of mine anymore

for i have seen it and i know

oh god the things i know today

crawling like craig's volkswagon 1978

set itself to those dry and dusty hills

proving our emerging manhood 
we smoked the dope

and drove that car 
into the arroyos with impunity

oh god the things i miss 
but in those things

i know what i know i am who i am

i am total if not old enough now

nothing if not still young in my own way

grassy ball field those girls that went there with me

mi compadres so sexy and young 

but all we needed was to talk

we shared something then 
that most people don't learn 
until twilight about knowing 
another person and valuing their heart

i rode a motorcycle to alaska at an age of 17

i moved to louisiana at a different and more specific age of 50

somewhere between those moments in time

i met everything i will ever remember

the way i see it all tonight is this all there is 

then and now is this the way back to santa fe after all

last night my girl admitted to herself
an insane asylum in order to get back
together with us, that is how i saw it
until it became clear she was there 
due to the damage of knowing
and trusting me, but then she did
she willed herself to know me again
and finally we went entirely mad, 
together.

i am like that, i am that sort of man
until i am done, i am done
with those sorts of things
after all else there is tonight then
tonight the night of hedonism
cookies and beer, space music
the nine mile wolves, a virtue my desert
of eden, my reflection and its face of life
with the good natured wrinkles, formations
of a second neck.

                                                   pj reed june 2012

credits:

-rick bass, "the ninemile wolves", ballantine books, nyny 1992

-dean upson, henry clay and kwkh radio, "louisiana hay ride," 

  shreveport, la 1948