Scriptor Press - The ElectroLounge

“It’s up to you. Rich, you can have me back but you have to decide who I am. When
you open your eyes, there I’ll be. Yours again.”
Goodbye, Mickey. Michael Gregory Americus. 1964-1968. Born Hartford,
Connecticut. Died Portland, Connecticut. Survived by parents & one older brother.
Franny asleep on a bed of rubble 30 years after going over that hayloft’s edge,
following that deaf little boy, ragged haircut, missing a front tooth, stop falling, here, now,
landing.
Rebecca standing nearby. She who first gave me hope. She who has never left me.
Hint. Clue. Foundation. Truth. Still here. Even now. No matter what the.
Rebecca hugs me, then steps back. Looks over at sleeping Franny. “Kiss her, you
blockhead!” she says merrily.
I watch the beautiful nude girl until I can no longer stand it. She doesn’t go out
much. She never wears clothes. She doestn’t eat much either. Just drinks juice, all day long.
It’s not hard to figure what that’s about.
She paints. That’s all she does. Her room, the part of it I can see, is filled with
canvases stacked every which way. I wanted to see them better.
I bought some expensive binoculars. I had to! This is what I do now. I am this
woman’s secret witness. I know she’s going to do something soon. She needs me to be here
& remember it for her afterward.
Her pictures move on their canvases. At first I thought their paint was running.
Trees. Clouds. She’s painted windows to some place in the woods somewhere. I don’t
understand it.
For awhile I wanted to talk to her. That was after I got used to just seeing her nude
every day. Well, not really “used to”—she’s too beautiful. She’s too alone. I’m too alone. But
it’s different now. I know my role.
I love her more than ever.
I imagine I’m watching you, Davey. But soon it becomes something else. Soon I’m
watching you without having to imagine it. Then I become you watching me. And at some
point there’s no difference anymore. Time & space & the mortal separation between us,
they’re all gone. We are poured into the same vessel & mix until no you, no I.
& this too dissolves. I can’t hang onto any of it anymore, except in my paintings.
They don’t teach you about what it’s like to down 20 hits of Mr. Owsley’s best, &
then proceed. They treat the canvas like it’s solid, like it’s not possible to enter it, paint from
within. They don’t believe pictures move, & so their pictures are not much endowed with
movement.
I taught you how to love me, Davey. You hardly existed in the vast scape of your
manhood when I met you. Some girl had dosed & blown you on the bus out here.
I dosed you harder.
I blew you so much fucking better.
You freaked out when I led you into a bed already fulla bodies. That night was fun.
“Davey?”
“Mm?”
“Nothing’s what it seems.”
15
The Cenacle / 54 / April 2005