Salamanders Green (Part2A) page 14

So trying with Suli again. At first we did good but now? The same old shit again. And I know I shouldn't be surprised and should have known better but well what can I say? I was thinking about being with my son and having my wife back, I couldn't have been right with myself if I didn't try once more...

And so Suli wants everything given to her immediately and I just want to be loved. I can't give her a new house and she can't love me til I can. I keep trying to remember - its just a place to eat sleep and see my son. Everything has to be her way and its all I-my-me-mine. It hurts to have trusted in her love again only to find I still don't have a big enough pay check to be considered. If only she were with me instead of against me.

It seems my wanting to be loved in this lifetime is wanting the impossible. I can't really paint here anymore, the atmosphere is too depressing. I know we're just kicking around a dead horse of a marriage. Neither of us can give what the other wants. It's hard to accept, I still feel responsibility to the marriage, to my wife - I was so proud to have her, she loved me and I knew it, we were special to each other - then. But we change and it must be crazy to try and force another person to want me. That's what I tried to do - I should have never come back! Its a dead end here. I've tried my best and there is some satisfaction. Even though it wasn't enough and I know I have to leave soon this time for good... Still wishing, hoping, still wanting my wife to love me - Fuck it! It's just a place to eat and sleep and see my son. Expect nothing more, there is nothing. Got paid today, going out, a few drinks to smooth myself over and I'll try to hustle up some cash on the coke exchange while searching for love among the ruins.

Bermuda Gold; a bottle of liquor brought back to me from the island by my sister.

May is a wispy and green. The month has treated me well. I’ve just been playing with crayons and papers, drawing and writing in crayon.

No car and bored. I want to break away. I'm not alive. Shit, I'm not ready to write today, still too tight, trying too hard, trying to think of something to write, too much like a job - fuck it. I want to write about woman and lovers, about flea markets and Spanish bars, about peeling off rain soaked clothes and the cool curve of your soaked ass. I want to tease your nipples between the sunlight mirage of passing clouds, tickled by your own long blonde hair, to touch, to tell of you the girl, who swings me into dreams ... The guitar player who makes his fingers bleed and this woman sitting out on her third floor porch chain smoking Pall Malls lighting one off the other all day long every day waits for something she doesn't even know, interrupted only by his occasional returns...

But I'm too tight, too stuck and the sun is dipping behind grey and the wind is up and the curtains are falling off the widows and I'm gonna smoke another cigarette have another shot of Bermuda hair tonic.... Now lets see - Nope. Just can't seem to catch that line, guess I should go back to crayons.

Too damn cold and I'm stalling, still scribbling just hoping to latch onto something. I mean so what about the weather? So what about anything? I mean who gives a fuck about what I write? How about those books they sell now, the ones with blank pages all fancy bound, should be a best seller - It's perfect, all those people who don't give a fuck about anything can just look at those pages and read about their favourite subject....

I walk down these city streets of this dead end town that sometimes I love, sometimes I hate. A factory town losing it's factories. A town where urban renewal is held up because somebody wants to make the public piss hall a historical monument - like George Washington sat here.

But I like the shabby brick works and the Diamond Ginger Ale sign painted full length along the tenement house, this town like a private derelict playground, half deserted, uptown junkies down-town dress shops, Italian marble churches, the palace theatre once grand opera now Mr. Atlantic States.... I'm heating up last night’s dinner - shrimp Creole, for lunch. There's a healthy chill in the air and today is Wednesday - the wife is always friendly on Wednesday - that's the day I get paid. She wants to go out with me tonight, for drinking and dancing she says but what she really wants is to make sure I don't blow the cash on canvass, coke or horses. It's kinda funny. Just tried to eat some toast but couldn't get past the margarine, nothing worse than a cheap imitation of something one loves. It's hard getting used to this place. It's weird coming back (again!) to live in the house and with these people I grew up with and not feel at home. Today is the first time I've been almost alone in three months. That's one of the hard parts of coming back, the never getting to be alone. It's difficult to work with people always running around. I have no place of my own again, I sleep on the couch. (Yes again.)

salamanders green/ Part One /page 4

Snowing

The black bird skim the tree the river the rocks and into sky is gone. It is snowing in May. The other day 80 degrees, now, since this morning a strange and beautiful sight, delicate greens of spring – lilacs in bloom, maples in red and the powdery puffs of sparkling white white snow so white. Among the deep rich earth colours of spring – a winter thief. Birds singing snow falling. Its snowing in May and we have to get down to the shop and buy a battery for the car so we can try and sell it. Snowing in May. The car that since we bought it months ago probably only ran right for a few days was fixed and still not right was fixed again and again so to sell it we have to get it jumped hopefully make it to the shop buy a new battery and get it running long enough to sell it so we can get some cash towards buying another with. The baby is sleeping. I wanted to paint today; so far nothing has come of that. I wanted to do a water colour dancer wet down the paper let the colour mingle disperse, vanish and coagulate, to dance into a dancer. I did not expect snow in May in fact I expected it to be sunny that’s why I planned to paint I was not ready for this day and am in no mood to paint unless the sun comes out, especially with this car thing hanging. My wife tells me all I do is waste my time; all I do is write, paint, read, fish. What else is there to do? And oh yes always want to make love. My wife says all I do is a waste of time. Maybe if I worked fifty hours a week and spent the rest of my time watching TV she’d be happy? I don’t know though sometimes the girl strikes me as one who will never be happy. It’s snowing in May, my wife doesn’t talk she doesn’t know how. I ask her what she wants, she doesn’t know. I ask her why she’s unhappy and what we can do to fix it, nothing. She says she isn’t unhappy. When I ask her then why are you always mad and complaining she gets mad and complains that it’s just the way she is.

It’s snowing in May and I wish I wasn’t married to someone who doesn’t know what they want and I wish I could be gone even dead. I wish it wasn’t snowing and I didn’t have to live in constant tension. I wish I was free and in a new met lovers arms and I wish I had someone else to tell my dreams besides this machine of type. This type of machine that has heard more of my voice than any human ear. So does this machine make me one more victim of the modern age? If not for the invention of the cigarette and the typewriter, I would have no one to talk to!

It’s snowing in May and the machines are winning and the type of machine doesn’t matter only it’s a machine, the only dreams are told to a machine, my only intimate a machine, the only peace is the sound of machine pounding order, pounding everything into order, the order driving me insane is shorting my circuits, is making me die – I wouldn’t be surprised.

I am pouring cocaine into the nasal opening of this machine, cocaine the perfect lubricant making all run smooth smooth smooth no grinding smooth no squeaking smooth no pressure pounding, smooth cocaine cool soft so perfect lubricant. Not like the machine dehumanizer, cocaine the humaniser, cocaine the bringer of dreams, dreams no machine can dream.

It’s snowing in May and the baby is in his walker playing with a magazine while I am having black coffee. We take turns the child and I. He comes over to my work table, finds the basket of papers and water colours and is pulling on a picture that looks like an Indian Chief but at first was going to be a young woman, he chews it the background of ultramarine blue smears across his little face leaving his saliva splotches in the upper left hand corner makes it our painting. Now he is playing with my cigarette pack which he is always attracted to … so anyway that’s the story of how my son became an artist before even being able to walk, his very saliva worked into the painting.

It’s still snowing in May the whole world gone crazy, the flowers, the birds, my wife, the motorists in the highway, the while river-fish-animal-plant-mineral thing is hay-wire and me and my son are having a ball making each other laugh painting writing laughing even at the snow, forgetting everything we ever learned I become the infant and he remains infinitely wise. We are having orgasmic experience here and now – being human, being working here and now we enjoy the good work of being alive. He with his water colour blue beard, brave little fingers grabbing with delight the bells, the beads, the cigarette pack, and the paint tubes of the world. Me cigarette in mouth fingers cracking away grabbing too at my own life as he is as we are as the rest of the world isn’t quite as absurd anymore since its snowing in May – still.