Envelope window eyeglasses.

Once, without thinking, the boy went to the store and saw what was there but after that he went home, again without thinking, and sooner or later the sun set and the Simpsons came on and he was glad the the freezer was full of ice cream, because vanilla makes even the sickest shit go down smooth.

Yeah, but anyway, so there was guitar! guitar! guitar! and the sky shook like a small vacuum cleaner picking up all the socks that you thought you lost forever, as you search behind the dresser for drums! drums!

Well, for the first course, there are the little things that we always thought we needed, but soon after the sun becomes a star, supernova like, and the people jump up and down on one foot twice, just to spite the space race.

Of course you can, but just don't squeeze the toothpaste dry, because I plan to lick all of the telephone poles quite clean tonight, as long-forgotten calls become semi-endless conversations that meander from what I thought was right, to what I knew was quite wrong, to what she thought I was thinking, when in the end it was all about the up-down stroke and me on the bed, covered and sweaty, thinking of her toes.

Prefer super-screened beez

Dot the lines that jump the twine that kris-krosses the bonnet I always tie to my doorknob. It's the only way that I'll forgive you for Wednesday. It's the only path worth taking now that we've parted ways. It's the only trip that I wanted to come home from.

When will I ever learn that it's not the type, it's the finger movement, and it's not the conversation, it's the convalescent home that we pass by most everyday, me on one side of the street, you the other. I look, you sometimes look back, and the clouds seem just a little higher all of a sudden.

Forget me, not, well, kind of only sort of maybe, and when I fuck the world until it doesn't feel like screaming any more - just a little shake here, and finger lick there - everything will be fine. Great. Wonder-full.

Pull-lease

Yesterday, when I opened that envelope, you know, the half-empty one that always tempted me last April, well, anyway, it ended up to be full of her hair, post-dye but pre-curl, and I just dumped it all out on the carpet, and stood over it staring down for almost an hour. There was that I touched, and smelled, and wanted to twist and tie around forever. There was her dead shadow-halo, detached, and all mine. I'm not sure when I dug out the broom, but once I started to sweep, I couldn't stop until my neighbors started having sex. Yeah, all walls are way to thin around these parts.

No, no, not that way, not anyway but my way, on the highway that flies away from all the ways you told me you'd never leave me - well, your love didn't leave, it's true, but when was the last time our palms played water spout, when was the last time I smelled your fingernails?

Better that you didn't, better that I shouldn't, better that the best is just good enough to make me wonder after all. What did you ever see in him? What did we ever want to achieve, in the end? It's all a big lust-love arm-wrestle match, we were just playing pencils for the universe, and you were all Huskies, me all eraser shavings.

Once, yeah, that's the way I wanted it to be, just like story time gimme, there was something and someone and together they walked down the road leading somewhere, the end, can you read it again? No, I can't. Write your own conclusions.

So. If you want to come over tonight, and just sit around looking at my records - I alphabatized them a few weeks ago, right after I read your last letter - then I would really like that, I would really like to see how you've grown.

Candy stripe my ass, she was an entertainer. She sang washing-machine detergent jingles, only without the lyrics.

Plus, when I told him that he was crazy, he asked me how much.

When you first measure the circumfrence of the collapsed love triangle, note how the once-bulged edges smoothed almost effortlessly, like big soap bubbles strung between the coiled garden hose, and the cold pipe, right next to where I kept the bees underneath the bucket. I'd check up on them every so often, and they never seemed to mind the darkness, only the way I stared.

Anything but that. You could give me the world, take away the shine, add up all of the times I walked away from a bad situation, and I'd almost want you to leave me what you'd never speak of, the space between wristbands, and the newspaper strewn upon the floor. Classifieds are us, and I'm not ready for a new job.

Uh-huh, like Christmas, only with more traffic and less ribbon. Like Thanksgiving, only with more seasoning, and less jackets. Like Easter, only she'd still be alive, and I'd never kiss her once. Like my birthday, only with the biggest party in the world, and no one would ever wake up, ever again.

If you hadn't noticed, it's on sale.

Well, well, well, speak of the spoken to.

If you really think that I care, then fuck off.

Yeah, only more so. It's the best damn present I ever had. Coast guard stubble doesn't even come close to the way you hum the answer, it's the cheesiest.

Yes, if you turn around in aisle three, look up around three inches from the plastic wrap, right behind the peanut butter cup packages left behind from shoplifter-grazing, there, right there, you will find my pager number. Call me, enter the appropriate private key, and I'll send you the url which points to the zipped file that when translated from au into wav, clearly tells of how I'd really, truly, like to take you out to a movie sometime soon. Perhaps a matinee, but obviously you're worth the extra three bucks.

Not like that, like this. Under the boat and through the tunnel and past the flowers and against the wall and over the river and through the woods and, well, just put two and two together and call me when you play Yahtzee.

After I thought about it for quite a while, at the same time I arranged my socks in a fuzzy, linted parallelogram, then the ceiling opened up garage-door like, and I remembered the walk I took way past the shopping mall, when the ice cream truck came and gave me a snow cone. After I remebered those licks, and thought about it for a little quite a while more, I came to this conclusion: you suck. Leave me the hell alone.

Boiling. Watch watch, the agony my ass, it's coming up all blistex, all ski-lifts and snowboard babes that hurt so much when they fall right on top of you.

Crash, car! car! car! foot over hood into ambulance, doctors with those clipboards and syringes, the visitors, the cast-removal, the mini-series, the jumprope, the Sunday newspaper thrown right though the picture window, 3-D action in my general direction.

Walking through a silent period, a space between and before and beyond what I'd ever imagined I be in, there, right underneath the hairs sticking out of my nose, brushing up against the familiar smells of cotton ball snowmen, screaming under cigarette lighter flames.

Fauceteria. Where all the fixtures will fix you, good.

Growling, you didn't have to carry me home, you didn't have to watch me wash up, you didn't need to tuck me in for the night, you didn't have to make me wake up alone.

Envelope this, you paper cut scab, you never-was and almost-wannabe, you disinfectant container emptied, beheaded, and made into a paper clip container, that I often use to throw at the spiders that freak out my younger girlfriends - they all have a thing against things writ small.

Scrape away the plaque, the pixy dust tube plastic stuck between my baby teeth, the ones I often stick in my ears, when I want to listen to cavities long passed. Funny how the dentist-spawned screams and tooth fairy wet dreams quickly trickle into a whisper, especially when the roots become juice. Carrots are really, really in now.

I wanted to give you more, more or less, less anything I forgot at the laundrymat. But I was lost in traffic, I was late for the wedding, I was sick to my stomach, I was a militia member. Wake me up when the apocalypse starts, when the previews end, when the sacred cows come home for the slaughter, and eventual post-clone shoe construction.

Take three empty film containers, poke them full of holes, not too many, just enough so that if you filled one of them full of sand, it would take more than a minute for most of it to swoosh out onto your palms, cupped. Then turn on the stove, fetch the frying pan, and spit up some steam, the more the better. Finally, call me collect, and I'll talk you through the process. It's quite simple, once you get the fuck off your lazy ass, for just once in your life, and walk, no run, call a cab as long as I care, as long as you get over here, as long as I can watch you pant, sorry I'm late. Sorry I'm never at home.

And the punch line of the joke is, yes, only with more screaming.

Fix me up some sloppy ice, I'm hankering for a hunka please, please. Please.

If you didn't want your friends to come over, why did you sell the lemonade in the first place, why did you bring out the better placemats? Better to have loved and lost, than lost and loved what you never even owned in the first place. Like newspaper subscriptions, only more expensive.

Don't you just hate telemarketers? I fell in love with one once, she had a certain way of haltingly saying my name at just the wrong time, well, is he here or not, tell him I called, tell him I have an urgent message for him. She was so sweet, she always hung up last.

The sailor, he was a sad man, he was a see saw, way over-weighted. The sea spray, it was a bird intoxicant, it was a bridge affixant, it was my glee.

Put 'em up, gimme a sign, any sign, two for one, for once.

Pause, and so then he was like I wish, only without the spittle. I was all on the floor right after he said that, and he was all hello, hello, doing the touch tone cha-cha.

Don't miss this piss, yup. It's all the rage in Europe, at better rave t-shirt emporiums. They bottle it and sell it for a song.

You want to know the truth? It was me, with the baby, running through the dresses, and how could I have seen that hanger coming, how could I ever afford the layaway?

I wanted to buy the barometer. Really. But just as I was whipping out my Visa, this absolutely stunning woman walked by the bus bench outside, and so I dropped my backpack and took up arson. Once the fire alarms went off, she stopped and stood staring at me long enough for me to pull down my pants and show off my new tattoo, it's of me as a baby, rolling over. She was impressed to say the least.

Stamps away! Scatter and Sleater-Kinney, left at the stop light, right next to Fred Meyer. I'll be waiting with bells on, I'll be pointing in your direction, all business like. I'm the best idea you ever forgot, plus a solar calculator.

Playing telephone with chicken wire, operator, I want 900-blocking, I want a sales tax refund!

Transistor socks, they make me tippy-toe. You know, like shopping carts, only with loads more love. Anyway, so I was telling you about this brand new wind pipe they've invented for incurable asthmatics, it's clear plastic, sticks right out of their necks, and if you put in a quarter you'll get a handful of gumballs right out of their belly button. Or maybe it was bouncy balls, it all blurs together in then end, especially lately when I stay up so late because of the mid-life colic. Cutting my phantom third set of teeth and all that. Chewing on the Milky Way Lite fantastic.

Punch them all out, sheesh! Didn't they teach you anything at finishing school? Oh, I forgot, you were on an atheletic scholarship.

He went to law school. He writes the small type on the bottom of car commercials.