the permanent efficacy of grace
The grind had taken it’s long toll
And the cog’s teeth were close to breaking
Until one fine morning
it unscrewed the nut
slipped off the bolt
and rolled down the road
on the road again
the rain is still hitting the windshield
like a thousand million bullets just barely too weak
one hundred and eleven gallons, two hundred and seventy-five dollars
we are far from home
if the rain lets up we may hit milwaukee by daybreak
when we get there we can stop for a while
maybe sleep with the windows cracked and the seats back tonight
this amateur affair is all that keeps me going.
quiet, again
“See that second window, where the glow of the television screen is flickering? I used to live there twenty years ago… seeing a girl by the name of Celine.”
“So, what happened to her?”
“This place has changed a lot.”
Pittsburgh is an armpit. No one smiles there. Some people say they are proud to be from Pittsburgh. I don’t understand that and I never will. I can tell you now that they won’t smile when they say it. I hate it here.
That said, I believe being jobless and alone in a city that eats the will to live like Oprah accidently eats the fingers of unwary assistants can really have a kind of a net effect on your tolerance for life’s more minor inconveniences.
I once had a job. I was once a journalist. That ended about a month ago.
That turned from bylines in a paper every day into a stack of things that I was supposed to be doing but instead did not.
I once had a girlfriend. I was once happy. That ended about a week ago.
It was a loving relationship with a woman I once for some unfathomable reason considered charming who had morphed, unbeknownst to me, into a bloated personification of evil who I got to fuck once every time the stars were in alignment and once Satan had left control of her turgid form for just the key amount of time.
Maybe he went to Aruba.
I’m not far from there now. I’m writing this from the Paradise Sands motel in Chino, California. It stinks here. A friend once told me that you can smell Chino from Fontana when the wind is right. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Pittsburgh.
But I am not staying here. Because for the first time in a long time, I have a purpose. I am hitch hiking to meet the girl of my dreams in Sacramento. The Isuzu Trooper I drove here in is thoroughly destroyed. The people I came here with have vanished.
This his how I got here.
