Laux - The book of men: poems

His brother was a sessions man for Taj Mahal, and he played guitar, too, picked at it like a scab. Once his mother knocked on the tin door to ask us in for dinner. She watched me from the sides of her eyes while I ate. When I offered to wash the dishes she told me she wouldnt stand her son being taken advantage of. I said I had no intention of taking anything and set the last dish carefully in the rack. He was a bit slow, like hed been hit hard on the back of the head, but nothing dramatic.

We didnt talk much anyway, just drank and smoked and fucked and slept through the ferocious heat. I found a photograph he took of me getting back on the bus or maybe stepping off into his arms. Im wearing jeans with studs punched into the cuffs, a T-shirt with stars on the sleeves, a pair of stolen bowling shoes and a purse I made while I was in the loony bin, wobbly Xs embroidered on burlap with gaudy orange yarn. I dont remember how we met. When I look at this picture I think I might not even remember this boy if he hadnt taken it and given it to me, written his name under mine on the back. I stopped seeing him after that thing with his mother.

I didnt know I didnt know anything yet. I liked him. Thats what I remember. That, and the I-dont-know-what degree heat that rubbed up against the trailers metal sides, steamed in through the cracks between the door and porthole windows, pressed down on us from the ceiling and seeped through the floor, crushing us into the damp sheets. How we endured it, sweat streaming down our naked bodies, the air sucked from our lungs as we slept. Taj Mahal says If you aint scared, you aint right .

Back then I was scared most of the time. But I acted tough, like I knew every street. What I liked about him was that he wasnt acting. Even his sweat tasted sweet.

Time to rub the shoulders tight knots out with a thumb, flip on the TV, watch a man douse a white blouse with ink before dipping that sad sleeve into a clear bucket. What cup of love poured him into this world? Did his mother touch her lips to his womb-battered crown and inhale his scent? Did his new father lift him and name him? He was fed, clothed, taught to talk. Someone must have picked him up each time he wobbled and fell. There might have been a desk, a history book, pencils in a box, a succession of wheeled toys. By what back road did he travel to this late-night station? By what imperceptible set of circumstances does he arrive in my bedroom on a summer night, pinching a shirt collar between his fingers, his own invention locked in a blue box, a rainbow slashed across it? Somewhere in the universe is a palace where each of us is imprinted with a map, the one path seared into the circuits of our brains. It signals us to turn left at the green light, right at the dead tree.

We know nothing of how it all works, how we end up in one bed or another, speak one language instead of the others, what heat draws us to our lifes work or keeps us from a dream until its nothing but a blister we scratch in our sleep. His voice is soothing, his teeth crooked, his arms strong and smooth below rolled-up cuffs. I have the power to make him disappear with one touch, though if I do the darkness will swallow me, drown me. Time to settle back against the pillows and gaze deeply into the excitement welling in his eyes. Its a miracle , he whispers as the burnt moon slips across the sky.