Free Last Call by David Lee

mad at you
    Where’d you hear that at?
    Mary Ann
    Yeah I trucked in mud
    all over the living room floor
    She thrown a fit?
    She’s quiet for a minute
    then the lid kindly blew off to hell and back
    What’d you do?
    Told her I’d get it cleant up torektly
    she said Whyn’t you try to be honest
    just oncet?
    * * *
    Yall hear about Melvin Ray Bird
    falling and busting his ribs?
    Yeah heard you found him first
    what happened?
    He was in his pickup all bent over
    like he was ahorseback with kidney stones
    I said Do you need help?
    he said What does it look like to you?
    * * *
    They say now that Odus Millard’s dying
    he got religion and’s making plans
    about going to heaven
    Being close to death don’t mean
    you know one goddam thing more
    about heaven or hell
    than a man who’s been married
    for fifty years knows about sex
    he’s trying to remember forward
    that never does work worth a damn
    * * *
    Melvin Ray Bird’s a tough one
    Oh yeah he’s tough
    got two layers of hard bark on him
    that’s just the part on his hide
    * * *
    Was he hurt any?
    If he wasn’t it’ll hold him over
    till the good hurt comes around
    * * *
    I remember how Odus would set
    on his porch furniture awaiting
    for whatever might come next
    dull as a sop
    but alert as a shadebake dog underneath
    waiting for any incentive to be abark
    any notion come up he could use it as a excuse
    for what rurnt his day
    I guess I’ll miss him anyway
    * * *
    What’s a matter his leg?
    Aint his laig it’s his foot
    What’s a matter his foot then?
    He runned over it widge a wagon
    A wagon?
    What I said
    What’d he do that for?
    It’s a rolling backards he stuckt his foot out
    to stop it and it mashed it
    Mashed it widge a wagon
    Hauling wood
    Godamitey
    Mash it flat as a duck
    Widge a wagon
    Full of forewood
    Godamitey
    Said it hurt all to hell and his daddy
    he had to cut his shoe off his foot
    Mashed foot
    Widge a wagon
    How old?
    Bout s’em or nine mebbe back then
    Godamitey
    Why he limp so bad
    I imagine
    They lose any wood?
    Not that I heard of
    his daddy was particular but his mama was pissed off
    that shoe’d belong to her brother and it was rurnt
    I imagine
    You’d be right doing that
    * * *
    Billy you sure been quiet tonight
    I’m trying not to explain to myself
    but just understand
    how a life that long could have
    almost no meaning
    beyond the immediate fading of memory
    even before absence
    You’re in it pretty deep I’m guessing
    a fire burning in your head
    Something like having
    the beginning part of a definition
    hung up in the cross tangled web of a waking dream
    without even finding a word it belongs to
    That’s a little scary, is it?
    then it says Here I am
    there I was
    and precisely what is it
    you’re planning to do about it?
    That’s good enough to be quiet about
    I believe so
    and I believe I won’t be saying
    There seemed no man
    busier than he was
    and yet he seemed busier
    than he was
    with any reference whatsoever to you
    who have been wading with hip boots
    tonight I believe
    It’s a little bit like something
    one of us might have done
    or thought about doing
    just exactly over a dozen times at least
    That one I agree with
    * * *
    You drunk enough to soliloquize?
    I believe so
    What’s the topic?
    Pick one
    R. B. you’n Ollie come on over
    Billy’s feeling loquacious
    maybe even Lucretian
    or Menippean
    What about?
    I expect it will be either the Grand Inquisitor
    or the lockbox of creation
    or something similar pretentious as hell
    it’s his speech which he’ll deliver unpremeditated
    and dictated unimplored by his celestial patroness
    whilst slumbering he’ll decide
    Will we be able to understand it?
    Nope, not a word
    We’ll be right over then
    I think I’m thinking about that sculpture Willy John made and how it’s wrapped up in time and space. We had to have time and space so we