Free Last Call by David Lee Page A

could have a world and live in it. If we didn’t have time everything would happen all at once and you’d be your own daddy and son with you smashed and squashed up in between, which, ironically and poignantly, is exactly the way I feel at this particular critical juncture of my near-to-end life, as I constantly feel the press of legacy at my back and my hopes for the future smashed into my face with the mandatory rejection of a considerable portion of my own earned and personal beliefs and ideology by my beloved progeny, all being necessary, intimidating, and, to a somewhat uncomfortable nature that I must come to embrace, repulsive in order to maintain a dynamic world and universe. And if we didn’t have space everything would be a swallowing hole with the sun and the moon and every damn one of the stars coming right down on top of us, which, once again, I have come at this juncture to realize is exactly the way I find myself, trapped in a body that is shrinking, crushed, and rotting around me while, in spite of the steady accumulation of evidence to the contrary, I am doing everything possible to maintain a sense of personal strength and dignity whilst living within that confinement, continuing to wage war against the scientific facts of chronology and gravity, fighting the good fight against my persistent fears of exercise addiction and anorexia, yet realizing no longer year by year but week by week at an accelerating pace that ultimately and finally, there is no fucking way I’m even going to win a battle. That’s why they are the most important. Without them we wouldn’t have Newton’s Third Law of Physical Motion. All other things came next, after that. They’re all waiting to happen or they’ve already happened but neither one did until there was a when and a where so it could, and if there wasn’t a that, everything immediately becomes a wasn’t because there would be no documentation. Thus, it couldn’t have been, at least in any objective sense. And that’s how his sculpture works for me, with all his assemblage of the paraphernalia of the past thrust up into the ether in a manner worthy of mythological ponderance, what I think it was he was trying to say and how and why it is. So, gentlemen, there you go. All of which I’ve come to understand in the course of an evening which has perfectly convinced me that I cannot, should not, and will not ever deserve a claim on any part of that monument or its significance, which in like manner has brought me to the realization that for that very reason the one thing I will desire and lay claim to for the rest of my life is personal aesthetic and enduring mental ownership of that very object, and I’ve made up my mind that I don’t have to think about that any more tonight.
    What’d you think, Ollie?
    I thought it was purdy good
    whatall of it I understood
    worth a beer I believe
    what about you, Clovis?
    It was almost a Stay,
    thou art so fair moment
    glad I asked for it
    In the words of the prophet
    I believe we heard
    something almost being said
    I’m drunk enough to almost shed a tear
    over that one
    Nope, tears are salty
    you have high blood pressure and can’t tolerate it
    besides it’s all gravel road
    leading to mere oblivion
    let’s go home
    I like it
    sayeth all but Jacques
    I’m about ready, Billy
    let’s call it a quit
    and get it over with

John Sims’ Story: The Oil Well Fire
    Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate
    â€”Dante Aligheri,
Inferno
, 111, 9
    Don’t yall leave yet, come over a minute
    and pretend to act like you think
    we might actually want you to stay
    here, I caint get the top screwt off
    this beer I got out of the cold box, Billy
    can you or Clovis help?
    that’s the onliest thing I miss this finger for
    I got cut off I just haven’t got no grip
    to twist off these beer lids
    they put them on too tight for me now
    they was this guy I