Last night was the Providence Poetry Slam. I'm the host. Sage Francis won, Grasshopper came in second. Gary Hoare missed second place by a few tenths of a point.
I went to bed a little too late last night, so I'm beat. Ray was supposed to show up, but didn't. Today I have to buy my plane tickets to Chicago for the end of the month. I need to do laundry this weekend or I will have to go naked to work on Monday, and I can't do that because my cube is too damn cold. It's 64 degress farenheight in here right now.
Out side it's still snowing. I was walking to work this morning, not thinking about snow but thinking about summer. I had the dream again last night. I havn't dreamed about Larry in forever. i wonder what brought him back?
Larry�
Now I need to explain something�
I wasn't always the person I am today, I wasn't a good man. Until I hit 23 I swear I had a death wish or something. Maybe I was trying to fill in the cracks - the cracks in my self esteem - the cracks in my life, or maybe I was just stupid.
I was probably just stupid
Because I drove drunk more nights than I did sober,
I passed out everywhere - I was always the one throwing up in a dirty basement,
I was the one getting lost - wandering away drunk.
More often than not I threw driving in the mix.
Like I said, I wasn't a good man.
Then there was this one Saturday night, we were riding around in my friend Jimmy Baca's pickup truck
age 19 I was / I believe,
& yeah we had beer in the trucks tool box- two each for each of us up front
& yeah we had been drinking a while,
like I said I wasn't always a good man,
we were driving through the back part of Webster coming off of Lower Gore Rd,
but Jim was driving slow.
He'd been pulled over a few too many times to drive like an idiot anymore - he's probably the reason I lived through that period,
driving me around, both of us drunk,
he always got the beer,
maybe I was just lucky,
"We're driving slow & careful, slow down the back roads of town, worse that happens is a deer runs by,
but at 40 miles an hour nothing much happens..."
Yeah, I was lucky.
We were driving & we were getting close to the sharp corner
we see lights.
Blue lights, red lights, yellow, white, but mostly red & blue, so we drank our beers down quick
threw the empties under the seat.
We thought it could be a road block, but it was probably an accident.
You can tell an accident from afar, but there'd be cops
& you have to be safe...
one lane of traffic at that point, & when we finally got to pass by,
we saw a crumpled blue IROC next to a big tree.
Mike's IROC.
There was glass - glass - glass everywhere, glass sparkling in emergency light - A disco ball smashed & thrown out horizontal - Still reflecting the party they came from
I would�ve swore God reached down & twisted that car like an empty in the hand of somebody's drunk daddy.
"Jesus" Jim said, Jesus was all he said, & he pointed hand over steering wheel
finger down to ground he pointed to Larry.
Larry was lying in the middle of the road
face up
with three of the rescue squad working on him
on the grass we saw someone else being worked on
we thought it was Mike,
cause it was his car & as we drove by
we had no choice but to drive by,
I watched them workin on Larry
Larry laying there over the steering wheel of Jim's truck
over Jim's arm
out the side window
cut in half by the roof post
full length view out the back
Larry growing smaller
& smaller
& smaller
until we rounded a corner
& he was gone.
The next day we did the ritual,
a stupid modern ritual
we all went, one by one back to where he crashed,
then to the wrecker yard to see the car.
It's real ghoul like if you think about it
& it turns out Larry was driving
another guy we sorta knew - Gracie - was the passenger.
They said Larry was going at least 100 around that corner
& when he lost it,
the car hit the wall on that corner & jumped & hit that tree -
that 3 foot wide tree
11 feet in the air...
"There was no way they coulda made it"
"Yes there was" I replied
Turns out Gracie was just paralyzed & a couple months later, he was walking again...
Three days after the accident, we went to Larry's funeral.
He was the third person I knew to die that way & the night of the funeral we mourned him
by getting drunk.
I wasn't always a good man, but he was my friend
& I never did ask Mike what they were doing with his car.
