The Poet

I guess I have always wanted to be a poet. 

I first realized, as a child, that my skin was held together by a material finer than silk, but just as fragile as paper. And that the hair that emerged from it wasn't mine, and in someway or another, it was just like weeds in the soil. And when I noticed that the cancer growing on my fathers nose was almost the same color as his eye shadow, I told him. 

It's easy for me also, to laugh or cry when I read other people's mail. Sometimes the curves in their private scrawl is enough to make me keep the letter for myself, a little piece of human soul to remind me that we are all here together, and that we all write the words in our heads. I have a box under my bed of some of my favorite letters. 

I used to visit my fathers grave every day, but as I got older my visits became sparser and scattered. As a kid I would tie balloons to his tombstone, hoping that the balloon would carry him up to heaven. But the very next day when I would return, the balloon would be deflated, lying dead in the itchy grass; weeds mostly. The wind would toss the balloon around in the dirt until the string became too old and soon they would just disappear. I would find them later heaped up against the iron fence of the cemetery, tangled and depraved.

On Sunday's I stay home and try to write. It's my only day off, and I usually spend it in a disillusioned daze in front of the typewriter, smoking until my lungs sprout tobacco seeds. The TV would usually be on in the background and it would provide little bursts of inspiration for me. Sometimes I would hear a word on a commercial or see a pretty face on a noir show, and I would be challenged to summon a series of words or whatnot to spill at my pleasure. Usually, nothing of any relevance ever surfaced. I could never write as well as the secret people in the mail. 

Last Thursday while on my route I found a letter with beautiful calligraphy inscribed on the envelope, and I had no choice but to open it and see with my own eyes and read with my own minds tongue the glimpse of another persons intimate association with others. Their business is what intrigues me, who they are, what they do, what they write and what their brain thinks. I will sit for hours sometime under the pale glow of the desk light, reading over all of my favorite letters, legs crossed until my balls fall asleep. Sometimes I will cry because their lives are so unique, with their own problems and worries and hopes and joys. It is so precious, these peeks into these people lives. Like my own live soap opera, minus the soap ads.

I recall when I found out that my father died. I was seven, and I believed in heaven then.

Dad was a clown. He had died after his last show, after some Asian kid's birthday party. The cops found him in his car with his makeup running, his red nose swollen.

There is a tap on the flimsy wall of my cubicle where I keep my route information, extra postage stamps and heaps of random papers that have no meaning to me. I was writing a poem about the waitress at the Quarter Cafe, I forget her name, but I was really going for it. I look up and its Lee Stacey, my boss, the five foot, sixty something, Nam veteran. He looks at me through his glasses like I'm a child. I put the pencil down and turn to face him.

“There have been several complaints recently from people who are addressed on your route. At least twelve different calls came in the last couple months, people reporting lost mail, and mail that never got exported. All on your route.”

I churned up a response as Lee's face pressured crimson to his cheeks. I opened my mouth to spill whatever words had coagulated in my skull, but Lee beat me to it. Apparently he didn't give a s**t about what I had to say.

“Get your s**t together, Hoops. If you can't manage to do that you'll be back out on foot in Culver district.”

“Yes, sir.”

In truck number nine, which was usually mine for the week, I would drive and smoke a pack of 100s's. It was against the regulations of the U.S.P.S, and I had been reprimanded hard by Lee Stacey for smoking on the job. He explained to me that it was a safety hazard and whatnot, but I still do it anyway. On the rare occasions when someone else I worked with would drive truck nine for their route, they usually came back complaining of the lingering tobacco smell, and I would beg them to keep their mouth shut, or it would be my a*s.  

Before heading out I pull up to the back of the postal building where they keep the ever growing stock of mail, and pick up several sacks for my route. Jeff Watkins sees me and walks over from his sorting post and shakes my hand. His teeth are yellowed and equally spaced apart, but he smiles just the same. Every time he says a word that begins with 'th,' a little delightful whistle sails out of his face. I ask him how's it going in the letter factory.

“You know, Stacey has been on my a*s about putting the mail in a more detailed order, alphabetically he says, but every time I tell him that people aren't addressed in alphabetical order, that it wouldn't make it easier on the drivers, he just shuts me up and threatens me with my job. I tell you, I really had it with that guy.”

“He is still living in the forties,” I say. “He doesn't know what from what these days, except for how to answer a phone and wipe his a*s. Other than that he still thinks that Truman is still pointing fingers.”

“Yeah, I believe it. You know, the other day he came in here and told me that I needed to dot my I's better on my time card because he can't distinguish between an I and an L. I told him, what does it matter, I'm just signing my f*****g name, who the f**k tells me how to sign my name? And then he changed subjects and ordered me to sweep the paper rubbish up off the ground, even when we have someone that does that already, but he doesn't get here until around four, so when Lee comes around and sees all this s**t on the floor, he makes me clean it up. I tell ya, Mac, I'm tired of this s**t. I've been here for twenty five years and until this f****r got here I ain't never had any problems.”

“I hear you, Jeff.” I look at my watch to imply the time. 

“Here, let me get your sacks.” He walks over to the sorting section where the swollen sacks of mail sit ready to be distributed. He drags a couple over and we both lift them into the back of the truck and I try to end the conversation quick. We see Lee Stacey walking towards us and I get in the truck and drive off before anything happens.

Stopping at the liquor store on Gleason I picked up a pack of smokes and chatted with the pleasant Indian fellow that ran it. His name was Jeet. I remember his name because the three other gas stations that sit on Gleason are all ran by Indians named Jeet. Usually I say whatever the f**k floats to my mind and they just smile and nod. I tell Jeet that if it wasn't for these cylindrical cancer candies that I would lose my mind, I would lose my f*****g view of sanity and all that is sane, and just f*****g shrivel up to a starved seed, scream at everybody and everything, try to smoke my fingers probably, or either light myself on fire. 

Jeet nods and smiles. 

"Oh," I grab an orange lighter and set it on the counter, "One of these, as well."

I get in truck nine, start the engine. A Volvo parks next to me and I look over and see that it is Barbara Mathers, the single lesbian mother who lives on Road 11. She gets out of the car with her seven year old son, who just had a birthday recently, and start towards the store entrance. The kid sees me staring at his moms gorgeously sculpted a*s, and says, “Mommy why is the steering wheel on the wrong side?”

Barbara stops, stirred by the allergic question, turns and looks down the scope of her sons finger, winces in the bright sun, for her sunglasses broke and she mailed them to Chanel in Frisco for repairs, looks at me and smiles. She doesn't know my name but I know hers, and I wave a hand and smile, thinking satirically to myself that I have two letters addressed to her from her supposedly female interest that contained several explicit photographs of vulva and clitoris. She waves back, but not as enthused as her son does, and they both turn and head to the front door of the liquor store, all the while her voice fading as the distance grows, telling her son that I am the mailman and I have to sit on the opposite side of the truck because it is easier for me to put the mail in the ---

On Avenue 4, where my route starts, I light the first cigarette. This part of town is the nicer part of the Pasadena district, and usually I see only about three horrifying sights rather than the usual thirty something in Culver City, where my apartment is. 

The first house is Terry Upton, a bisexual social worker whose ego is concentrated in the head of his prick. Every week he has a  different male enhancement subscription, eight different porno mags (male and female), gets billed for his males only membership at Ballz Galore, and receives handwritten letters from his Aunt in Connecticut. I've read only one, but I didn't keep it. Nothing special really.

I gather the assortment of his mail, flip through a Playboy for a minute or two, and stick it in the hollow tin can on a stick. One down, fifty nine more to go.

House number two is a Mr. and Mrs. Clarke, a couple who runs a pet grooming service from the comfort of their home. I grab their handful of envelopes and miscellaneous and flip through them, not really interested in the contents but just to make sure I am not missing anything special. A letter from the government of the state of California catches my eye, and I open the letter carefully and read through the contents. Apparently the Clarke's do not have a permit to run their pet grooming business, and must cease any grooming activity or be fined. I sigh, and place the letter back in the envelope, sealing it with my safety sealer. Poor Mr. and Mrs. Clarke. I put their mail in their freshly painted blue and yellow mailbox that matches the color scheme of their business sign, Clarke's Clipp's, that hangs from their porch ceiling. As I drive away I feel my face become congested with that familiar sensation of sympathy, and it burns a little. I roll the window down on the passenger side. I think to myself that whoever ordered the Clarke's business to be shut down was probably and most likely a man that closely resembles Lee Stacey in physicality and regime. I make a U-turn and go back to the Clarke's mailbox and take the envelope out, making it seem like I'm putting a forgotten letter in the mailbox, but really I'm trying to help out the f*****g Clarke's by allowing them to remain ignorant. 

The sun has changed position and I yawn in response. The sack of mail sits next to me on the passengers seat, its contents depleting. The last house of my route is my favorite because the ninety year old Mr. Woods is always on his porch smoking, and he always has something to say. I think, in all reality, that my arrival is the highest point of his day, for I am the ear that he gets to spit in.

I pull up to his mailbox, which is diagonal from where he sits in the shade on his porch, and toss my cigarette out the passenger window. The wind blows and I hear his voice muffled against the rushing whispers from the trees. Mr. Woods, I remember, doesn't like his mail placed in the mailbox because he is wary of theft. So I park and turn the hazard lights on, leave the truck running, and carry Mr. Woods handful of senior mail to him. I start across his lawn and I hear a faint shout. I look up and he is waving his arms at me and yelling to get off the grass. I jump off onto the sidewalk and smile my condolences.

“You damn fool, can't you tell I just trimmed these blades?”

“I apologize, Mr. Woods, I wasn't aware that--”

“How do you know my name?” he says from his easy chair, his hand level with his face and smoke issuing seemingly from his fingertips. “Nobody knows my name around here. And I've been here since forty-five, I tell ya, I started building my reputation as LA's finest broker, I made millions, spent billions, fucked the finest a*s from here to Taiwan, smoked the tastiest tobaccy that them Cubans couldn't sally up,” his voice grew with each succeeding anecdote, his cigarette dripped ash onto his pant legs, the butt lost in between his thick knuckles. “I've been here for thirty years and still not a soul has roused my attention. Did I tell you that I was there when we found Hitler's corpse? It was the single greatest day of my life, for I got to smash in the face of the person who wiped out a billion innocent souls with my right foot, and that boot still has his mustache hairs stuck in the rubber tread I tell ya! After we each gave him our own intimate kick, we set the f****r on fire and watched him burn.”

I stuck out my hand to give him his mail.

“Well, what do you think you're doing handing it to me, can't you see that I'm lounging?” He waved his varicose ridden wrist around to signal the smoke. “Set it down right there on the table. Don't knock over my drink now, sonny, that's imported Cabernet from Achilles -- one spill of that will cost more than your annual salary.”

I set the mail on the table, and made sure to slide his drink slightly with it to rouse his angst. He didn't even notice. I don't even think he would care if I picked up the glass and took a swig from it. Mr. Woods was just a voice now, a voice with no body, a voice that speaks from the musty material of the porch easy chair. A voice that had long since grown louder and more threatening. But Mr. Woods was simply just talk.

I started off the porch. “Have a good evening, sir.”

He was lost in a thought, probably recalling the sound of cracking skull under his rubber army boot. When I got back to the road, I saw that the truck was on fire, black, inky flames growing like bushes out of the windows. I stared at the white truck and watched it quickly grow black and charred. I guess it was my cigarette.

Mr. Woods walked off his porch for the first time in years, for I realized he was standing at my side. He placed his skeletal hand on my shoulder and squeezed it.

“Look at the f****r burn.”

Truck number nine was no more, and I sighed, not because I knew I was going to be fired, but because I had left my cigarettes inside the inferno. 

I took a cab to the cemetery. I left truck number nine in front of Mr. Woods house and disappeared before the fire department showed up. I told the cabbie to stop at the liquor store on Gleason so I could get another pack of 100's. He didn't try to avoid the stop, but I know he kept the meter running when I was inside. 

I told Jeet about what happened earlier with the truck, told him through giggles that I am completely fucked and will definitely lose my job, but s**t, it's not that bad, at least I don't have to put up with Lee Stacey anymore, the five foot f**k, and maybe I could focus more on my poetry.

Jeet nods and smiles.

"Oh," I grab another orange lighter and set it on the counter, "One of these, as well."

At the cemetery I tell the cabbie to wait for ten minutes, and he points to the spinning meter. I say its okay, and ask for a pen and a paper. The cabbie hands me a chewed pencil and a notepad from the taxi company. I take it and walk into the park.

The sun is almost completely down. The headstones all around me stick out individually, like a bunch of dead people kneeling. I come to my fathers grave, notice the old balloon strings tied around it, the crusted rubber lost under the dry grass. I kneel in front of it and light the first cigarette. 

There is an itch on my nose, I scratch it and suck in the smoke. I try to write something for my father, a poem, or at least just a small prayer. I start to write something but its no good. My knees strain so I sit on my a*s and read the name of my father inscribed into the stone. I don't recognize the name. It's just a bunch of meaningless letters put together. The itch in my nose returns, this time a sharp pain, and I scratch it again.