pigeon
s*p*y
you have to look the other way to see this one
I don’t know what it means. I can’t read it, it’s obscured
a translucent, smoky green cassette;
the click of a ball point against the label
a secret — hidden from nobody — the devious mind playing tricks on itself
the obscured future
the future crime
rubber band guns and captain of the club
gathering intelligence; squandering intelligence
too clever by half
cryptic (for the sake of being cryptic), even to yourself
My stepbrother BD lived with us for a while, off and on, between failed attempts to live peaceably with his mom. His was the rich redwood den with its own door — the room that I would graduate into after he moved out.
I was constantly lugging my little boombox around, recording cassette after cassette of goofy fake interviews, documentaries, random rambles, homemade sound effects and occasionally music. BD gave me a cassette that he didn’t want or need anymore.
Written — or rather scribbled — on its label was what I assumed was garbage, the remnants of scratchings out. I would never have guessed that it said s*p*y — maybe “sopoy” but what would that have meant? The letters were deformed and what I’ve represented here as asterisks were actually cramped scrawls, perhaps attempts to obliterate other letters. At some point — why? when? in the context of what conversational topic? — he enlightened me: that side of the tape had been a recording of an album by the band Spy. The cacographs, so convincingly artless, were an intentional concealment! Only those who knew what they were looking for would be able to decipher the label on the tape!
“See? Because the band is called ‘Spy,’ I thought it was cool if the label was written like a secret code.”
We had other moments. Our conversations were always off by one — one sense disjointed, shifted one way or the other out of alignment. We connected but didn’t quite connect. I admired but didn’t quite admire. He mentored but didn’t, quite. But he was the first to introduce me to rubber band guns, how to bring a social heirarchy to a pillow fort clubhouse, pellet guns, shooting at frogs, talking with a certain insouciant belligerence, beer, porn on VHS, what “loudness” is for on your car stereo, CompuServe, Jean-Luc Ponty, the idea that nonsense writing could have a coherent plot structure, seriously disrespecting your parents (or their spouses — aka my mom), the way people talk and rationalize being obnoxious when they get drunk, what a “narc” was, “borderline personality disorder” ...
That blank tape was years before the future crime — the mushroom, the pull tab, the bar brawl, the manslaughter charge, the prison sentence — by the time things had deteriorated that far for BD, I hadn’t really talked to him for a few years. I’ve carried a small parcel of guilt about that. One of the last times I did remember talking to him, he had insulted my girlfriend while drunkenly declaiming how much better he knew me than she ever possibly could.
iron oxide harbors a garbled message; recorded over but never “erased”
the secret in conflict with the need to reveal
the forgotten, the left behind
the self hidden from the self
the message hidden within itself
which is the signal and which is the noise
always missing something, always leaving something out, always chasing the real and never getting there — maybe that’s the point of writing, not a point of failure
yau heve to look the ether way to see this one
I den’t knev whet it moens. I cen’t roed it, et’s ebscured
a trenslucent, smeko grene caszette;
the clirk uv e bqll peint egainzt thu leber
e seerot — huddan frem nebedy — thu devieos mynd preying trocks en etsalf
If you always think something bad is gonna happpen, then when it does, at least you can say you were right.