Was vaguely planning on heading north
On highway 23, which rolls through farm
Prairies and ridges and valleys
The Wisconsin Driftless area
Where glacial migration didn’t flatten
I’m writing this at the bar next door
And across the parking lot I can hear
The sweet homeless guy talking
To himself—he had to be sedated
At the hospital once after climbing
Onto the roof of the bar, screaming
And laughing, after which he thought
The doctor put a chip in his brain
That allowed him to talk to God
So I drove to Reedsburg, through
Spring Green and Plain and Loganville
To see if the basement metaphysical store
Was open, because sometimes a psychic
Gives readings, this cool recovering
Alcoholic lady I like a lot, who made
Her own deck of cards and told me
I have “God energy,” but it was closed
So I walked down the street and got
A small cup of coffee, the only amount
I can handle these days, and got back
In my car that’s way less cool than
The car I used to have, and continued
To the Dells, a tourist destination I’d only
Been to once as a child, to a huge
Waterpark called Noah’s Ark
It was a weekday and overcast and lightly drizzling, so there wasn’t
Much traffic, and immediately the vulgar commerce
Hit me: hotels, restaurants—supper clubs and steakhouses
And breakfast monstrosities (one huge one named
Paul Bunyan’s)—and then start the attractions, the first one was an 80s
“Museum” and store, which I thought
My friend who told me he didn’t want
to be friends anymore would’ve wanted to see, which I just drove past and peered
In, deciding not to stop and go inside
Navigation took me to the main strip,
Which I’d never seen before, and it
Was kind of overwhelming, I can’t front:
A long street of trap after trap after trap
Kitschy bars, one named Nig’s, stores with tshirts
Lining the walls to the ceiling, ice cream and candy and chocolate shops,
Ethnic restaurants, glow in the dark laser tag, paintball shooting ranges,
Old timey portrait studios with costume wardrobes to wear and pose in,
Which triggered a memory of a picture of my mom and her brother
That I realized was probably taken in a place like that, three of them,
Everything with its front doors and windows open, inviting the ambling
Tourist in—I texted my friend in Michigan about
It, to which he said “small towns now are either completely dead with
Like a single dollar store and meth, or it's boomer Disneyland kitsch nonsense”
I traversed the strip on both sides
A couple times sipping my lukewarm
Coffee, not really going into places
Except one tshirt shop, behind the desk
Of which an Asian woman was eating
A sandwich—“how’s lunch” I said and
She quickly swallowed and kind of
Embarrassingly giggled and said it
Was good—I asked her how long she’d
Been working there and she said a month
I went to Nig’s and had a root beer
Next to a group of four younger men
Who all seemed to be meeting up
For something—I mean this place is
Crazy, just the tackiest low vibration…
I went to the paintball range and got busy
If I was hungry I would’ve eaten somewhere but I was feeling a way
One of those restless ways where
You need to break the ennui of
An otherwise confounding destiny—
A Victorian alcove with a chintzy clocktower, a fake grass lawn with
Food trucks—I pictured myself eating,
No, choking down three bratwurst
With onion and mustard—I had to get
The fuck out of there, no snow cones
I took a different route home, a scenic
Byway, past the forevertron where
My friend and I had went years ago,
When we were still friends and had
A connection, caring and knowing
Between each other, before I could
No longer handle his life, he said,
And couldn’t reciprocate listening
And care, which I understood in an
Intuitive way before understanding
I’ve been to some frightening places
In my mind and heart and soul over
The last few years, and not all my friends
Made it along with me, and I don’t blame
Them, because I’m living in reality,
Which is “an icicle forming in fire”—
I’ve gotten some friends back though,
And I’m grateful for that, especially
For the friends that stuck with me
Though the whole exquisite madness
I’ve never hallucinated anything and I’ve
Never heard voices that aren’t there,
But I deal with paranoid delusions,
Which I now have the ability to rationally
Disintegrate—I’ve been dealing with major
Grief and I think that sublimates into
Fear without logical expression—when I
Have panic attacks my hands and arms
And torso get all prickly and numb
I used to want so much and now I only
Want a few simple things, and to hold
Those things as close as possible,
Fervently and with all the love I have,
And I have a lot of love left, it’s just been
Reallocated, focused into something more
Fine—I just sat back down at the bar and
It’s all regulars and familiars, except one
But he’s sitting next to the owner
So my suspicion is quelled, mostly
My tears, though, run towards the gorgeous and lame things
In this world, this incredible world that lives and dies
With every breath, where coincidence
Predominates, and sense is fluid as sleep
My vain tears run towards the supple
Silence of this dream, where nobody
Wins, and the crippled wings of desire
Fold themselves into the empty center
Of experience, like a perfect war
-- Big Bruiser Dope Boy wrote Foghorn Leghorn, After Denver, Something Gross, Feds on Vacation, and most recently a chapbook called Dodgeville Sonnets. He has a brain eating amoeba.
