Ameriscopia

This Is Not the Conversation That I Started the Conversation With

47 This Is Not the Conversation That I Started the Conversation With we’re not part of the mainstream we ARE the mainstream son, baby, kid . . . listen I don’t care what you call me just do it on your own dime and that’s the joke so I was told, son, baby, kid, see miguel has this thing about the mainstream but I ain’t seen him for years, son so does that make his stream the main still or has the stream caught up with what it was he was when I was with him, son, baby, kid, mijo, whatever the hero in your lingo be but we would have our one yearly conversation in his car driving back and to his class in Rutgers and there’s a cassette tape I have from one of our trips where he’s talking a blue streak not cursing blue just talking fast so that makes it sky blue instead of jet but he got all worked up about our place in the fabric of america our meaning us although he had a way of flipping what was said, with what was real and what became real, and turning me on, with it, or it, on me, so this grand exercise in politico bravura was really extravagant pointing of the self 48 telling me to learn about what it was I was doing in my time for my people cloaked in the fumes of the jersey turnpike and machiavellian promise but as confused as I was by such grandeloquent machinations I was grateful to be included in the collective we of this here his statement since there was definite mutual respect showed regardless of what was in these confined quarters on his front seat on this stretch of america’s highway, his overtly sexual prowess brandished fearlessly as one might a new playing card or in a higher tax bracket a new maserati in a garden of naked men but going back before the ride before the mainstream laced its light afternoon drizzle back during lunch after one too many swigs of revised thunderbird— we are served by the server, what is meal and what is king—his barstool inched he leans in slow says, I’m gonna show you something baby his journal revealed, this he says is my next book written page by page like a real book, the word real impaled by weight and prophet, by this point all talk of fitting in or not, son gave way, kid to short chasers and straight shooters, okay mijo let’s go in the car we went feeling no pain the prospect of rain sprinkled with politics a booming baritone and a ride home was my cue that it was time to wake up 49 I feel gooood now he says if I was to go right now, the car reaching 80, I’d die a happy man, la la la la lala lala laaaaaa, he sings oblivious to wet pavement or gas pedal la lala la la la I like talking to you, which was a way of saying I like that you listen to me without interfering to which I respond translucently his mantle having been lowered a while back after the verbal seductions of many a fellow poet but still . . . here we were fascinated by the legion of clouds above casting their magic over the shooting star we were heading home on the jersey turnpike ...