The Most Unnecessary Bridge In The World

 

The Most Unnecessary Bridge In The World

 

So the power chord that I ordered

for this old movie camera that used to be ours

aka/ergo/etc.:

the movie camera stayed with me

what I lost was her

and the chord

 

(insert sound of time moving: here,

in an ear that has been conveniently shaped

like an extroverted vagina. insert it there, with the vocal intonations

of a mighty Herzog sneezing………can we soundtrack the hell out of it

with the original score from King Kong?……….huh?……….

I miss her?…………I mean, shit

that’s not where I was going with this,

“This is serious.” –Signs

I mean

hell…..)

 

I know there’s no getting her back

I knew that 40 minutes before the second time

that she left me

(her life left my life and while sure,

my life still stares off in the direction

of her life’s leaving

it’s all maroon vs. purple at this point

it’s irrelevant

 

her life has a new life to hang out with

and they probably have their own video camera

by now and it’s probably really nice

and they know exactly where the chord is

at all times)

 

and shit nothing really comes back anyway

because back is just a pile

of misplaced brevity

and previously house shaped sticks

 

and there’s nothing I can do about that

because I’m a pretty lousy time plumber

and what do I know about sticks?

 

but goddamn it there was something I could do

about that chord

(baby steps to oblivion)

and what I did was

I ordered a new one

and like I’ve already said at the beginning

of this, or no I haven’t

I got distracted in all this loss of her

because it’s everything, dammit

 

from the world and that thing that moves time

to the goddamn tree trunks in the backyard of the song

that Bruce Springsteen will never sing for us

 

once or at all

it’s all of it

everything

made out of loss

 

which when you think of it…….

right?

so yeah, the chord I ordered for the camera

that’s been sitting in a drawer

with its battery drained from the inside

for 6 years now

that chord showed up today

while I was at work

 

so when I got home

(two pianos playing rock/paper/scissors

with each move banging only the super-most

saddest of notes)

 

of course the first thing I did

was plug the entire goddamn thing in

I mean, I really put that shit together

 

I plugged that fucker in

and all the buttons burned to life

like a gallon’s worth of adrenalin

pumped straight into Uma Thurman’s

pulp fiction shaped chest

and there it was

just fucking sitting there or whatever the hell

it is that digital images of your own past

encased in plastic fucking do

 

an hour of footage

shot 10 years ago

before my heart had cracked for good

and the world had grown so goddamn unreasonable

that a fuck like Donald Trump actually has a

shot at being President

 

an hour’s worth of footage of my old life with Helen

60 minutes worth of pixilated memories

60 times more detailed then the memories

I have in my head and………………

 

……..I’m fighting the urge to be distracted

because to continue on about things we no longer continue

…………………I mean, ouch

“I need a drink”—R Gosling’s daughter in The Nice Guys

 

so let’s just impale ourselves upon the cliff notes

for now, shall we?

and we can all just try to fill in our own gaps later

 

agreed?

groovy

 

fast forward to the bit about how we used to check into

mountain motel rooms and get super drunk

and have a really great time but also if this video tape

is to be believed we used to get into really dumb

stupid fights about stuff too

and for some reason we’d record them

 

I’ve only watched half of the entire hour

and we’ve already had two long

middle of the night motel arguments

that are so ridiculous and funny

and I found myself screaming to myself

on the tiny video screen to just “Shut up!”

 

I get so fucking stubborn and let down

about stuff that should just be disagreed upon

for a couple of minutes and then

moved on, or away from, fucking un-dwelled upon

 

but I had some goddamn theory back then

that if you talked about something long enough

then everything would eventually turn out all right

 

and we all know how well that worked out for me

so yeah, (cut to the original trailer for

The Creature From The Black Lagoon)

 

fast forward to the bit about the bridge

 

at one point in the video when we’re not arguing

like idiots we’re having a really nice time but we’re out of ice

so I grabbed the ice bucket and Helen grabbed the camera

 

and we headed outside and down the stairs to the ice machine

the motel is structured like a double decker Bates Motel

and the two of us being drunk and laughing about everything

we were convinced that somebody was going to call the cops

on us again because we were being loud and the last time we

had stayed at this particular place somebody had called the cops

 

so we were trying to be discrete and secret mission-ive as possible

because the ice machine was located directly outside

the motel managers office, which was pretty much

like the local Death Star for us at the time

 

so the plan was to get in, talk an old man into

disabling the tractor beam, grab the ice, and get

the hell back to our room as quick as Wookily possible

 

and the plan was going horribly

but goddamn it we were having fun

 

the ice had been secured, some local squirrels

had been made fun of, and we were about to head

back to the Millennium Falcon which was also known

as: our room, when the two of us at the same time

happened to turn our heads together to the left

 

and that’s where we saw it

Helen, with the camera

and me with my Helen loving eyes

lodged somewhat symmetrically in my head

 

behind the motel there was a bridge

it was around two feet long and

one foot off the kind of ground that looked

like it had never seen water

 

and we just started laughing

because the bridge was unnecessary

on a scale that made it remarkable

like a pumpkin the size of an igloo

or a really great work of art

 

it was the most unnecessary bridge in the world

 

nobody gave a shit about that bridge

that night, but we loved that bridge

for the fact that it was excelling at something

 

even if its area of excelling was

being unnecessary

 

we laughed about it all the way

back to our room, where we learned

that we’d lost our room key

and Helen set off to the front office to get us a new one

and showed up 10 minutes later laughing and without

the room key because she’d forgotten what she was doing

and did something else instead

 

which tonight leads into

me, still loving her

 

while back then it just led

us into another

unnecessary fight