Dallas Clayton Writer, Artist and Author of An Awesome Book.

CHOPPER

CHOPPER

I rode in a helicopter
for the first time.
We took it
over the city
from the valley
to downtown
past my house
then a straight line to Malibu in less than five minutes.

Strange machine
like an accidental discovery,
that shouldn’t work but does.
A glass bulb
taped to a lawnmower engine
or a carnival ride that had bigger ideas
for itself.

Everyone was so close
people in cars,
walking their dogs,
standing on the corner.
It felt like I could yell
just as loud as you would to your parents
downstairs making breakfast
and they would hear me, and look up and say
“Hey, there’s Dallas! He’s in a helicopter. I’ll be damned”

DAY TO DAY

DAY TO DAY

There’s a couple
down the street
living on top of a small store.
They work there every day
selling odds and ends
things that fall apart
after two or three uses.

They don’t speak English very well
and must be touching their seventies by now.
The man is missing most of his teeth,
replaced with mixed golds and silvers
and the woman has a laugh
like a nervous tick
that sounds like she sleeps in a helium balloon.

If I stayed here my whole life
chances are I’d go in one day
to buy some razors, or a pack of batteries
and one of them would be gone.
Perhaps the wife.
Perhaps the husband.
One would go,
vanished from the landscape,
leaving the other behind
to tend the shop,
pay the rent,
sweep the filthy sidewalk.

One would go
and one would stay
and would I even notice?

LOOKING FOR METAPHORS

LOOKING FOR METAPHORS

And
I’m in the front yard
kicked back toward the sky
wondering how those telephone poles
got so cluttered with wires,
transformers,
big black cables wrapped around going this way and that,
like there was never any plan
never a thought for an exit,
just one worker man after the next
adding on to the heap
and telling himself
“That’s what the boss said do.”

LATER

LATER

We can go all night
dancing to music we’ve never heard
and don’t much care for
drinking until it gets so very funny
every word, every step.

Go until we’re leaned crooked against the wall
and feeling strangely at home
in this illegal after hours club
like a high-rise apartment living room
hot, with bad couches
and carpets that remind me of my grandmother
and her racism
and her bowls of fake plastic grapes.

THE RULES

THE RULES

Trying to explain to a child
why cavemen didn’t wear clothes in the summer
but we have to
is like admitting
that nothing we ever do
really makes any sense at all.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

I think it used to mean
making enough
everyday
to provide for the people you love
and loving enough
so that those people
would also provide for you.

It seems like now it means
making more than you could ever need or use
and keeping as much of it as possible
because you don’t have time
everyday
to love anyone enough
for them to want to share.

EVERYMAN

EVERYMAN

In a vast field
late at night
three mathematicians lay
charting the sky
with maps and graphs
testing to see how long
you can look at the stars
before their beauty loses all meaning
how long you can talk about their grandeur
before one
becomes just as uninteresting as the rest.

HOW IT’S PROBABLY GOING TO SOUND

HOW IT’S PROBABLY GOING TO SOUND

“Hey, they just announced the world is going to end on Monday!”

“Really? … Wait…I thought today was Monday.”

“No dude, it’s Thursday.”

“Woah…Awesome!”

SPRING BREAK

SPRING BREAK

At Go Kart World
in the forgotten city
of Carson California
adult men spend long stretches of the
hot dry afternoon
surrounded by simulations
of activities
which in real life are not fun at all -
driving,
shooting guns at the police,
trying to earn small amounts of money by picking things up with a crane.

These activities are made fun, however,
because they are miniaturized
colored incorrectly
and sold to children as
possible indicators of the spoils
of a life well-tread.

In a cruel twist of fate
after the first fifteen minutes spent
on the other side of the turnstyle
with two more hours left
on the “race at your own risk day pass”
they are then rendered un-fun once more
by the looks on the faces
of these men,
the nametags they have to wear
and the smell of gasoline
and cotton candy bled
into the twill
of their checkered flag collared
work shirts.

WHAT THE FLAG SHOULD LOOK LIKE ONCE WE SECEDE FROM THE UNION

WHAT THE FLAG SHOULD LOOK LIKE ONCE WE SECEDE FROM THE UNION

A wolf puppy wearing sunglasses,
sipping an umbrella drink with a crazy straw
talking on a cell phone
with a voice bubble that says
“They’ve even got a store
that sells designer bean bags!
I swear it’s right next to where they have the Oscars!”

WASH

WASH

If you listen closely
to the floormats
in your automobile
they will tell you a story
about all the reasons
you could have been nicer
to everyone who’s ever stormed out on you
without saying goodbye.

BELLS

BELLS

I got my new book yesterday.
I made a new book.
It came in the mail.
That feels nice
to have a real thing
a new real thing
that you can put on a table
or in the hands of a stranger
or bury along with your dead.

Just a small something
or maybe it could be a big something if you let it
like carving your name
into a tree
that just happened to be
the one they built the Mayflower from.

UNFORTUNATE

UNFORTUNATE

You’ve kissed so many people
who don’t even remember you
when they think about how many people they’ve kissed.