the best part is when the ball gets really close to the pole, almost touches it !game over!, but then you THWACQ! hit it right back the other way. it doesnt take long for that ball to swing around and come back your way again, only this time its closer closer wow how did it get so close to your face. so you have to swish your head back, really cool fast martial arts like, and the ball is going so fucking fast as it spins past you and gets ready for another pass, fwip fwipfwip! the promised violence of that thing just whacking you the fuck in the face, man, thats fun.

another great part is those sloppy hits that make the ball hit the pole and then go fwoop! flying up into the air unpredictable, into the grey and distant drizzled sun, the sky so huge with the birds small but elliptical, until the rope grabs it back to earth and towards miles and i's upturned smiling faces. miles is 8, lazy eyed, slow and dreamy and sweet when he talks about getting married and having a dog and sweeter still when he doesnt do his homework but spends all day working on a valentines day card to his mom, one piece white notebook paper, folded once, with intricately lined letters on the front -i love you mom- and the inside a four line essay of painstaking cursive and love in banal form...
-happy valentines day i love you i hope you had a good valentines day-
but then the lovely:
-you are pretty-
and he lazy eye smiling and checking the cursive against the alphabet taped to his desk.

and so now we are out here in the drizzle whipping the shit out of a tetherball at each other, and we are looking up and there are great black birds circling us. and were getting wet. and we never win, neither of us ever wins, we just bat it the fuck back and forth as the birds circle us, and sometimes the birds and the ball and the THWACQ! just so great and he cant hold it and a "shit!" sneaks out and then, shy, shoulder down eye up, a little "excuse my language". but too much lost in the laugh i am not going to stop him from saying shit on this day when theres a tetherball and a black bird and a grey drizzle all hitting him the fuck in the face and his mother is so far away. i get hit in the teeth, he jams his fingers. ive got don henleys "dirty laundry": running maniacly through my head for some reason.

a couple nights ago a good old friend came over and i felt like i didnt have enough to say. everything has slowed down and gotten simple and my life is in just three or four places, the wild drizzle, the long bus, the hermited room, the faraway la. and i float from one to the other with little of the huge water shaking feeling that filled so many years past. now just walk and see, and not too sad and not too happy, just walk and see and guess at how time will move next. and good the flowers are lovely, and good the man in the tacqueria gave her limes for free, and good shes beautiful as she and her mother speak language misterioso on the bus and both perform the cross at the same time, a look up, a grin, in their frantic conversation. but i see and dont add and am only the drizzle or maybe just the tree at the top of the hill at the edge of the yard that watches our mad spiraling tetherball and slow circling birds and invisible circles of rain. must just be the colors she sings as i walk through the mall and cant rememeber. so slow and undefined.

but then that tetherball THWACQ! buzz so fast the wind against my cheek and theres a child screaming in my arms; a child screaming and swearing in my restraining arms and trying to hurt me as badly as he can. and then a sleep dream bus ride and then theres a perfect love underneath me and theres a beautiful new harp never heard above me, and then we do it all again and its all a little new but im comfortable and *safe*, feel so safe in her arms. and circling: not as slow as the birds, but not as fast as that tetherball motherfucking coming right! for my face!.

and those moments are thin and forgettable if its drizzling too lightly like this...but in the forgetting nothing too bad, only the past that is gone and right now its small wonder or blank stare or small tear or vast love unknown and too real to understand. so this is okay/.
right? right?
i think so...so undefined and not at all attached, not at all attached to a pole bolted to the asphalt with a ball tether flying all the way the fuck around you so fucking fast to come and hit me in the face. oh fuck its going to hurt me it is going to sting so bad when the ball fast and wet with tingling drizzle hits me the fuck in the face. and i love that game and i love you sweet slow miles when you are screaming in my soft forceful restraining arms, and im sorry, im sorry, this is as soft as i can hold you, this is as soft as i can hold you. and i want to play with you and show you this game i know where the tetherball can just whack you surprise alive in the face.
and i want to play tomorrow, cuz i dont think im playing right now.
wait...am i?