Dances With Wolves
Saturated cherry wood pipe smoke. John Barry bass reverbs in Jack and Patricia’s library. How many times did we fall asleep before it was over? Two families, two daughters, two sons, behind the scenes with too many mechanical buffalo.
Bull Durham
Red sox caps and video cassettes. Spicy alliterations of long slow deep wet kisses that last for three days. Ambiguous trailers, taciturn studios, messages with edges. Insider jokes are band-aids. Only coffee heals real wounds. Sweetness helps too. A story arc from 1988.
Water World
Kathy dated Kevin. On dry land Texas, Kevin hunted the wrong buck. He ate steak while giving me the side-eye. I was fifteen. Do I tell him how many times we watched Dances With Wolves? How about falling asleep in a friend's library? Will he confirm good dads smoke pipe tobacco and rest their eyes while sounds of deep war drums are played by British composers who score films about American land colonization and secret agents?
The BodyGuard
First crush, first date, but not first kiss. Wind shorts for easy access. Wrist guards holding hands. Same class, same school, same height, same friends, same stalkers. Two days later a friend runs up, number 42, with a football helmet under arm and says I’ve been 86’d for not 69ing.
Stands with Fist
Cardiac Arrest. No soundtrack for your funeral. From time to time, I re-read your obit. Now that it is online, it’s not hard to find. Pediatric NeuroSurgeon. Lover of outdoors. A bow man. A family man. Capable of sucking out brains with his fingertips. Replacing them with magic silliness. First second dad to dad. Best friend’s dad. Dad’s best friend. Color blind. Always surprised by my brilliant green hair.
Open Range
You are no cowboy, but you have lived long enough where cowboys roam. Shit Kickers don’t paint bathrooms on Easter but soft boi’s do. You are hard in all the right places, calf roping precision, a love for B 52’s. Roam if you want to. Thanks to Them, Butch Sunday is a tradition.
The Highwaymen
My ex’s grandma taught Woody Harolson in elementary school. I once ate dinner sitting next to Kevin Costner at my cousin’s ranch. My high school English teacher shared a dorm with Connan O’Brien. Liz Phair went to summer camp with Julia Roberts. Better be whip-smart. Famous doesn’t mean not messy. And proximity don’t mean not complicated. Not fucked enough to be cancelled for squeezing lemons on your sleeping girlfriend, or in the presense of family, or trying to serve your home-made lemonaide to a former student. Listen. Is that chopsticks I hear in the distance?
YellowStone
Costner like it’s hot. Kevin’s watch. May we borrow time. June’s a river.
Man-u-facture-d-stone-cold-yellow-Mason-for-hire. How many RPM’s is this baby?
All set. Set for now. Set dressing on the road is not a book by Keruac, but a song about sunscreen while eating oysters in tidal pools. Live in Montana, but leave before it makes you believe a beat poet or a man wrote those words. It wasn’t Vonnegut, it was Mary Schmich. Love is not falling, but a walking towards questions. Primer’s for real life. My love is a connecting flight away…
… two, tops. Thanks Kev. Costner likes it hot.