Joan of Arc in Dreams and Time Machines

Eric,


This isn't a poem but I'm going to post it anyway. I would really love some feedback on this. Right now, it is in a really rough state. I wrote it at 4 in the morning when I couldn't sleep. Just wrote it straight through. There are no edits to it yet. I've been reading some Donald Barthelme so that's probably why it is sort of odd.

"Good morning," he whispered to his pored face. He enjoyed his breath turning the mirror white. Although he never wrote on the fogged glass, he wished he did, and he always tried to think of witty things to put there so that when he came out of the shower there would be something pithy to amuse him and keep his mind off of his cold body. He never did.

Sitting in his idling car in the garage, he thought of Tess and of her curves. His Honda didn't have curves like that. Neither did his wrists, which he was staring at. Rather, only she did because they were her curves and because she owned them just like she owned the pictures they took together in New Mexico last August as the sun was hot and they sweated making love in the hotel room before seeing the desert and its rockfaces. He told her they weren't as pretty as she was. She told him that's bullshit. They're gorgeous.

That day the highway was packed and NPR was fundraising so he listened to a mix he made last december. It played their favorite songs. He threw it out the window and felt stupid because he actually liked some of those songs and really wouldn't have minded listening to them. "So this is it."

Work was shit but it always was. He would have quit but he made a lot of money and that allowed him to enjoy the good weed he never had in college. Tess still had his bong though. On a post-it note he wrote "Get bong from Tess" and stuffed it in his pocket where an engagement ring, a pack of cigarettes, and a boxing knife kept it company. The bong would never be gotten and the boxing knife never used. The cigarettes would be discarded after the usual mind palpitations over their cancer and his death but a new pack would take their place soon after. He never had the balls or whatever to quit. A constant theme in his life that was, never quitting. Sometimes he thought that's why she left. It wasn't why.
She left because he wouldn't stop talking about Joan of Arc, how he saw her when he slept every night and made love to her in his dreams, which he didn't believe were dreams, which he believed were real. In dreams, he told her, you can meet the dead. But he was coming to love Joan and Tess could understand that because she filled their breakfast and dinner conversations: how her chain-mail felt against his bare skin, stuff like that. And after he started getting books about her from the library, she got worried and got him a shrink who he never really went to. He just went to the library and read more, eventually deciding to build a time-machine because dreams were no longer enough and the weed never really brought him to her. The tools and equipment for the machine came in the mail last month and when they did and she saw them she left, knowing what was coming. She took the bong, needing it, as well as his weed.

The time machine didn't work like the ad said. It just made noises. And blinked. He left it on when he slept. It was soothing. After that night's dream of her and her christian lips, he decided that suicide would be a good idea. He bought a boxing knife, thinking it would be quick that way. For days it slept in his pocket, as he slept more and more, trying to be with her always. Tess would call sometimes and break his dreams. She needed to get her stuff. He stopped picking up.

Driving home, he decided it was time. The impact wasn't bad. Metal against metal. Sleep. Joan. Blackness.