Sorting the Mail

by Tom Cassidy, poet and reader
Wayne Nelsen, film

Audio starts about 20 seconds into film. The film is shown live with three screens—left, center, right. This is just the center screen since it translates to a blog the best. One other collaboration between Nelsen and Cassidy appears after "Sorting the Mail" ends, entitled "Gateway."  





Sorting the Mail
(text)

by Tom Cassidy

I get in bed and close my eyes

and try to think of nothing

but my nothing gets too busy

I can hear the stars

I’m wide awake

I go downstairs

to organize the mail

I put magazines and catalogs in one pile

letters and bills in another

and announcements for events

like Naked Hamlet on Ice in a third

I go to bed and close my eyes

then realize I’m wrong

I go downstairs

and put the letters with

the catalogs and magazines

I create a bills-only stack

I make a pile of stuff

I’m not going to open or answer

and a special group

for some pain-in-the-ass shows

I probably should go to

just to keep the fucking peace

I go to bed and close my eyes

and count the sheep

they look like wolves in drag

they complain about the job

it wakes me up

I go downstairs drink a cup of milk

a quart of beer a fifth of gin

a two liter bottle of Listerine I think it is

it could be Mr. Clean but I’m not sure

I take several multivitamins

made especially for writers

they contain predicates

niacin samurai-icin

bebop rum strychnine

red dots opiated adverbs

Spam bar brawl boners

horse spit nine volts

and fifty times the amount of salt that’s in the sea

I drink a bottle of cough syrup

with a label that says

Not for Human Consumption!

I go back upstairs

to the medicine cabinet

dump out all the older pills

from amber plastic tubes

and I grind them into powder

then go back downstairs

to make a smoothie

I mean all them are out of date

what could they possibly do to me?

make me   happy.    pain free!    

    energized and drowsy.    all at once?

I would fucking love that!

because of a piece

I saw on KARE 11

I roll up the linoleum and smoke it

something about the bacteria

that breeds in waxy buildup

I light it using the handy pocket blowtorch

that’s part of the Swiss-Army-Knife-like pocket tool

I got when I joined AARP when I turned ten

I see angels on the clouds that I exhale

and I notice that the clouds

are merely costumes worn by devils

and the devils look like writers

and the writers write like shit

the pocket tool also has

a knife a fork a stapler

a dolly a toaster a root cellar

a person to put out there on Lyndale Avenue

when you really really

need someone to hear you

do you know how hard that is in civil conversation?

and I simmer and flop

and throb and grok my eyes hum

and I wonder

as I’m sure you must wonder whenever you try to juggle while bungee jumping from a helicopter in a tornado that’s spitting flaming hail the size of baby fists

I wonder why the hell isn’t there

a better way to sort the fucking mail!?

I’m wide awake

and realize I’m wrong

I go downstairs

and stack the mail according to size

on top is a postcard from

the wildlife cartel asking me

if I received the ugly address labels

on the bottom are the new issues of Slime

and How to Sedate Yourself

in between are letters from writers I don’t understand

pictures of artworks I cannot decipher

drawings from friends who make me seem sane

and this stacking seems to work

but suddenly it doesn’t

so I go outside

and stand beneath the moon

    it’s 3 a.m.

no slamming dog or barking door

a block awayjust quiet and loud

and still and fast

like something momentous will happen

the moon might explode

a giant worm will burst up through the street

    my skin is vibrating

the silence so tight I hear six hundred sixty-six pins drop

my inner peace

is not at peace with anything

I do not feel a oneness with the universe

I can barely feel a oneness just with me

    here below the surface

a million miles from heaven

a final rung before you ditch the ladder

all the words and all the books

but I realize I’m wrong

I’m wide awake

I go downstairs to sort the mail