Boxing in '07

Find Me o' Letterbox! Discover Me!

Missed Chance

Presidents and Assholes Pt.1

The Cure was on the stereo and the afternoon was slipping into a colorful evening and the sliding-glass door was open for air in the smoky, noisy room. We were sitting around waiting on the other members/slackers/friends to get their asses over here so we could start playing, sheeesh!
Sloucho sat in the corner waiting on a victim. Sloucho was a very large recliner chair that Jason, B's brother, had picked up off the side of the road one day knowing that our three beat selves needed more things to sit upon. Sloucho wasn't so bad stylewise, however he had a nasty, gimpy lean to one side. And with that lean came his name, Sloucho. But his true claim to fame was his ability to lull even the most hardy partygoer into complete, knocked-out sleep. You see, a victim would arrive and it would either be someone ignorant of Sloucho's powers or it would be some drunk showoff saying how Sloucho wouldn't get him! and sure enough--matter of fact, without fail--Sloucho would soon lull them into a deep slumber. Therefore, when the party was in the beginning hour every butt avoided Sloucho out of respect of his powers, and plus we needed every person there for Presidents and Assholes.
B sat on the couch and I was over in the bottle-lined kitchen with Denard. I think Cree was checking on something or else he was on his way home from welding all day, but whatever...we were sitting around on some summer evening waiting on Matt, Vanderhorst, and Amiz to get over there.
The room was large and well positioned to receive the sky throughout all of phases of the sun or moon, with the added beauty of the large swimming pool, directly below our apartment, casting shimmering, ever-changing reflections along the walls and ceiling of our living space. We could all soak in the view through the wall that was the sliding-glass doors; we sat on the opposite end of the room around the oval table and slapped the cards down many days and many nights, and breathed freedom.
Matt, Vanderhorst, and Amiz--the completetion of our circle--arrived in grand form: two t-shirt dudes with red eyes and a 6er pack half empty, and a beautiful, sexy mass of curves named Amiz with a smile as wide as the sunset. I grabbed the worn deck of cards and started shuffling.
Part 1.

Blessing

A passage of time slips inside of curved wind around trash, bends the forms of buildings, slices the exposed areas of skin and nerves and touch, night hovers shadows. Feet slap the ground beside groaning cars and flashing lights and mirrors of the self flash in reflective storefront windows. A vehicle sounds the horn; startled, I see a welcome, familiar face. My friend is here in this churning city, in my swiss-cheese life, in reality, here to mark another ring on history. Here to motivate, in this place, to concentrate focus on those fretful steps ahead that await. I smile at him in humble appreciation, my closest friend.

Away

Black Curves
White Lies
Red Scars
Blue Skies

Carving Night

Impression set upon surface,
lined, dimensional, perspective cast
Flat, awaiting recessed definition

Pointed scoop finds the plane
Angle, release pressure to
make the groove flow,
slice the indentation seamless

Discard the cutaways
held breath blown slowly,
scrutinize architectural blueprint
reversed this for understanding

Brokering A Loss

Cascading,waving layers of colors
Spiral cross my spectral shadowshape
Catching dark corners with light hues
So that eyeballs can easily recognize
My nametag, my branding, my labeling.

On a nail-studded, sagging-board stage
Underneath a blaring light heating, burning skin
The echo of the migraine loudspeaker clamor pleads
My price and worth in a fevered auctioneer-voice pitch
I notice the crowd shift, separate, and slowly disperse.

Thrusting an odor-emitting armpit to gesture
My presentation to gathered leftovers, my Charge courts
The vultures and ants and fidgeting larvae
He pushes upon the predators my form's satisfaction
Discounted, marked down, a bargain pound for pound!

My mouth pinches, my pride-swollen, beaten proud-
Two callers, dismissed for not meeting the reserve
Observers lose intrest, meander from my unclaiming
Later to wonder if a taker met the negotiated claim
But leave me bound, deserted, unwanted but alive...still alive.

Echo In The Wild

Stretching the silence across calendar-flipping time becomes stone-cold permanent deafness, and the need to reach out of sound's drape becomes forgotten. These pointy fingers languidly touch elements of words to reach outward under an expansive horizon of numb; click-clack cuts air that breathing doesn't even penetrate to make explosions in a cadence of release and retribution and resilence and revenge. Like the steps plodded by the mountaineer, similar to water dripping against granite to form an impessioned groove, so are the tips of my 10-tip extensions defying slowly the hush, the cold calm, the inescapable tetonic encroachment of lifelessness. How emboldened am I to resist, casting feelings like slingshot pebbles against the cycle of light and darkness; do the expressions sting? Are these gestures burning in receipt? I break the grip of quiet, a rippled force exerted bravely again through painted communication of my within. It is all I know to do after all my lessons and journeys and instructions from this life.

Incise/Adhere

William Burroughs was the first to introduce me to the idea of cutting and pasting words, which is a technique he used for his landmark work The Naked Lunch. The following are exerts from drafts of posts I never posted. I notice them just sitting there when I create new posts, but I just ignore them. Tonight I found parts I liked in each one, but I didn't like the overall piece of any of them. So I took the parts I liked from each entry and cut and pasted them into this one entry. Order does not exist for this one, but the sections kind of work nicely together. Thanks to Burroughs for inspiring me with his disorder. These sections span between the months of May and June of '06.

Clap the sound of the colors in the panaroma of your dreamy whispering mind's release awake to break that circle you've been plotting with your steps, actions, and words daily, hourly, foreverly in a torturous ritual in the bathroom, where no one can know what I think or say or feel behind stall walls of semi-privacy I thought these things tonight:

Today, May 34
The black crawled across the lightness inside, scurrying for shadows in this illuminated interior. It felt like the lifting of spring breezes inside, carrying away the charred, and smoke, and dirt. It felt like deep breathing and serenity and open opportunity. I felt like I grabbed a second in the brief flash of change and it was a lucky card of chanced fate.

There stood the deer. There stood spirituality. There stood chance. We saw it and quietly sat down to observe the natural act meant for us...starting in a crowded bar....ending at the sight of the brown deer against a quiet, blackened, shadowy backdrop.
We had more to learn from this evening than what appeared so easily to others.

May 68
I sat at the bar and waited on some idiot that I didn't like to bring me something that I didn't need or want, but was somehow involved and tied up in with anyway for some other idiot. Stupid. I drank another beer and tried to make conversation with the barkeep even though this was the 10,000th day of the same ol' thing. My life is and was bullshit and I still drove to the same place because I had no one and nothing and nowhere else to be. I wrote in my journal until the lines blurred and the drunks crowded. Sometimes I would play the jukebox but that was the same ol' tunes, just in a different order. I knew the banality of bland non-direction.

We found an inlet into greenery and solitude and a rushing stream, and there we found...silent, forgotten trails girded with webs and forgotten plants and ticks and any other nuisance of nature. You get the feeling that you are intruding into their quietness and solitude; indeed you are, because you crave that escape from the rails and roads and elevators and liars and obligations and sadness of the city, which is and has become your pathetic, unfulfilled life. But...we were intruding into that nature escape together.

And the grass blades bent and the birds picked at problematic feathers and watched and the river could be heard, if we were quiet. And in that hidden, Indian-like space, we found that the future was much, much bigger than ever imagined. The sun moved us on, in its dwadling descent, and shook us out of our state of comfort and soon we were back to roads and separation and rails and buses and phone calls and long, lonely walk homes...empty except for those sturdy stars of hope that dot the expansive black sky of night.

Not Here

Suddenly,
out of the blank the words the one
shows forth imbibing you rushing you filling you
scaring you
Making you see past
the hurt blinds the words swept
the grind rends those days...the end.

Shine
The fear that
this hope is wrecked this feeling fetched
this fool, smacked,
settle yourself
Stretching across time are
two people feeling dumb
explantions are retrospect
revelations no longer circumspect
finally finding the adhere...distant tear.

Tardy

Recently I was involved in my first attempt at entering some of my writing in a contest I found online. I had never really thought to do this before; I was content to write in my blog and express myself that way (it sure beats the box full of old notebooks containing my writings, the ones no one ever reads because...I guess because they are too much trouble to read) since I get great folks giving me feedback on my stuff and sharing in my journeys, feelings, transformations, etc. Well, I didn't have something ready for the deadline. This was due to many factors but it was mainly due to me not trying harder in my writing. The deadline came and went and I hung my head with shame. However, after several days of just ignoring the writing part of my life I finally decided to try something I had thought about many years ago, which is presented in the Experimental post. Perhaps I'll explain what I'm doing with that style later, but most likely I'll let you discover the secret for yourselves.

But here are the beginnings to the short story contest idea. I don't like any of them now...at all! I'm so glad that things have worked out this way. To give you some background, the contest was for an original, non-published/presented (like in a blog) piece that was 1,500 words. The length of it was not the problem for me. I have plenty of ideas to draw upon, or I can simply make something up to write about. The difficulty I had with this piece for the contest was in deciding if I would write the story from the first (I) or third (he) person point of view. I never could get it to flow. Here are my fledgling thoughts. Think of this as a sticky pad, not as a first attempt. Like I said, I'm very glad I missed the deadline. It just never clicked as you can see for yourself.

1. (First person) In this hurtful night on hushed darkness and solitude I notice, upon exiting the old house for a respite cigarette, the foreign click-clacks of the elusive deer that sneak into the neighbors' yards to forage.

2. (Third person) He stepped outside, squeaking the screen door and huffing into a fresh cigarette, amid the amplified silence of the timid smattering beginning of a hushed rainfall. His mind was encased in the complications of a lifetime of bad turns and this suffocating quiet inside of the moonless night seemed to threaten his sanity, until his attention was held by the click-clacks of deer hooves on fallen leaves.

3. Starlight dotted black November sky inbetween encroaching limbs half-shedded of reluctant leaves over the chilled bed of the rusted truck where he sits smoking, thinking, transitioning into nighttime. He thinks of killing...time, of breaking...his binders, of snapping...out of foggy daydreams. This brown truck is reliable in the stadid intertia of being parked until he, the driver/owner/failure, can motivate it, and himself, into forward motion; it makes a great backrest under calming clouds of smoke and thoughts of betterment.

The thoughts of betterment come from slowing cooling calves, from hotspots on feet, from shadowy fears that are only now beginning to abate. He calms on the stadid truck and ponders why it cannot be driven to the store, why he has to walk one and one-half miles to get the necessary pack of cigarettes and the lone, cheap-ass beer. His night is quiet now, restful, relaxing, trustful again after the gauntlet he survived in his voyage for mandatory provisions.

His steps were unsteady, as was his direction and purpose and confidence, so he packed a knife and left his puny five-dollar bill and told her he loved her before deadbolting the door to his temporary residence.

Experimental

The house simmered back into a quiet lull after the visit. He went to the kitchen for a quick pour of the dark stuff under the guise of doing some dishes cluttering the sink and she went to the back bedroom to check in on the baby. He stuffed plates and plastic containers and plastic bottles and fake nipples and baby spoons and pots into the dishwasher and slammed the short splash of minty black back when the steps faded the proper distance. They both felt the distance, and his unexpected friend's visit only reminded them of all the years and moments and feelings that eventually led up until the current state of life.
"He looked fit, better...don't you think?" she hollered from the bedroom.
He closed the dishwasher and walked toward her, toward their child. Thoughts erupted behind his quiet demeanor; recollections and examinations of the time shared back in the good ol' days...the old school ways.
Approaching the back of the house he plainly stated, "The past will check in with you, no matter where you are, from time to time."
"And...what does that mean?". She looked up to his face.
Nights of moonlight adventures and revelations and dreams expressed whipped his clarity into a dull fuzz. He looked across the room to their little girl, then to his wife's searching eyes.
"Yeah, he looked better. I wonder if he is though."
"Well, I'm going to bathe her and put her down. I'll see you later?"
He crossed the room and kissed them both, holding his wife's gaze for a thoughtful, shared moment.
"I'll be downstairs."
He turned, heading to the kitchen where he grabbed the green bottle, and moved into the basement with nothing but ghosts left to sip the night away. Vapors-like the shared youthful dreams he and his old friend would conjure-slipped past the edge of his breath and hovered over his quiet spot of personal space, clouding both with sparkling nostalgia, until the green glass no longer contained the blackness.

Talking To Yourself

Can't block it out any longer
This sunburned soul pushes white pain when touched
Imagination is less fearful than my steps
Living inverted under scrutinized reflections
When alone the noise is deafening
These stories and connections and explanations
Stopped by the rims of locked lips
And arthritic fingertips
Surrounded by ticking sticks of timekeepers
Weighty days slashed off the calendar
Seasons morphing change into displays
Direction, production, motivation, release
Are silent waving ripples in my glass each night
They slowly pantomime farewells
And balance steady into withdraw a liquid grave
The words that no one ever hears spoken

Bravely Quiet

You felt a touch extend--a surprise in an unexpected person,
and it felt convincing...without need of a labelled explanation.

You shift and twist and spread a wide-hope smile
inside, cautionary
to not let anyone outside of your skin know
that happiness still exists for you,
despite the fires and pitchforks.

There were no lights or sparkles or melting patterns
or curves that captured seconds of held breaths.

Expressed aspirations, worries, desperations,
hesitation; shamed peek-a-boo hands;
listen for wise afterthoughts,
amid wishful wrong longings...
and beaten concerns.

Aged, we've learned:
Silence is earned.