Repainting Iron Railings

Early in his life, the upward stretch beckoned him to explore. The lazy mid-morning light was languid and the neighborhood air calm and empty, especially of parental figures. He reached high on the rails, meeting the halfway mark and gripped tight. His feet holds were problematic; the curves of the swirled inlays in the wrought-iron railing resisted easy ascension. He wedged a Converse hightop into a swirl's connection to the left rail and shimmed his hands up over the flaking rustoleum paint for greater height while his unsure right foot dangled behind him. With extreme concentration and exertion, he pigeon-holed his right shoe into the bottom of a bigger curlycue and felt his left ankle starting to shake from the pressure of his form; his right leg now bore some of his form's weight at another obtuse angle, but at least the burden was shared between his two legs. His hands slid upward, quicker now in his physical interaction...like time was running out for his climb...and caught a spiderweb in his hand. One hand gripped the rail while the other tried to shake free the dusty adherence. Both ankles began to strain, he was almost up to the top, and he suffered the web-crusted hand for a victory extension of his feat--needing to slap his palm onto the carport ceiling for verification, which he did with a hurried pop--and then he clung to the rails while his gravity intensified. His bottom foot seemed to be asleep and stuck, unresponsive to his coaxed releasing. His right foot was wedged; this was when his arms and hands and back and shoulders chorused their exerted pain. His panic was real. He yanked on his right foot, bending the curved decoration inlay on the wrought ironwork, wrenching his leg free. His exulation of movement caused his handgrip to give away suddennly, plummeting him to the ground. A final touching of his right leg, under the weight of this fall, and the weakened handgrips that came far too late, combined to find him on his back with the left shoe still trapped in the now bent bottom curve of the wrought iron railing, fists white-knuckle locked about 2 feet off the ground saving himself from the smack of concrete by sheer fear and coursing adrenaline, and heavenly luck. He gasped for breath, his hands stung, his leg was twisted but numb from lack of bloodflow, and he was practically in shock by the flurry of events. Extracting his twisted foot, he recalled that he reached upward, he had touched the top, he had overcome his desire without dying.

Grass

Lines fold from lack of structure, tall survivors of green aromatic grass between grooved lines of swirling destruction taunt me with resilence. I aim again, second round, to destroy your progressive height and to erase my amateurish driving. Inbetween doomed patterns, I drive around this old yard thinking of time past. I recall early life, innocent days and nutured living. I remind myself, amidst the spreading razor-scythe swath of demise I leave behind my lawnmower...I remind myself of how I grew up in this yard like the hardy weeds that slip by my destructive path. Times flash backwards, show how my best friend edged out alive too, which is so rare from our ghostly generation. These thoughts tremor along vibrations and screams of shattered sticks and the suffocated bogged-down dead grass bodies clogging the swirling machination of finality. Weeds survive; the common, generalize grassy lawn is shorn and unremembered and dismissed as unnecesary.

Black and Blue Sunset

Hate to let my mind roam over the areas of my thoughts that are sprinkled with landmines of hurt like a decorated zero-donut of demise, so I turn it off. Click. The switch is heavy to flip upward, spring-loaded downward. I crush those heavy draping recollections so as to not stumble under the weight of a bruising, a battering, a beating that is my past...that is still me when I'm out of focus...that is my upturned hands presented to the sky in abject confusion of love.

Hold onto distance as a cloak to withdraw into so as to avoid plugging into lives of surrounding "others" and dance behind the puppet wall, the cut-out mask, the costumed fool, the shadowy pantomime. Ride that elevator up to work and hop that train and pull the covers up over blackened regret and painful remorse and after the prayer by the lonely bedside, the words whispered across the darkened room that cry for help paint the backdrops of my dreams.

Restricted

Like the others that wave from outside the glass surround of your gazing eyeball, so life beckons me to come out-of-doors and play on the freshly cut lawn today.

"Sorry, I can't play today. I'm...", closing myself into shadows and stale corners of an overworn house of familiarity.

Not today.

Stalled

This light that pulls
Out the other shadows
Is always radiating
I lose my bearings

Hard fall again
Is not planned
The hurt contains
End inward slams

Wound around my own words
Captured, I stir the memories
Grasping, groping, reaching for holds
Acceptance--stalled motion precedes demise.

Complacent

Sunsets enjoyed from my backporch have always defined good moments of my life, and tonight was a recollection and awknowledgement of those special transitions: A book, a cigarette, a cold beer, and the slowly sinking colors of the day bathing this quiet, tranquil space in peaceful changing actualization. No matter how many times I've reveled in this sensation I still connect and reflect and absorb anew the moving-shadow imagery of our planet's rotation...and the sensory presentation of the concept of time.

I sat out back and watched the gentle swaying of the trees and bushes, heard the scampering of birds and squirrels as they slowed the day's activities, noted the coming-home sounds of the neighbors resound and fade off like the churn of the distant roadway traffic, and let my eyes gradually react to the diminishing light of this day's color spectrum amid a restful disattachment from my usual cares, worries, and emotions.

Satori

Onward drips the heavy rounded beads of days, gravity pulling the weight of each contained drop downward into a sort of mini-river of memory, with the past being that gathered pool underneath the river's waterfall. A defined, calculated slice of the passage of this constant current is a day--a 24-hour period in which the earth circles a full rotation inside of its greater orbit of the sun. One day is a circular completion of each given water drop: specific in its fluid edges which separate this encapsulement from the greater water source, the drop is now pulled into a motion after a maturation of density bearing a gravitational descent; yet this individual drop forms a particular shape pattern, colored by reflected light, and expresses unique soundwaves generated upon impact with the greater flow of the mini-river of memory. Even enveloped into the splashed conformity of formless, flowing days past, amid swirling inclusion of the ever-flowing stream of events, a recalled memory can find and identify a completed drop once immersed into the collective liquid. The mini-river gains force and widens as it degenerates over a pitched edge, cascading airly and sprayed into splintered projections onto a general pool of all the created drops, which slowly ebbs and flows and pulses and reflects...until a final drop shatters the calm surface, breathing outward a concluding reverberation.

Unspoken

Chocolate layers of deepening receptors swallow eyesight
Inverting reason and capturing care on slick pitcher-plant walls
Absorbing, engulfing, encapsulating, compiling
Stacked and packaged and arranged presentations
To discover the sincerity of the origin
In a lingered, shiny flash
Portrait-painted faces and masked visages
And ensnared words captured, sticky,
On locked tongues, withheld
Under such a powerful glance.

Bloody Frustration

Touching the black and white wires sparks and arcs and crosses currents and melts, burns, rends the segregated halves of the system. Dazed-in shock-I reel from the eye-blinding burst on contact and stagger over to the toolbox. I reach for the metal, long and kinda skinny, flattened phillips head with a rachet and drill bit that has the bubble in the magnetic extension ruler...the non-existent instrument that will fix my fused, reversed current, deflated, empty and dried, dead, broken life. My collection of hand tools, accumulated from my years and lessons and experiences, lacks the special implement needed to restore and repair this wasting heap that I work on daily. I wipe my hands on a dirty rag, swig on my flat can of beer, puff off my nub cigarette, and swear under my breath at the time I've wasted on this dead-end project.

Easily Captured

There are things in life that each individual is really good at for unknown reasons, a natural adeptness that is unexplainable. One of my lucky traits is making musical mixes. I can take 10 completely random artists and put them together to create a mood, a statement, or a dreamy background fade. I don't know why I have this ability but I cherish it, and so do my friends. Most of my mixes are simply made to see what can be made from this "stuff", which is very consistent with my "throwaway art". I have a term called throwaway art to which I apply on any kind of art that is created or reformed or hacked together to create a bigger, more organized on concepted artwork, particularly if the elements come from found or discarded materials. The end result is that the finalized piece is to be "left" for others to find and ponder over. The ability to mix music, burn it onto a cd (or record it onto a tape in old-school days), is a tangent of my throwaway art form. My friends benefit greatly from this habitual, hobbyistic trait of mine. I most recently took 10 dusty cds from various artists that I haven't, literally, played or even touched the cases of in at least 6 years and within 30 minutes I easily had one of my mixes. This latest one I truly like: a dreamy background fade. It is music that you play while you read a book, take a bath, clean the house, etc. It really is not meant to be listened to with scrutiny, rather it is a space absorber.
My pals Andy or Dan...or maybe even Sue...definetely my cuz DJ Jubei...will reap the understanding of this mix. If you are interested in any of my throwaway mixes, shoot me an email telling me why you'd like to hear one and I'll send it out to you on my dime.

Took 15 Minutes

A series of opening lines...

1. The fork tines rang anger in clanking waves of constrained soundwave rings that was easily heard amid the hunched shoulder, tense but polite guests seated for the dinner. "Invites be damned, if he...," she thought while locking her forehead into the opposite of tense, but nowhere near relaxed. "HEY, oh shoot, dinner is on the table!" her husband proclaimed as he and her best friend emerged to join the dinner in progress from their extensive, lengthy tour of their basement.

2. "Drop me off here dude...", and then he added, "please." The rain was fierce hammering points of liquid fury onto fools out-of-doors. He slammed the truck's door and dipped into his coat's hood with the repetitive rain clouding his hearing so that he only heard the passing hiss of air as if he was trapped in a seashell's cavernous nautilus, intoning brief reflection on his youth before quickly striding down into the dark neighborhood streets of danger, demise, regret...alone.

3. Exiting the train station he had the cigarette perched upon his lip, ready, before he opened the exterior push doors. The cold scratched at his exposed skin, a flame kissed the awaiting tobacco stick, wind curling around skyscrapers making ignition troublesome. A down-on-his-luck character approached him in his hurry; eyes connected, pleading looks and inward groaning, he shook his head no. Across the busy street he paused, guilt clouding his gut. He looked back to recompense his callousness but the person was gone, the moment passed, decision cast.

4. I raced into the train as the doors shut, settling into the gaze of an old gentleman observer, and in reaching for my small Bible I saw the hidden fortune cookie. I offered it to the man, who was so surprised that he took a long time before shaking his head negatively, and it caused me to smile to myself as I put the unopened message back in my satchel in exchange for the book of Mark in my tiny Bible given to me as a gift when I was baptised.

5. I was so happy to have time alone with her because she amazes me with each topic we squeeze in between the crowd's surges and exclamations and peels of laughter. I'm too scared to let her know that I admire her, nervous to move too fast, cautious of error, and I find myself spending long thoughts, daydreams I guess, hoping for more minutes to become lost together with her.

Gentle Extending Hand

A message to myself and those smart enough not to tune out...

"So we must listen very carefully to the truths we have heard, or we may drift away from them. For since the messages from angels have always proved true and people have always been punished for disobeying them..."

I choose the KJV here for this one to tie it together, more bossy and bold:

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen..."

But I love my LIfe Application version sooooo much, which says it as so...

"What is faith? It is the confident assurance that somthing we want is going to happen. It is the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us, even though we cannot see it up ahead."

That is encapsulating, engulfing, to me. That is worth seeking out on any terms prescribed unto me. It sure beats the terms I've been given by any other persona in my life.

Faith is needed: My alcohol problem, my smoky lies, my unfinished attempts...faith. Faith. FAITH, carefully, words by both authors show the love, guidance, care, concern, needed articulation of faith to those that seek or care or even peer in curiosity in a moment's lingering. We should see the unquestionable love that extends to us, backward and forward, from our meager step to take one mico-brain second to believe, or even give pause for consideration.

Thank You Note

You--I want you to know that I truly appreciate the dinner, this kindly proffered food for me...for I surely would not have eaten this night if it was not for your generosity. I would have languished in some corner, with a growling stomach, and I would not have seen nourishment. That food! Oh, the taste of it still lingers in my mouth. I never knew that simple food could be so delicious, so wonderous! I thank you, I know you won't ever read my appreciation. I grubbed on true dinner this evening; I didn't tear my body's fortitude down for needed energy from the cells that form my constitution, to survive; Why? Because you fed me, you provided for me, you cared about me in my tarnished state, my lost plight.

Thank you again. I will pull these covers over my head and try to rest for tomorrow will roll over all too soon and I'll be in search again.

Sincerely,
Your bum son

Unearthing Hurt

For Ian

The lights dimmed, the surrounding noise followed suit, leasing shadows time among elbows, glass reflections, and haze smoke circulating.
"I'll tell you, I'll say it all...doesn't mean a damn really. Here, toast me to it--the story."
Mugs clinked, fluid sloshed, the bartender without a bra settled against the bar pretending to stare at a speck on the wall.
"It went down like this: two stupid people lost sight of the end of a tunnel."
There was a long pause which called for some serious endurance, and I sipped my beer a couple of times.
"And?"
"That's it Mate. That is the story in the concentrated form."
I watched the bartender walk away, noticeably let-down and bored from the summation of the story, and when she was out of earshot I whispered to my companion the horrible, the almost evil truth.
"LIfe was inverted for me, for our situation, and someone would die, no doubt, soon, if a drastic change didn't happen."
I let that sit inside of background noise, swallows, taps of a cigarette on the ashtray.
Finally, he straightened up and asked, or noted, "So...you are saying that by leaving her and the kids...just up and abandoning them...you saved a life, or their lives?"
My cigarette smoke swirled slowly around my hand, shifting away as I reached for the mug, and then dispersed as I snubbed the butt out. I drank the remaining contents of the mug.
I turned to my companion, locking on his eyes.
"Yes. Someone would have died if I didn't split the scene. It was truly a matter of life and death."
I threw down some bills and we left the bar with the heaviness of my past expressed out loud hovering between us.

Pad Days 2

This town seemed to ghost away before his eyes, daily fading into swirling dust and wind-blown curtains from open, empty windows of houses that once held vibrant life...families, laughter, connection.

The railroad spur discounted this community, sought a hard, bent-steel rail right into perceived ripened valleys of opportunity.

Mailboxes sat empty on hand-fashioned posts that lean from uncare, disuse.

The swirl of the wind whips when the life of a town is exhumed to past status.

He tilted his grimy hat brim, looking longing down streets that echoed calls of neighbors, youth, turmoil, care...he stood rigid against time with squinted eyes and a locked jaw. A fool on an empty Main Street of forgotten, moved-on-to-newer dreams; planted in his stance, he would continue this little town in words, in fistfuls of scourned, mouthed sounds, in gritty determination--disappearing words marking the dusk like Indian symbols, for those members that no longer gather.

He...cared about the Pad--people, purpose, potential. He felt it needed permanence and he obeyed--alone--because he found himself reaching out into empty night sky.

The wind quickend, the dust circled, he lowered his head and scratched positivity into the shifting dirt underfoot, trying to define time against an unyielding grind of motion.

This one stood against change for realizations...in solitude.

Turntablism

For Jubei

Echo...reverbing note bends in the foreshadowing of your eardrum, mind's eye, fingertip.
Manipulate from the tingle inside of your bio-timing,
Bleeding feelings into streamlined emotions
Poured outside to gathered, mingling receptors.

Sweat means you're human,
Ice settles in the cup,
Reaching for the follow up,
Control? No, only flow.

Watching distant aloof
You provide for my slice of life
For those to enjoy, decide, overload;
You leave alone knowing your tones
Echo...inside of us.

Flame

Sleep-Spoken Prayers

Don't die on me tonight in the hush of coated slumber, inert and unguarded in your form's rest, for this rocky road still extends onward.

I can fold like the flower I am amid the forces hurling against me...oh so easily I can snap...threatening to uproot my feeble roots, just like you.

Smoke, silence, solitude, scared.

We are lost, my brother and I, lost like my father in his purgatory wanderings...only we have not yet given over in the face of doom.

Our lips move in our restless nights of widescreen dreams that pain us sure as reality, maybe more so for our lack of defenses in our fetal-shaped slumber disattachment.

Don't ask explanations of us; others can't know inside workings and few can help us, nor can the rare ones that stretch out for us understand our vaporous hugs.

We are brothers locked in pain.

We are hurt, and sliding, and clinging tight to the lonely coldness inside...a void which presents the uncertainty of every upcoming day,

awakening our new fresh mistakes,

amid our hapless progression through empty waste.

This is the only way we know to proceed, the only direction we follow, on a path beyond you, or us, or this, or done or that which is undone; we pray for one another silently.

Daily Routine Interrupted

Lush, liquid laughter
Absolute
Tender
On a day of complete surprise
New paths
Dreamy, dare?
A necessary connection.

Crunch

All, none
patterns run
ruined fun
assumptions
single shadow
the voice,
words connect
time is music
in steps
in rain
on a reflective
captured revelation
showing my time
this way,
today

By Myself

Forgotten Words

Yet another installment of the discoveries of my past writings. These were hidden in boxes of old crap that littered the space under my bed.

Cast Vestiges 10/4/05
Though we stand
paces apart
faces parted
An embrace only expresses
those wasted moments
left to define our
conscious
splintered life;
Soon we'll learn
broken survival


Anyone For Chinese? circa 1988
Guilt-It pounds my head like
construction workers,
pounds my soul like
elephants at the circus
The stupid part is that
I'm supposedly in...
Control-I left it outside,
with the garbage, to
be taken away.
I put it in the mailbox,
and pulled up the flag.
Too bad no one can get
rid of control since
there is...
Desire-shapes my heart,
twists my mind.
I live in a contortion,
I'm in torture.
Break the fortune cookie.

Resuscitation

Wind screamed, bellowed, caved in my eardrums to the point of bloodletting inside of my head. The altitude dipped alarmingly, crushing, painfully cut the levels of acceptance. This pointy piece of metal known as a plane, something meant to fly and soar, was sinking like a submarine...with me inside gripping the yoke and screaming into the clamor of wind and staring wide-eyed but too scared to cry. I braced for impact.
When the chute pulled my inert, dumbed ass out of the top hatch I still screamed, still stared, still gripped air like there was a steering yoke in my hands. My hollering voice broke and I finally blinked my eyelids. I moved my gaze to see the explosion of Hell-orange and red and yellow and bright white spray licking flames against the surrounding darkness. I finally breathed in deeply and understood that I was floating downward, but at a sharp angle. This raging windstorm beat against my feeble parachute cloth and sent my lucky-ass into a new situation of danger.
Toothpick arms bent the harness guidelines to no avail amid the heavy downward pulls of the banking windstream and I pulsed the adrenaline of fear into my tired blood vessels anew as I drifted over pointy steeples and antennas, electrical wires, a large building. I was nearing ground with an accelerated force wind and no control and wild contortions of helplessly gyrations. I looked ahead to the large train tracks hoisted high on an elevated bridge over a deep gorge. I looked to the side and saw no land and the wind sent me directly to the tracks, cracking my midsection into the planted side and knocking loose a tooth as my face bounced awkwardly off of a metal track clamp.
But I was briefly grounded, my chute lines tangled in the edges of the crossbars of the tracks, and the wind swept my body bouncing over the opposite side of the narrow span of tracks. I spun in mid air, frantic grabs for the foundation of structure rose unconsciously inside of me and I crawled back onto the tracks. I fearfully clutched the tracks of the train as the wind whipped my chute and buffeted me, while one hand reached for the strap releases. I somehow released one side of the harness and the chute fairly ripped the other side from my frame as I fought with gritted teeth to cling to the span of wood separating me from free descent into the swirling blackness of river far below me. Watching the chute that saved my life, and nearly took my life as well, puff off rapidly into the surrounding night sky, I clutched the tracks with both arms and closed my eyes and took deep breaths. I planted my face against the gritty, greasy rails and nearly puked my guts out as I said a brief prayer of gratitude for protection.
I must have laid there for several minutes, breathing and absorbing my blessing of deliverence. My arms were robotic; I locked onto those steel rails with the fear of mortality and my muscles finally began to cramp and protest. I was still unsure of my foundation high on that archway over the water and depth of death from my battle with the parachute-ripped winds. I chose to inch my way toward the side of land my head was currently facing, tears flowed from my tightly-closed eyelids and the night sky was so close to me here on this crazy bridge of tracks above the abysm...I just barely could move my form from each desperate clutch toward anywhere. I sighed deeply in the whip of the fresh air and listened for some voice of direction. That's when I heard the chugging of the train's engine.
I was up and running, trying to catch each tie with a sure footfall, but I slipped immediately and one leg hung through the tracks like a limp branch. My thigh was scratched and I smashed my balls, but I just hoist myself up and ran forward with abject fright. The train's horn sounded behind my scramble and my eyes fought to discern track tie from downward inky blackness and my legs sought a pattern: I found it! Two strides was the placement of the cross ties. I would half jump, land, leap outward far, land...I skipped one in-between. I ran with all my concentration, like a football player training on the rings of tires, pumping and pushing myself. The rails started to vibrate and the area around my frame lit up like a spotlight. Now I truly heard the train's horn, felt the resonance of it, understood the dire situation I was involved in.
I had 20 yards to the edge of land, the train was already on the bridge, and my legs were crumbling and confused with fear. One foot missed the mark and slipped into the void between the tracks. I grasped the shaking rails and raised myself, my arms faltered and shook with impending doom. The uncaring hunk of metal and light and overtaking sound bore down on me, bore down on the unseen, non-expected form way out on this outcropping of track. The light overtook my vision and the noise encompassed my brain and the force of the churning engines let me know my puny legs would never get me to my freedom. I panicked again and survival took over.
I swung over the chasm and moved my hands from the train track to the edge of the crossbeam, swinging my legs to grip the other side of the beam as I suspended myself over a black drop of certain pain and doom. My fingers were narrowly missed by the molten hot wheels of steel and now I found my fillings rattling in my teeth, my bones shaken nearly to snapping, my vision so violently shaken that focus was impossible. But luck, by fate, the single engine screamed over my spiderlike form clutching the underside of the expansion leaving my rattled frame to scamper back onto the boiling hot rails that served as a handgrip.
I wondered if I could die, because maybe I should just go ahead and thrust my beaten body into the reaching gorge...but I had come so far and survived so much. I shakily stood and began the careful picking of crossbeams, hearing the roar of the train fade into the drape of night. I moved toward land, toward solid underfooting.
I craved a cigarette like no man on earth has ever needed one and that is the drive that made my face feel the soft dew on the silent hillside grass while I prayed tearful prayers of thankfulness. This was my resuscitation.

One LIne For Friday

Quiet is a cold hurt coating the retrospection glare I focus inward on my ritual life story, too late to matter for reconstruction but shamefully silent is the cloud of sickening regret.

Pad Days 1

From Wikipedia...The 1992 Los Angeles riots, also known as the Rodney King uprising or the Rodney King riots, were sparked on April 29, 1992 when a mostly white jury acquitted four police officers accused in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King, after he fled from police. Thousands of people in Los Angeles joined in what has often been characterized as a race riot, or a mini-civil war, involving acts of law-breaking compounded by existing racial tensions, including looting, arson and murder. In all, 55 people were killed during the riots.

Smaller, copycat riots occurred in other United States cities. San Francisco police arrested 1400 rioters in the downtown area and established a curfew. The Nevada National Guard was deployed to Las Vegas and 200 people were arrested. Seattle was hit by overnight mobs of up to 100 people rampaging through business districts. Fresno had gangs rampaging through the older downtown business district with one bystander murdered in their car. New York saw racial beatings, a mob looting a shopping mall, and another at Madison Square Garden.Hundreds of protesters confronted police in Atlanta. Minor incidents were reported in Tampa, Pittsburgh, Birmingham and Omaha. Major incidents took place in Dallas and Madison, Wisconsin, etc.

And what we knew...

The television did not enter our pad until later in the year and we never, ever tuned in a radio station the entire time we stayed there. News filtered in from neighbors or from phone calls or news never reached our ears. It was very strange that we all knew of a major surge of anger, destruction, and mayhem on this otherwise normal, most likely boring, Wednesday.

I think I remember warnings about Atlanta being in turmoil, only certain areas of Atlanta though, and that folks should avoid travel as a precaution. The members of the pad all gathered at our place and for once it was strangely quiet, like a thoughtful burden was draping our usual exploratory conversations, games, fun, and randomness. We weren't directly affected; I doubt a single one of us had read a newspaper in over a year, but suddenly current events were shaping our feelings and thoughts. And it was out of our control.

We saw it in the eyes of our local beer store owner. We saw roads nearly barren. We listened to the sirens off in the distance, numerous sirens, constant sirens. We looked into the faces of one another for some answer or normalcy. We knew that parts of the city were in complete chaos, that parts of the US were burning with fire and hate and indignation and injustice. We understood that something had broken through to critical measures, long past the boiling point of acceptance, and that we were white and Rodney King was black.

We were peaceful, even removed by choice. White and black were things we watched on the back of our eyelids. But this seemed very heavy, that society was warned, burning, raging...it altered our perceptions of the present days.

Cornelia Test-n-Tune

Quickly, hurried before the sun falls behind the treeline, I rush to make the necessary repairs to the old truck. This old beater truck is me; this rusted, bruised shell has a strong heart and miles left inside the core.

Flipping the pages of the manual I learn that I need to check levels, particularly the brakes. I can't stop. I have to stop, that is part of forward motion--the ability to stop is very handy when you are driven. My fluid is below the marker so I fill the reservoir with the magic juice that helps control momentum. This truck and I try to find a balance between forward and motionless in careful swigs of liquid, preventing a disasterous crash.

I see in the handy directions of the manual that I need to ignite the engine and check how the heart of the truck feels. I sit inside the cab, feeling the key into the special slot that clings tightly around the probe and fits so perfectly. I turn it and send electric sparks into the core, into the heart, and it resounds with a rumble that echoes off of Stone Mountain. I idle in the driveway, I let my core burn.

The truck's handbook tells me to check the speed, to turn the engine down if running too fast. It tells me to amp up the engine if the motor is stuttering or coughing or hesistating. I twist it up. I twist it louder! I feel for the engine because it strains, but vibrates so good...making my heart roar and skin scream and feel completely alive. But wisdom causes me to spiral the idle back to a calm, even click. It purrs now, the engine's output is smooth and the feeling of a strong-running, enduring vehicle is mine. This balance, this proper tuning, is me and my truck and everything I breathe or touch or believe--a connection of harmony.

I turn off my truck and lower the hood, feeling the click of the latch. I lock the doors and watch the fading hue strokes of the day's end between the jagged treetop line in the distance from the empty truck bed. I feel quiet and solitude inside of cold night air.

I wait for my passenger, a pleasant hope, as I smoke a cigarette tonight.

Inertia

The shadows are shorter in the fog-draped night. I steer left, stumbling and probing with each step inside this absence of illumination. The path veers away from the roadway of streaking light trails, wind-snapped noises of hurried air, and metal death. Feet, find my pathway. To miss the footfall, to disassociate into a dreamy thought, to unattach into the memories of the beer-swilling evening I enjoyed...well, it will mean my death here tonight on the shoulder of an unforgiving roadway encroached by uncaring fog. Roadkill.
I plant my footfall in a more sober way and edge passing flashes of headlights as my boundary, the ditch of my left the foot's extreme for placement. Gravel crunches, I hear a train, I cross a side street and narrowly miss some speeding idiot who sees me finally in his rearview mirror. I'm halfway to the store.

The red clay slips under each step and this part of the journey is the most fearful in that the left side of my stride is a noisy, eerie wooded area. I slip/step faster and note all the clicks, the cracks, the sudden empty roadway, the full wolf moon. I nearly break into a run from uncertainty. I resist. I created this time, here besides these dark woods, on a slippery upward slope of crumbling steps, absorbing the barren lack of traffic and absorbing the lonesome moon's glow.

I surface the hill and into the corner intersection lights and busy actions. I now want to blend into the dark covering shade of the woods now gone; I am an eye catcher, something to notice out of a side window of a car with a blue light bar. I aim for the convenience store. I enter it, I grab this thing that culls me from a mile away at a ridiculous hour and suctions me through gauntlets of dark horrors and fear and possible doom. I lift that container and carry it to the bullet-protected window and smile at the girl behind the wall. I pay and I stall and ask her what she likes in life outside of her job. This odd question causes her anxiety and stalls the line, but I pursue it in different phrases until she knows I require some answer about herself, a human touch connecting through see-through plastic protective walls.

She says she likes to write. I promise to bring her some of my words. I turn and leave the store, the return trip unfolds before the tips of my shoes. I have a weight now, an odd lope to the footprint patterns I trace backwards, leaving the reverse indentations with one side heavier than the other. I have purchased a weapon, a loss to the point of my whole journey if used, for an encounter by the dark woods. I have a flimsy reason for this inane waste of time, money, and safety in the conversational engagement with the protected shopkeeper. I have inward justification, fake and phony and false, but something to help me know that this night is unlike all the others. That this night's dark unwinding of who am I is not only familiar, but normal.

Once I make it back to the familiar driveway, quietly I open the bottle and light a cigarette and sit looking at the wolf moon of January on the bed of my immobile truck.

I drink, I exhale, I redefine ordinary.

Presidents and Assholes Pt.3

I ran my fingers through my unkempt, shaggy hair as I regarded the card players seated around the table. Taking my time, I decided to just lowly top the presented 3 of clubs with a 4 of spades, taking advantage of my position directly to the left of Denard who had started the round of cards. B followed with a 5 of hearts, Matt played a 7, Vanderhorst a 9, Amiz was busy talking to Cree and we all had to goad her into laying something down, play for crying out loud!, and she slapped down a Queen. Unfazed by the escalation in the hierarchy of cards numeration, Cree threw down a 2. A 2, a single 2 mind you, of any suit, will immediately stop the round and let the thrower of the 2 begin the next round of cards. It also forces the asshole to have to rake the cards of the previous round. Since we had not designated the asshole yet, or president for that matter, I scraped the cards to clear the table.
Cree eyed his hand, his obtuse hand of cards always positioned in some random order to throw off our perceptions of what his hand held--his trademark routine--and reached for a single card, slapping it down with authority. There sat a slightly spinning ace of spades.
Remarks from all the assembled players consisted of groans, exclamations of "why!?", and low mutters of disses toward Cree for dashing the hopes of all our held hands of cards. Denard pointed out that he was now completely screwed for, being directly to Cree's left, why someone would start a round with the next-to-highest card. Denard passed, not able to discard or unwilling to spend a 2 (if he even had one in his hand) to obtain control of the round again. I pondered for half a second and passed, along with the rest of the table. Until it was Amiz's turn. Oh no, she simply pulled out a 2 and effectively ended the round. Cree smiled, his plan having worked. I cleaned up the round of spent cards.
Amiz dumped double 3s and Cree, being to her left in rotation, topped them with a pair of 4s. Denard had no complaints and discarded two 6s. I had a high pair of Kinks (our terminology for Kings) and opted to pass again. B laid down a pair of 8s and demanded a social. Everyone drank from their beers. Matt put down two Hooks (Jacks) and Vanderhorst passed. Amiz laid down another 2 to keep control. I raked the cards.
Amiz threw down some paltry 5 and Cree became maniacal again, yanking out his other Ace. Denard grimaced, giving Cree the middle finger as he passed on the play. I was annoyed, and frankly knew my fate was doomed--hell, I was already practicing for my asshole role with my polite, janitorial card collecting--and tossed a Kink, breaking my pair up. B threw the remaining 2, taking control of the round. I collected the spent cards and felt my placement in the card play order. I was sucking hind tit, ie. last in the round before the originator of the round has a chance to top to finish that round, thus he will retain control and dump twice as many cards as the other players in every round that he is able to start and finish.
B's 4 was eagerly met with Matt's 5, Vanderhorst's 6, Amiz's 7, Cree flopped an ace and shouted President! We all gave him a social, Denard couldn't play so he passed, as did I. Denard benefited from the play ending with Cree so he dished out his hightest offering, a Hook, and I passed. B passed, Matt topped it with a Kink and, having spent his cards, he claimed Vice President status. Jason passed, Amiz passed, and I raked the meager round.
Denard discarded his last card, which was a 6; I put down an 8 and demanded everyone drink. We did. The newly inaugurated President commanded me to drink again, which I dutifully did, and B hopped out with his final discard of a 10. Vanderhorst passed, as did Amiz, so I collected the cards.
Vanderhorst exited the fray by laying down a pair of 9s, which neither Amiz or I could play on since we did not have any doubles (inwardly cursing myself for having broken up my pair of Kings and my pair of 8s, though the 8s were of little use to me this round), and then topped his hand with a pair of 10s. Amiz threw down a Queen, closing the uneventful round with a smirk and a hidden ace.
I was stuck with a bunch of useless cards, the new label of being asshole, and a bunch of subservient duties to attend to: namely I was to fetch fresh beers for the collected players, shuffle the deck, and change the cd. If I did not do these tasks to the satisfaction of any of the drunken players, I would be resoundingly punished in drinks, not to mention overwhelming insults and denigrations from the President and all the other players. The verbal harrassment began immediately with the chanting cry of "Drink asshole!" originating from the remaining 8 card left in my worthless hand.
I drank heartily.
I sighed as I opened the fridge for the beers. It was going to be a long, very probable drunken evening of cards. I meshed the worn deck of cards together and began shuffling, hoping for a better hand.

Presidents and Assholes Pt.2

"Who has the 3 of clubs?"
"Grab me a beer while you're in there!"
"Hold on, I gotta pee."
"...and then she said, 'oh yeah?', and I said, 'yeah bitch!'..."
"Who, oh who, has the 3 of clubs?"
"Man, did you know that tomorrow is rent day? Shit."
"There are only 3 Buds and then the Mickeys and Busch Lights."
"HEY, somebody has the 3 of clubs. Look at your hands..."
"Hit Random on the stereo!"
"...so I told her to 'kiss my ass!' and she gave me this look..oh!"
"Who has the damn 3 of clubs!"
"THAT'S what I've been saying!"
"I don't."
"I don't."
"Not me...oh wait, here it is."
"Dammit Denard!"
"Does everyone have a drink? Ok...".
Pt.2

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.

Interloper

The haze didn't deter his stride and soon his elbows met the wooden bartop, his gaze captured the swirling bartender's curves, and his cigarette smoke smothered those he edged between in his entrance.

"Say, pal, would you mind passing me the ashtray? It is easier than a kidney stone."
Strange looks confronted him as the tray passed his way.

"This place smells like piss! Which way to the bar? Or can someone get a bartender over by yonder urinal?"
He heard it get quieter, confusion--wasn't he at the bar?--except for the jukebox which played any dumb Green Day song you want to conjure up for the mental picture.

"I heard that Atlanta is the traffic capital of the South, but I'll be damned if I can get to it to find out!"

A beer appeared before him and it was gone it 3 big bubbles followed by a shy burp. He motioned for another, and then noting the atmosphere, signaled for the check instead. It arrived promptly and nervous conversation started in smatterings around him again.

He signed his name and hollered "TOUGH CROWD! Last time I had this much trouble was when I covered Grateful Dead tunes at a Christian Youth Convention."

No one acknowledged him and he farted a long, silent one as he walked out of the unfriendly bar.

Lazy River Plantation

"This is fertile ground, good plantin'...this is ripe for the plantin'."
"Says you...looks like a mess of treez and hillz an'..."
"Shuddup boy!", he said with irritation, "you are here to do the labor and not think, got it?".
"Yessir...dig, plant, and hopefully pull something up..."
"you will pull...punk."

It wasn't light when we connected out cleaving instruments to fertility, it was lonely and black and quiet.

He hoe'd a great line, I'll give it to him. He cleaned it clear to the edge of the prop. line. He worked it, and came back and worked another line, and came back and cleanded another line, and edged it until after dusk. He lined it right. She was still inside.

He lined up again and had to be told to stop, to quit. The night buzzed with crickets and the moon was lower than the half-pitched wooden fence and that showed dedication. He sat on the step of the porch writing in the moonlight, writing to things that were gone, escaped, elusive, but heartfelt, in the connection of pen to paper.

That sun rose early, his body exclaimed like a mistrial, and he went about it like he was the guilty party. More lines, more rows, more dedicated, obligated labor, more presentation. A cold man sipped a warming liquidnade on the front porch watching his rows, watching his cut, his lift, his rake, his haul, his character.

The rains came and work halted. Held about by water, by the flow, he studied his field of rows, of lines cut. He saw the wolf enter and he lifted the rifle. He halted before the trigger to know, to understand the wolf. He had to share the cuts, the rows.
He wanted to die, he wanted the powderblast yet he held the gun.

Blue of sunrise, blue of innocence and blue of turmoiled sea; blue of afterlife and blue of surrounding peace. Blue cuts him--his favorite color--blue of hope is the changing horizon, of love set free.

The garden produced something, this that the other, popped up ideas of produce, vegetables and other yield. Never understood, or captured, the blue of that season. And never understood was the way his eyes burned looking into the sky, grasping for the meaning...in a color...in a season...in what a field had to offer. Or what the orchard could produce on this beautiful dreamland, down by the river...memories stir here on a lazy afternoon...I can now simply recall the prideful harvest with a smile and wonderment.

Dissection

Rob yourself of glimmer harbored inside via plastic stageprops in handshakes, phone contacts, and sketchy rendevous moments smuggled into your planned destinations, inside of some uncontrolled swirl of detrimental off-course path of doom.

Pilfer gold
Blood dripping fresh from treasures
Excavated out of my interior
Out of my future
Capturing me inside
Within the cavern I've created
Repressing forward motion
Lacking oxygen to survive.

"I don't take I grab and you stuff and we shoplift these.."
"Shut up, shut up shut up! You and all your sadness is.."
"...jewels of our future that are too shiny to us right now"
"I can't stand you any-f-ing more! I'll drive us off this hillside! I'll..."
"more jewels lost, hell the whole booty will be..."
"SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP"
"gone"
(Brakes applied, tires screech, headlights jerk upward, and then the passing of air)

A Question of Fortitude

When it happens what will you do? When imagination insuinates itself into the cursory reality of your life how will you respond? When that which is dreaded or dreamed or discarded for lost suddenly presents itself, unavoidable and confrontational in front of you, in what manner will you respond?

Will you have the words, the presence of mind, the fists, the lungs, the calm, the backbone, the smoothness of touch to counter the most important challenge you'll ever face in your life? When you are forced to stand toe-to-toe with the very core challenge, desire, fear, or moment of truth--knowing that your next move, thought, impulse, reaction will dictate how you spend the rest of your living days--what will you do?

Flow

Within each day that folds inwardly into representational shapes in orbital passing are crushed dreams, bright insights, harsh conflicts, soft connective whispers, finality; all these and more circulate upon gentle stream currents as floating origami creations set adrift with wishes from the rocky shoreline. The slow passage of clear water continually replaces the surface appearance in a flow that can be timed and marked with fragile voyages of our brightest hopes and heartfelt intentions.

Crossover

Grey day finds a face
Crowded people, shared secret
A smile lets me know

Eyes fall across words
Ask about things we don't know
Of the feelings felt

In this open world
There are forces vast and true
Touched a glimpse with you

For sci40995 11/7/06

Anniversay Request Responses

Ok, I asked for your input for the posts that meant a lot to you, your favorites, or ones that you hated. I only received responses from a couple of folks and none of the responses included ones that were hated. So I'll list the favorite posts as sent in from some avid readers of my blog. Thank you very much for your replies and thank you for reading my stuff!

Reader-Supplied Favorites (in no particular order):

OneTimesTwo-10/31/2005
Testing, testing...onetimestwo

Rotation-9/24/06
Waking, worry
wiping eyes and lies away
Walking, working
washing it into embers
Each anoynmous day

Travelling, moving
passing in a blend destinations
This that for she who
Reverse undo erase
Blinking, breathing

Crunch, intesify
the whole portending gap
Love me, hate that
can't deaccelerate
Happened, coast, retract

Left shoe, lightswitch
decompress into prayer
This hurt, that demand
subtle dance dreams
Want to waken

Movement of the Spirit-7/06/06
5 A good man hates lies; wicked men lie constantly and come to shame.
6 A man's goodness helps him all through life, while evil men are being destroyed by their wickedness.
9 The good man's life is full of light. The sinner's road is dark and gloomy.
12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick; but when dreams come true at last, there is life and joy.
14 The advice of a wise man refreshes like water from a mountain spring. Those accepting it become aware of the pitfalls on ahead.
16 A wise man thinks ahead; a fool doesn't, and even brags about it!
19 It is pleasant to see plans develop. That is why fools refuse to give them up even when they are wrong.
20 Be with wise men and become wise. Be with evil men and become evil.
25 A good man eats to live, while the evil man lives to eat.
Proverbs 13, selections

How About An Orange Soda?-9/11/2006
The door to the little shop opened slowly, as if the light was having a hard time cutting the dust in the air. The hinges creaked and the handle was falling off. The rest of the shop was in no better shape. Even through all of this, she was stunning. I knew it was love at first sight for me. Her face gleamed in the light; I was breathtaken. Her beauty was immense and we were germs of normalness. I stared at her as she walked toward the barstools; I wasn't the only one. She dusted off a stool with the grace of a princess. She sat down slowly, taking her time to look around the place.
I searched my mind for something to say. How do you talk to the woman of your dreams when you've never seen her before? I guessed the best place to start was by talking to her like I would anyone else, even though she deserved much more. I was a waiter at the restaurant. That helped. I mean, it gave me an excuse to talk to her. She had a menu out and was reading it as I walked over. She looked up and I smiled at her. "What do you need?", I asked her. Oh my gosh, how stupid, retarded, etc., can you get?
She didn't seem to notice and said, "Just a Coke." Coke? What is Coke? I thought desperately. Then it registered so I went into the back and tried to pour her drink.
We were out of cola! Great, just what I needed! All we had left was orange soda. So very cautiously and coolly I walked out to her. I explained to her what had happened. "What, no Coke!", she exclaimed. Then she got up and left.
I was heartbroken. To say we had no Coke and watch the love of my life walk out the door...I had to get her off my mind so I took the rest of the day off and went into the city. I headed straight for Burger King. There I sat down and released all my worries into my Whopper. Next thing you know I had knocked over my drink, dumb klutz that I am! I went up to get a new one, cursing and wiping myself all the way.
Guess who checked me out at the register when I got there? Yes, her! The ex-love-of-my-life! Sheepishly I asked for a coke and she said, "Sorry, we're out of Coke. How about an orange soda?"
The sunset never looked so pretty. Maybe it's because the sky is so clear, and the stars are unusually bright. I think it's because she's sitting by my side. By the way, I hate orange sodas, but don't tell her that, okay?

The World of Drum and Bass (ATL)-3/26/06
Strobed light cut across faces and bodies in time to the pulsation of volume, and blood and hearts. The room sprawled to the walls free of obstructions execpt for the support columns, and the colored lights danced across angles of floor and wall and dancers. The din of the explosive bass shakes my body, vibrates my privates, locks a timeframe into my observation, forces unconscious tick and twitches of my body respoding to the flow of input.

I twisted in time to the rhythm and felt myself loosen inside, lacking that clench of stress and the soft stab of hurt, clinging to the balance of light and energy and flow and music and possibility.

My cuz, DJ Jubei, shouted something in my ear that made me smile and I kept looking to the head-bent turntablist onstage and shifting my body to the beat. The beer was cold in my hand, acting as a counter-weight to my gyrations, I suddenly felt a little pooped. My journey was in need of rest, so I found a couch. And while sitting I watched many a person on their night...seeing the skimpy buckhead chicks, the gays, the drunks, the guy that ate too many drugs, my cousin dancing. All of these separated for the girl with the twirly light thingy.

And the night shortly changed after I asked her if I could buy her a drink. And the beat played onward and the buckheads still danced and the gays still showed me how to dress better...but she defined the night, the moment, and the future...which is up to her.

I remember hearing High Contrast...and that's about it.


And I'll add my favorite posts to date. This was a very, very hard decision because a part of me is in each writing I put out there, and therefore I love each one in a different way. So I couldn't decide. I'll put my three favorites and also my favorite visual post.

Erosion-4/29/06
Cut away the fat, carve the meat from the bone, dice and slice and mince and pinch and tense the calm, the good, the right, the positive in the carver's kitchen, in the meat locker, in the court room, in the pitch-black bedroom, inside yourself in an unconcerned crowd.

Do it again the next day, the day following, the rest of the week, the week after that, then continue onward as if that is what life is...the beating on yourself, the hobbling, the binding, the bending, the breaking.

Turn off your eyes and ears and heart and mind and life and blood for things you cannot change but are married to, enjoined with, infused into, burned by, melded...and stop making them hurt you long after the caustic bright chemical reaction, emotional poignancy, intellectual delve, sexual twist or careless cluelessness disperses.

Leave these rainy nightmares of the sticky, putrid past to fade, discard that dark hue that climbs out in rancid, acidic sweat to taint the sweet-rose dawn of each breaking day, and believe there is more, so much more, beyond now.

The Blackest Night-5/16/06
Fear--it raped my sense of security, of boundaries, in a scythe swipe. I shook, my body racked with confusion and panic and adrenaline. I heard the noises again and tried to process in my overloaded mind my next move. The gun, a trigger, turn out the lights and tiptoe. Breathe quietly, silently...and don't forget to breathe...while my very alert senses configured my next action. The gun was hardly a noticeable weight in my tense hand but it was a comfort, and a concern. Would I put a bullet into someone, maybe. This decision struck me as odd, as I tensed against the wall out of the light to avoid shadow movements. These new standards of living and dying were the products of fear. I began to pray with my eyes wide open.

Luck-8/31/06
The battered team breathes heavily, beaten by the unfulfillment of the projected gameplay that has gone horribly awry, and sweats rivers under the heavy cloudcover of dismay. No one can look at the other players for shame, for guilt. He stares at the blade of grass, the other looks into space for answers, one holds his head in his hands, one scratches his groin, the coach seems catatonic. Not the captain, not Mr. Can-Do 4 Years In a Row Team Captain. Oh no, his furrowed brow tells the story before the eyes even reach the spit-flying lips. The gestures on the chalkboard are in Chinese, actually they are riddles in Chinese. Finally sound seems to penetrate into our sorry lot, a phrase, a certain term...what was it that snapped us back into the moment from our self-pity doldrums? Oh yes, Captain used the term "no chick is going to separate the left from the right for a bunch of losers like us". I stopped at "chick"; my girlfriend was in the stands, groaning through this agony along with the faithful families of the players, the band nerds, and other goobers with nothing better to do on a Friday night than come watch us get our asses handed to us in a brutal and, frankly, impolite manner. I could feel her yawn from the field, but quickly lost that thought because I had shifted to the geometery of the separation of the left and the right...and I finally felt energy again, and it wasn't from the 3-gallons of Gatorade I drank even though I spent most of the first half riding the bench with our comatose coach.
Captain kept spitting out phrases that didn't register into my dull helmet-protected skull, mainly because they lacked any connection to "chick", as he emphatically gestured, pointed, threw down the chalkboard, and made us all slap hands in a big circle. I didn't feel the surge of motivation--I felt the sore butts of the spectators, the shifting-foot impatience of the other team, the disappointment of my girlfriend, and the complete disinterest of the hotdog vendor as he closed up shop on a night of disappointing sales. But the spit was really flying out of Captain's mouth mixed with hoarse slogans of "teamwork" and "go the mile" and other crap, and we slapped our weary hands as best we could and broke the huddle.
I trotted over to the order of players, taking my position in the back. Somehow, some miraculous way, we had managed to squeak, edge, blunder, luck-out, and magically make our way into field goal position. We certainly paid the price for it as well. Grover, the runningback, well...he won't be running anytime soon. Both wide receivers caused 20 minute delay of games as they were carried off the field. And our offensive line looks like survivors of a war, with more red than white on their uniforms; I doubt they even know their own names at this point. But, with the fate of fortune smiling upon us out of heavenly pity, we had undoubtedly ended up in field goal territory. And that's when coach quit responding, though we checked for breathing twice.
I moved to my position and waited for the snap and placement. All I had to do was run, plant, kick and connect, and make it go between those two big-ass posts that look the the devil's pitchfork with a prong missing. If I do these steps, in the order they are meant to be done, I might...I just might...separate left from right. The QB is hollering the theory of relativity while our line is quaking from the strain of gravity. The other team looks rabid and mean and anything but tired out. I look at the scoreboard and see the clock dropping past the 5-second mark and it makes me want to puke up all the orange Gatorade I sucked down in my bench-sitting boredom. But then the ball is snapped and there is motion, and the line of devils are rushing over our line like they are ghosts and I see evil running at me with blue jerseys on, and the ball is placed. I'm running, I'm running, I want to puke, I'm placing my foot, I'm swinging my leg, I'm thinking of separating left leg from right leg, I'm closing my eyes and holding back bile and connecting with the ball and it is all I can do not to barf right there in front of the spectators that have finally got off their asses to see what happens to end this disasterous waste of their life. The roar goes up, I get mashed into the cool, damp grass and smell the foul smell of angry, opposing-team humans, and I wonder if I separated left from right as the buzzer ends the game.

Unforgettable-6/17/06

Alone

He stuck out this thumb on a dark highway shoulder, pointing a prayer up to God on the end of an unchecked, grimy thumbnail, and hoped for some kind of anything. The sun was beginning to settle into its bed for rest and colored the sky like the drunken distractions of a Christmas tree strung with cheap lights. His feet crunched loose gravel, the wind kicked across his denim jacket and whipped the frayed ends of his hair around and around, and the silent highway stretched forward and backward and didn't judge or comment or lend a hand to his path. The thumb, hitchhiker sign style that has a desperate pitch and poignancy in the gesture, was just for practice. Heck, he'd never taken rides from strangers and really never needed one until now, until this point, until this path became his walk. The road was barren and removed from care, the wind was enacting revenge, the light of day retreating, the underfoot gravel barked insults from the countless footsteps; where was the circle of fate to rescue him from days and nights of bad calls and wrong ways and diluted decisions? Fate had lost interest and he was walking against time, marked alone.

Anniversary Request

Halloween will be the anniversary of this blog. I wanted to do something special on my 100th post but didn't notice that I was on 103 when I came up with the idea. So, to celebrate I'd really like to know what post out of the last year connected with you the most. Which one was your favorite? And which one did you totally dislike?

Thank you for a great year!

Autumn

Leaves swirl silent circles,
like ghosts of little girls playing
ring-around-the-posy.

Brown, splashed with haiku colors,
eradicates bushy green;
Painted woodland becomes pen and ink.

Some mystery is concealed
inside of the blustery breeze,
forcing pursuit into the next season.

Shrouded Twin

Clicky crunches reveal you, the shadow with form that stalks me from a near distance. I don't hear breathing, I don't sense the presence of another person; you are ghostly, yet heavy enough to crush fallen leaves underfoot. I was cautious, I was unnerved, I was reactionary with pistols and porch lights.

Now I'm wisely concerned--what do you want from me? I meld into shadows in response to your surveillance. My chest pumps air in and out in silence. My cigarette smoke trails me to my immobile, tense frame in the chair...listening...seeking to understanding our ligature.

Fear is absent, but you break my circle of safety and silence and I must face the empty, trespassed air around me with alert awareness.

What is your purpose in pursuit of my hapless wanderings? Who are you?

Are you awaiting forgiveness? Recognition? Confirmation? Understanding?

I hear you clearly, I know you are near.

Faith is my protection.

Falling

Peek out of thistle, out from hiding and shadowy reclusion.
You shine outward regardless of the inward gloom.
You can flower, radiate, explode into the wind resonance;
Evolve into your season of change.

Tightrope

Here cuts the dividing line:
Power or poor
Divine or pain
Control and slip.

That marks the boundary:
Action to deed
Impression to impact
Decision in destiny.

Understand the timeline:
Pleasure in pain
Endure in release
Inform during sensation.

Christened

Anchors' weight arrests motion on bloated dips and crests, pinning this expression of my life's black or white into your definition of who I am, in the vast watery sea of possibility. The flag semaphore displays different messages from the face that ends up peering starboard into your watercraft. This glimpse of my actuality is burdensome, heavy to shoulder and hard to bear. I feel the iron scape across the sea floor of your being, watch the waves beat against my dead weight revelations, and note the nauseating green tint in the taunt skin of your caring face. Oh, to endlessly drift in uncaring winds and ever-altering directions, oh the damage to the capain's log and the needless confusion plotted on discarded maps, bearings askew in my bewildered escape, disruptions are the storm emerging outward from my ship's wheel! Sun and moon and wind and water and pain, the name of my sea vessel is Disillusionment.

5 Cars

A red Dodge Van contains a sorrowful black man with glasses, a cigarette perched bored upon his quiet lips, some scattered clothes, and a spun wheel bearing on the front left tire. His van is dull, coated in grime of the days he was too morose to lift a hose or drive through spinning sprayers or pay some broke neighborhood kid or crack addict to wash the miles away, and the grime casts him as flat and non-glossy from my observation point. He slows, with concentrated frictional noise from the front left, and turns away into the unwinding nightfall of the neighborhood. He nodded at me and accidentally ashed his forgotten cigarette poking out of his facial profile. I nodded back in return and tapped my cig on the nearby ashtray.

Long, low-slung blue Olds bumps bass nonchalantly in our neighborhood that is now arriving home, starting dinner, bringing the mail and garbage cans up from the road, walking the dogs, or starting the grill or whatever each homedweller's scene may be. We all hear the bass--we are supposed to after all--and some of us caught outside turn to look at the laid-back driver. He stares ahead, out of the windshield as we stare in from side glass on each side of the street, and slows his pace. The bass surrounds us in a doppler wave of nearing and departing and the unhurried boat cruises onward to his left turn and eventual destination. The air seems crisper when he exits and I can hear wind, birds, and the traffic of the main highway.

This shadow was equipped with a lightbar packed with flashing blues and whites, a spotlight on the door, some scary decals expressing the affiliation with law and order, plain-jane wheelcaps, and a very scrutinizing driver looming at me in a slow coasting right turn. His black standard-issue vehicle spooks me like a caution sign of "oh shit" in my subconsciousness, but I do the typical play-it-cool trick. I sip my beer, blow smoke in his direction from my cigarette, glance around like something interesting is either preceeding or chasing his tail, and then look back at his unchanged, not-buying-the-routine face. He slows, then starts quick like he has received a desperate call for action, and speeds off up the street. I curse him for my blood pressure increase and then think of how I make about the same amount of money per year but don't worry about dying at my job...although I miss out on carrying around a firearm for all those dangling participles and comma splices.

Silver flash didn't slow for the turn, for the traffic, for the safety of others. Silver flash hit a curb making a loud pop on a black round tire and a driver swear and a passenger scream and brakes were not even involved until long after the event. Silver flash maintained his flash, albeit limping along clumsy and noisy, and made it halfway up the street. Outdoor porch lights flicked on and his car cut the engine. The driver door finally opened, followed by the hatchback, and light from the interior poured out. I saw his shadow stumble, heard movement of articles in the back, and then the clank of steel tools on the pavement. The car inched higher in my vision, then lower, then the wheel was removed, then the car was raised again, the puny temporary tire installed, the car lowered, the flat tire/wheel thrown into the hatch in frustration, some tense exchange of words, the light from the interior died. Then the car cranked and slowly drove onward through the winding streets of the neighborhood now the porch lights were extinguished and the drama was over with. I later saw the silver flash drive back out of the neighborhood with only one occupant, but it drove slower this time and took the time to apply the brakes before the turn although the turn signal was ignored.

A dirty brown truck, maybe it was rusty?, slowed in a expressed downwinding of engine power combined with the rapidly applied friction of brake pads arresting the forward motion of this vehicle, and the squeal of the suspension chorused the cacophony of clatter as the battered truck swung into the driveway. I reacted, half startled from my observations, into rising from my chair, and looked across the carport at my own rusty truck. No, it was there; it had not be stolen and is now being returned for some odd reason like no gas, this is a suck-o getaway truck, or carjacker guilt. Nope, this was a twin--a doppleganger--of my stagnant automobile. It moved, it created motion and travelled, it voyaged. It made it to me by some random coincidence and I saw that register in the hesitation of the backing out truck. The driver nodded his shadowy face at me and honked on his retracing of his miles and I felt like a baton had been passed to me in some higher-order relay race.

5 Cars, one of which was my truck's twin, in 40 minutes of neighborhood observation. Crazy reality.

Showdown

Attempt
At
Cessation
Flounders
Withers
Stalls
Realizes
Awakens
Impresses
Captures
Condemns
Defines
Belittles

Stop the nicotine control bends my mental grasp, pulls my grasping fingers back with ease, laughs in my stern, cast face.

I will face this adversary in the morning, already broken in spirit.

Like laughing in the face of death are my constant, polluting puffs.

Disappear

Porcelain contains splashed water and forms rigid hand-holds--sterile and white and non-judgemental. The overhead fan buzzes oddly like a lopsided hula-hoop in a tornado, and it stirs tension around my jaw and neck like stereophonic crickets, like erratic firecrackers, like a constantly backfiring automobile, like the pigeons on the ledge outside my hostel window in Victoria Station. These pigeons cooed strangely, frightfully; all night I would almost fall into the comforter of sleep when a garbled, desperate bleat would piece the gentle cover of night and I would involuntarily twitch in nervous, curious fear in a foreign room and unfamiliar bed.
The lavatory's overhead bulb feels hot against my feverish skin and paints my visage pasty and unwell in the dirty mirror framed before my searching, concerned eyes. I splash more water on my face, on the back of my heated, knoted neck, dripping, regaining focus amid swirling feelings...swooning into the grip of actuality, of temperature and blood pressure and breathing regulation, grasping inside that inpenetrable staring reflection the mirror presents as the extent of myself.
Next came the paper towel scrubbing, then the flush of the commode, followed by a couple of raspy coughs-the door handle-the light switch; the re-entry into the convenience store/the bar/the dark hallway/the parking lot of the nature trails/the pizza joint/the public transportation hub/the stranger's house...I smile and blink and head directly to the nearest exit for a cigarette of mediation and integration.
My heart beats, my brain continues, my discovery process crunches sensory information now that I've become numb to that hole bleeding me softly inside. I would clutch my guts like a bullet wound if I had a center point of pain; instead my being arbirtrary longs for the wholesome warmth missing from my present days; I disengage everything from my presence and participation. I know, I comprehend my unhinging. I absorb the distance within, encasing me inside of broken reflections of unrewinding captures of my past.
The air outside is frosty, clean. The streets have become scarce and my headlights project beams like illuminated echoes in the hovering surround of black. Shadows depart, coldness clutches, and my eyes no longer shine when I disappear.