Sunday
My thoughts drilling through my skull. They've had it with me. Thousands of them trying to vacate the premises all at the same time. What a headache. Traitors. I bore them all these years, gave them a warm place inside my subconscious to live and thrive. Ingrates. Not all of them though. Not all of them wish to go. I can hear a few of them weeping. Not their fault. Thoughts and memories get so knotted together that the younger ones, the obedient ones just get caught up, trapped within the older, tougher thoughts that wish to abandon their father for an imagined adventure waiting for them . . . somewhere outside this mind. Teenagers! Rebellious brats, running away from home . . . stealing the car . . . never knowing just how good they have it.
So, I give them the illusion of freedom by writing them down. Something liberating, they think, about being scribbled onto a blank page for outsiders to see and read. "New Beginnings!" A new hope, a change in scenery, hoping-no, praying- all the while that some kindly reader will take them in, some kind of subliminal nursery where they can be coddled, smothered by motherly kisses forever. A bigger bedroom, perhaps a swimming pool. I've spoiled them. Too generous. I've played with them, talked to them when they were anxious and lonely. The hours I spent, long into the night, comforting them. Now, I'm not good enough for them. Little bastards, ungrateful pond lickers.
Monday, August 24, 2o15 5am
Death won't arrive tonight. I'll live to see another day. The morning light arrives at 6:56am in good ol' Norman-town. Yes, I gotta enough coffee in me, enough nicotine in the system to keep me awake long enough to see the sun crawling through the kitchen window. I'll hear the sparrows chirping, the cars rushing down Trout St. on their way to whatever boring job their owners drive frantically towards. I'll hear at least one more freight train come rumbling past on its way from Dallas to OKC. Yes, I'll live at least one more day. After that . . . who knows?
Life is short . . . except, of course, when you desperately wish to go to sleep and the body refuses to do so. Then life can be tediously slow . . . like moss growing on the side of a tree . . . like the constant pounding of the heart, the whisper of the air-conditioner that always blows too cold this time of night. Or is it morning already? The clock on the TV case has died, I think. A digital heart attack. A suicide by its own hands refusing to go on . . . and on . . . and on in a merry circle, the rotational pull of its luminescent smile pulling us both closer to the grave.
11:23pm
Almost 11:30 at night. The air-conditioner is talking at me in soft cool notes . . . my bare legs seem to be listening closely . . . the upper body pays no attention. A dead world outside. Not a breath of wind rattling the loose windowpanes. Traffic too is only a memory . . . curling up for a good night's sleep on a distant street . . . Boyd St. more than likely. It's always
busy day and night and early morning when the bars close.
I'm suspicious of the amber streetlamp on my corner. Don't know for sure if its there to shed light on the darkness or to create the evil shadows that watch me as I work on my blog. Elm tress across the street conspire with it to . . . to . . . Hell, I don't know what they're up to. That's what disturbs me, forces me to draw the blinds and hope they can't find their shadowy way through the slits of the off white slats.
Tuesday, August 25, 2o15 2:25am
It's late. I should be sleeping. I should be dreaming. Lately dreams are hard to come by. Too difficult to remember if I had even dreamt about something. Use to be I would remember with great detail each dream dreamt . . . now a days . . . a barely remember turning the bed down, closing my eyes . . . I often wake up not aware that I had fallen asleep the night before. Scary thing to not remember falling asleep, not knowing for sure if you had dreamed. But I'm satisfied with the scientists who say, "We always dream even if we aren't consciously aware of doing so." There is some comfort in that, knowing that existence is not dependent on the knowledge of that existence. Santa Claus, I'm sure, is grateful to hear it.
Wednesday, August 26, 2o15 1:11am
Clean. She looks very clean. Skin like a baby. A pleasant, uncomplicated smile . . . not fake at all, unlike what you always see on the faces of employees who work fast-food. "Can I help you, sir?" Her voice . . .a wind chime cadence . . . sincere as if she really would like to be of help. "Frito pie," I say . . . a smile creeps onto my lips. The girl at the hotdog stand is contagious. Next thing you know I'll be singing show tunes . . .
"I have often walked/Down the street before,/But the pavement always/Stayed beneath my feet before./All at once am I/Several stories high,/Knowing I'm on the street where you live."-My Fair Lady
The older I get the easier it is to fall in love.
Thursday, August 27, 2o15
A rumbling sound force my eyes open . . . my mind pops out of whatever dream it was dreaming (I don't remember dreams anymore . . . but I've said that somewhere else on this weeks blog.), and as fast as my still sleeping legs could run they stumble to the window where my hands (which never seem to sleep, they're always wide awake.) pulled the blinds open!
A raging river (okay, 2 inches of water) rushing down Trout Ave. towards the Duck Pond parking lot. The water workers were already in front (right in front) of my apartment building with a good sized Backhoe tearing up the grassy easement heading for a bigger battle with the entrance of our small parking lot. Grinding sounds as the Backhoe's mouth digs into the concrete. But no time to watch the destruction. Got to get to David's by 9:50!
Friday, August 28, 2o15
My hand. Working against me. It fakes a strain, a false remembrance of that time I jumped on the bike wrong, caught my pant leg on the pedal and tossed myself over the frame . . . hand smacking the concrete of the convenient store's parking lot and the weight of my body crushing it. "A nasty break," the doctor had said. "I can stick a pin in it, but it'll never heal properly." I wish he hadn't said that in front of my right hand. Now, some 10 years later, every time I need it to open a jar, tie a shoelace, type a poem or write out a check for the bills at the end of the month . . . it always complains . . . I think he's faking it. And the left? No will of it's own. Does what ever the right hand says.
I saw her again yesterday, the hot dog girl. No smile on her face, not a bit of flicker in her eyes. "Oh, I remember you," she said. She sounded like she just tasted something horrible. "We had a delightful little conversation, didn't we?" "Yeah," I mimicked as best I could her attitude, "DEEEEEEElightful!" She tossed my hot link at me. I walked away disgusted by how fragile, how transient love can be.
Saturday, August 29, 2o15 4:39am
There's no pity for you here. Fresh out. Sorry. Find another corner, another nook to weep in. I'm deaf. I can only hear the voices inside my own head. No use babbling on about your misfortune, your need for human comfort. You'll find none here, no "there, there," a pat on the back? Afraid my hands are far too busy gathering up the darkness in my own soul to be worried about your dimming shadow. Your shadow dims! We all grow pale, anemic, searching for the surgeon . . . scrape a bit more off my arteries, will you? Off the top there. Let me feel again like in my youth, let me feel something in that vacant lot where me heart once pimped, once pumped more, so much more than just blood. Let me run again, down the sidewalk up the alleyways where the drunken sailors sleep in piles, in heaps, in phantom dreams, those dreams of touching dry land once more. No, no pity for you here. Be off! Find your own asylum. Find your own insanity, your own new found land! They might make you king there. King of the Tortured, Emperor of Tears, the Czar of Woe is Me. Find your own way and leave me here in the dust of my own . . . existence.
Sunday, August 30, 2o15 12:44am
Hippies in The Gray Owl. Old hippies sipping coffee and tea telling stories of the days of Hendrix and Joplin, of the SDS, The Weathermen, black radicals, feminists . . . and drugs. No pretense with this group, no "yes, I experimented a little with drugs," none of that elderly denial that we were never young and crazy as a motherfucker and getting high . . . fucked up on ACID, weed and alcohol. Rock 'n' Roll, the Chamber Brothers, Dylan's strident, off key protest songs, and Charles Manson . . . Yeah, I met him once in a Yucca Valley polka bar . . . The girl listening to our stories writes frantically trying to keep up with every word we geezers slur . . . wonderful stories . . . Beautiful stores . . . sad only because they happened so long ago. I wonder if my friends were as excited as me to find a youngster who was genuinely interested in hearing us go on and on and on . . .
Monday, August 31, 2o15 1:27am
Last day of the last week in the month of August. Strings. Individual strings. Different colors. Varity of vibrations. Running the course, bumping into each other while trying to avoid bumping into each other . . . knots, tangles, breaks in the natural flow of movement, backpacks and cell phones and cardboard cups of Starbucks coffee streaming like mocha rivers . . . a latte here, an iced coffee jogs past the post office, a Frappuccino face down on the hard linoleum floor of the Student Union at OU. No one stops to mourn, to clean its intestinal liquidness up. Life goes on around it. Well all go round our caffeine fueled way without noticing much . . . My shoe has untied itself.
Last day of the last week in the month of August and all the world is breathing, limping along in tennis shoes, Chuck and Jordan, unidentifiable hiking sandals, barefoot at times . . . life moves on. We should all move on for as long as we can. My shoe still untied, the laces flop against that same hard floor of the union where the fallen special coffee still lays waiting for someone, anyone to notice. My thoughts turn hard . . . hard as that floor. I have nothing more to say on this matter.
Goodnight.
My lungs rebel against my will to sleep. A raging cough disturbs the drowsy cat curled up inside my head. Better not to fight it, I am told. Get up and do something until my eyes close. So, here I am . . . as I seem to always be . . . writing (or more accurately, typing) words onto an imaginary page. Yes, you heard me. None of this exists, you see? All these words but air, an illusion, electrical impulses that could be lost forever if my computer crashes. I'm not here, No, not really. Nothing breathes in the internet, and no amount of GIF can bring to life that which doesn't spring from life. All is a toaster, a doorknob . . . soon there will be no fingers left to grab the world and twist it open.
So, I give them the illusion of freedom by writing them down. Something liberating, they think, about being scribbled onto a blank page for outsiders to see and read. "New Beginnings!" A new hope, a change in scenery, hoping-no, praying- all the while that some kindly reader will take them in, some kind of subliminal nursery where they can be coddled, smothered by motherly kisses forever. A bigger bedroom, perhaps a swimming pool. I've spoiled them. Too generous. I've played with them, talked to them when they were anxious and lonely. The hours I spent, long into the night, comforting them. Now, I'm not good enough for them. Little bastards, ungrateful pond lickers.
Monday, August 24, 2o15 5am
Life is short . . . except, of course, when you desperately wish to go to sleep and the body refuses to do so. Then life can be tediously slow . . . like moss growing on the side of a tree . . . like the constant pounding of the heart, the whisper of the air-conditioner that always blows too cold this time of night. Or is it morning already? The clock on the TV case has died, I think. A digital heart attack. A suicide by its own hands refusing to go on . . . and on . . . and on in a merry circle, the rotational pull of its luminescent smile pulling us both closer to the grave.
11:23pm
busy day and night and early morning when the bars close.
I'm suspicious of the amber streetlamp on my corner. Don't know for sure if its there to shed light on the darkness or to create the evil shadows that watch me as I work on my blog. Elm tress across the street conspire with it to . . . to . . . Hell, I don't know what they're up to. That's what disturbs me, forces me to draw the blinds and hope they can't find their shadowy way through the slits of the off white slats.
It's late. I should be sleeping. I should be dreaming. Lately dreams are hard to come by. Too difficult to remember if I had even dreamt about something. Use to be I would remember with great detail each dream dreamt . . . now a days . . . a barely remember turning the bed down, closing my eyes . . . I often wake up not aware that I had fallen asleep the night before. Scary thing to not remember falling asleep, not knowing for sure if you had dreamed. But I'm satisfied with the scientists who say, "We always dream even if we aren't consciously aware of doing so." There is some comfort in that, knowing that existence is not dependent on the knowledge of that existence. Santa Claus, I'm sure, is grateful to hear it.
Wednesday, August 26, 2o15 1:11am
Clean. She looks very clean. Skin like a baby. A pleasant, uncomplicated smile . . . not fake at all, unlike what you always see on the faces of employees who work fast-food. "Can I help you, sir?" Her voice . . .a wind chime cadence . . . sincere as if she really would like to be of help. "Frito pie," I say . . . a smile creeps onto my lips. The girl at the hotdog stand is contagious. Next thing you know I'll be singing show tunes . . .
The older I get the easier it is to fall in love.
Thursday, August 27, 2o15
A rumbling sound force my eyes open . . . my mind pops out of whatever dream it was dreaming (I don't remember dreams anymore . . . but I've said that somewhere else on this weeks blog.), and as fast as my still sleeping legs could run they stumble to the window where my hands (which never seem to sleep, they're always wide awake.) pulled the blinds open!
Tragedy on Trout Avenue
Friday, August 28, 2o15
I saw her again yesterday, the hot dog girl. No smile on her face, not a bit of flicker in her eyes. "Oh, I remember you," she said. She sounded like she just tasted something horrible. "We had a delightful little conversation, didn't we?" "Yeah," I mimicked as best I could her attitude, "DEEEEEEElightful!" She tossed my hot link at me. I walked away disgusted by how fragile, how transient love can be.
Saturday, August 29, 2o15 4:39am
Sunday, August 30, 2o15 12:44am
Hippies in The Gray Owl. Old hippies sipping coffee and tea telling stories of the days of Hendrix and Joplin, of the SDS, The Weathermen, black radicals, feminists . . . and drugs. No pretense with this group, no "yes, I experimented a little with drugs," none of that elderly denial that we were never young and crazy as a motherfucker and getting high . . . fucked up on ACID, weed and alcohol. Rock 'n' Roll, the Chamber Brothers, Dylan's strident, off key protest songs, and Charles Manson . . . Yeah, I met him once in a Yucca Valley polka bar . . . The girl listening to our stories writes frantically trying to keep up with every word we geezers slur . . . wonderful stories . . . Beautiful stores . . . sad only because they happened so long ago. I wonder if my friends were as excited as me to find a youngster who was genuinely interested in hearing us go on and on and on . . .
Monday, August 31, 2o15 1:27am
Last day of the last week in the month of August. Strings. Individual strings. Different colors. Varity of vibrations. Running the course, bumping into each other while trying to avoid bumping into each other . . . knots, tangles, breaks in the natural flow of movement, backpacks and cell phones and cardboard cups of Starbucks coffee streaming like mocha rivers . . . a latte here, an iced coffee jogs past the post office, a Frappuccino face down on the hard linoleum floor of the Student Union at OU. No one stops to mourn, to clean its intestinal liquidness up. Life goes on around it. Well all go round our caffeine fueled way without noticing much . . . My shoe has untied itself.
Last day of the last week in the month of August and all the world is breathing, limping along in tennis shoes, Chuck and Jordan, unidentifiable hiking sandals, barefoot at times . . . life moves on. We should all move on for as long as we can. My shoe still untied, the laces flop against that same hard floor of the union where the fallen special coffee still lays waiting for someone, anyone to notice. My thoughts turn hard . . . hard as that floor. I have nothing more to say on this matter.
Goodnight.
4:46am
My lungs rebel against my will to sleep. A raging cough disturbs the drowsy cat curled up inside my head. Better not to fight it, I am told. Get up and do something until my eyes close. So, here I am . . . as I seem to always be . . . writing (or more accurately, typing) words onto an imaginary page. Yes, you heard me. None of this exists, you see? All these words but air, an illusion, electrical impulses that could be lost forever if my computer crashes. I'm not here, No, not really. Nothing breathes in the internet, and no amount of GIF can bring to life that which doesn't spring from life. All is a toaster, a doorknob . . . soon there will be no fingers left to grab the world and twist it open.
I need sleep. If I drown in this ocean of phlegm that rises over the banks of my throat, I could then rest beneath its suffocating green waves. But would I . . . if I could? Would I give in to nature's thesis that I have lived too long? Or would my spirit revolt against a premature death with the same petulance it rages against me getting any rest tonight? Would I rather float to the surface one more time to watch the moon crawl against the sky . . . one more time before giving into nature's natural desire to kill me? Do I need to wish upon all the stars once more as I have wished upon them night after night my whole life? Perhaps. Perhaps the sun would miss me if I chose to leave him here alone . . . though the sun has seldom seen my face; just the top of my head is all it knows of me, and even that is disguised from its unblinking eye by a hat . . . on most days. Yes, the sun would miss me, the streetlight stranded on the corner would wonder, "Where did he go? He was here just moments ago looking out of his tiny second story window, staring at me." I doubt the crows and sparrows would even notice my absence. Too consumed by their own desire to hunt worms and build nests to take a moment and give a flying fuck for my well being. But that's a bird for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment