Category: writing

when I was five or so,
me and my brother slept in the same room.
we each had a twin bed, at opposite ends.
he told me scary stories,
wanting to impress on me maybe, his fearlessness of having heard them himself.
he had a flashlight, of course
aimed up near his chin,
he’d begin telling me stories of swamp things and snake men,
which didn’t terrify me terribly to be honest.
but one night, he tells me there’s a monster under my bed.
he’d lift up the tiles ever so slowly,
he’d creep his hand around the edge of the mattress tugging at the sheets so he could pull himself up and out of his hiding place.
I would tug back of course,
but he’d continue,
the flashlight pressed right up against the bottom of his jaw.
he scared the shit out of me you know.
in fact, the one time I scared him was when we was getting up in the middle of the night,
and he heard his own bed creak
I was sleeping under it, and I’d arranged my pillows to look like it was me in my bed.
creak
I heard him call for me, chris, chris are you there.
I didn’t move cause I thought maybe he was seeing the monster.
I saw the flashlight turn on..
and the ray’s moved steadily, slowly downward.
I came close to the edge of the bed, staring hard looking for tufts of fur, claws, red eyes, anything.
and then he bent the flashlight down, and waved it under his bed where I was
and I looked around frantically to make sure the monster wasn’t lying silently next to me.
I grabbed the flashlight from him
and I’m sure he freaked,
as did I, so I slid out from under the bed, as quickly as can be
the flashlight resting on my chest shining up onto me.
when we saw each other, we both screamed.

monsters mouths agape in light.
I wish I didn’t have to use that word.

clouds are odd no?
it’s like they get close, and boom thunder,
then they touch, and bam lightning..
and if things are just right, they spin tightly together in a tornado.

some days i might as well be talking to the walls,
there’s really no interest in this.
what attracts people to people is wholly different amongst us.
maybe its the way i look this time, who knows, but it’s not mutual.

they always warned me, men yeah, they’re all about conquering and moving on,
but women, women want to possess you, they want to know what it is that makes you singular
and own it, even if for only a little while.

and when the wind goes out from the sails
we’ll look at each other and wonder
who’s going to row,

and talking in little breaths, breathes it to life again
blow by blow,

funny you know birds on electrical wires,
they don’t shock themselves cause they’re not grounded.
electricity is always described with such a will,
inescapable to think to us that something with that much power would lack it.
electricity is always trying to find it’s way to ground. alternating current,
AC which paces back and forth on the Line like an angry tiger,
and direct current , which waits to escape or kill at the switch or outlet
like a cobra bared up hood flared.
but the birds up on the wire, it just goes through them.

but we bottle it and sell it to kids in batteries

you know how you can make art out of anything.. but tape decks have a certain nostalgia for people our age, huh? you know the other day i was at a garage sale and this lady had a bunch of em in a box for $5. had they been lp’s and id been 20 years older i might have salivated. My parents, moreso my dad, always swore that you’d find some rare gem in a box with crap someone moving in or out is practically giving away. They say records sound ‘warmer’ than other media, and the sound cant be duplicated, i guess unless its being picked up by a needle, tapes were kind of a mystery, the things that played em gave you a glimpse through a little plastic window, of some motorized heads pressing down on the tape while they spun it. it aint at all as glamourous, and the things hissed and popped when you started or stopped playing music. but still they were ours y’know, all us kids in the 80’s had em, and made ’em whenever some new good song came on the radio. i kinda think like my dad in that sense, maybe i’d find one with no writing but some great songs on it.. i look in the box, a lot of grunge and alternative, though now its all pretty mainstream aint it?

you should be glad they told him,
as they beat in his fucking face
cut him till the blood ran like rivers
they pummeled him till his teeth
were swimming around in his mouth
like alphabet soup
you should be glad you know
cause it’s like
it’s like, uh
it’s like whatever that thing
a butterfly is that it is
before it’s forced into it’s cocoon
you have no choice but to change from that
you have no choice but to be something completely different
than what you were

kids feverishly putting their hands up in class
after the teacher asks
I know I know I know I know

My mom had a dodge Aries for a brief stint back before I was a teen, and one day a lady ran a stop sign and just ended the second lease on life my mom had just given that thing. she broke her arm in that accident and they carted her off in an ambulance, and left the kids in the company of my grandpa. i remember him kicking the tires on the old thing, muttering, they don’t make ’em like they used to. they carted the car off soon after, and i remember hearing its belly scraping against the pavement as the tow truck hauled it up against it’s bed.
Years later, now i go to junkyards, and poke through them looking for little parts here and there, where they’re still good. Some days it’s almost surreal, seeing all the metal carcasses posed there, as if to be revered. Each one a god with shattered bones

today is probably my last day with her,
I hope it isn’t painful.
can’t imagine what its like when your heart is failing.. when your motor is sputtering out.
when pigeons break their wings, they’ve got to be put down.
and its not like old yeller, who gets shot out back..
you can’t just go around discharging firearms in the city
you’re desperate cause the thing is seizing.. and there’s always a rock around.. so you just bash its head in.
the children are away in another room.

you wonder when you became an adult, and the arbitrator between life and death.

some days I get really sick of the shit of other people..
they paste down letters they can’t even ransom for some meaning.
I know you think part of me is cold for not wanting to help others.. sometimes I forget, you know

there is no life here in the Mojave.
save for the cacti which I pity,
stuck to the ground and always kept dehydrating in this damn sun
but kept from death by a cruel god
who gives them the salty sweat off his brow that he worked up
beating the shit out of this place.

even the lizards are trying to get the fuck out,
never having more than two feet on the ground at a time
to keep from singeing.

me, I picked up a pack of smokes from the last shithole of a gas station 100 miles from here.
I lost track as my eyes feverishly shift between the gas and the road,
half a tank and you have to turn back.

I begin rationalizing this to myself and light up a camel,
shit brand, but appropriate.
the only way to feel any sort of relief in this place is to burn yourself.
I take deep breaths and feel the nicotine in my lungs
as they grow hotter and drier than the desert I’m on.
they gasp for air,  and when they feel it,  it’s cool for the first time.

any spot is a good spot.
the winds will take care of any way back my memory could ever give even if they beat me for it.
there’s a dead body in the trunk.
I sing that thought like the song 99 bottles of beer on the wall.

before I’ve noticed it, I’ve gone too far. a quarter tank left.
I tap the gauge to make sure the motherfucker isn’t lying to me.
I light up another smoke.
fuck it I say to myself, i was dead before i left anyway

The first time I saw pictures of the earth,
I was deeply moved,
there was our little green-blue planet all alone in space.
it reminds me strangely of an abandoned mutt..
you know the type that only gnaws gently at it’s fleas
to make them move to greener pastures.
in the end, it’s us and the earth, all we have is each other.