I am an anonymous donor spreading my seed of grief across the world and I might as well be blind for all I see is black, the rubber room menace rotating on some wobbly wheel and my gifts have all been opened by other people and I sit and watch in a pile of gold paper remembering the uncle who shot himself the cousin who shot himself the brother, who someday may shoot himself And all the bleeds will flow like thick wine and pool into an ocean where God Neptune will pierce me with a sharpened shovel and all the angels will laugh at God’s biggest mistake.
And this all a malenky bit sad, isn’t it? But what is joy without sadness? It does not exist. What is love without loneliness? The deeper the isolation the brighter the kiss … but still, time stretches out like a river vastly flowing over the rocks and the limbs crushing flowers with a wet fist, numbing hot legs braving a dive and where will I be tomorrow? In a treehouse with a shotgun or in a bar with 11 empty shot glasses before me or on a dancefloor with a whore or alone in felt-like desolation sipping at the tears in my wrist or clapping for the might of the clouds or then again nothing at all. Bear with me bears of the forest for I cannot get a grip on yesterday or tomorrow or even right now stone sober and burning and while someone is making wishes I am losing my mind Another red another notch in the bed another twist of cold morality, but then, things could always be worse and so, I’m not positive, I don’t need to be today I am bleak and writhing in the fuel the dirty fuel casting spells of the tepid hemorrhage and I ache relentlessly for my heart is an inferno download me into the electric sea and you will see who I am meant to be.
I met Edward Abbey at the sand dunes, but he was already blown away I met Miller at a French cafe, but he was already blown away I met Kerouac on a railroad car, but he was already blown away and I met me at yet another airport, but I was already blown away. The bleed pile of my grace is wiped away with a red rag and the doctors can’t patch me together anymore so many holes have I, so many disturbing dreams and polarized realities, my only sanctuary is to drown in paper and words pictures and photographs and electric men pumping bullets into nameless enemies. Today has been fried bologna on burnt toast, water and pills, ashes on my eyes and the sound of her bellowing in the background and the weird upstairs guy snoring through the ceiling. What new ache will tomorrow bring? What will I be forced to swallow into the hollow grave of my soul?
I had a dream in the opening creaks of dawn today that I was getting ready to graduate from high school again. In my dream, the colors of my cap and gown were white trimmed in gold. In my real-life graduation, the colors were green and gold… I think. I don’t really remember because it was eons ago. I had attended a Catholic high school my last three years because I had been a bad kid in regular school and kind of got kicked out. I guess it wasn’t because I was bad really, I was just maladjusted. I didn’t fit in. But truth be told, Catholic high school was rougher than regular high school. That’s just what I needed.
The point is, because it was a Catholic high school and a relatively small class of less than 100 people, we had our graduation ceremony at a godly chapel on the campus of one of the local colleges. It was some sort of long-standing tradition. I suppose I didn’t really care about that. I hated high school and was just so ready to get it over and done with.
Moving on, I guess it was only fitting that my final act as a high school student turned out to be an exercise in my own misplacement in the world. After I accepted my diploma and began to stroll across the chancel, I reached up and struggled to find the tassel that I was supposed to move from right to left. It never occurred to me that performing such a seemingly simple act would have turned out to be my penultimate high school kick in the crotch. I was mostly concerned with the damn cap completely falling off my head and then everyone would see my messed-up hair.
Like I said, I had reached up and I was feeling for it, but I just couldn’t find the damn thing. I could sense the breathlessness in the gathered crowd. I was immediately struck with panic and what I really wanted to do was just run, run, run and never return to society ever again. But that would have been impossible. Everyone was watching, everyone was waiting. And then, as I took nearly my last step at the come down point off of the chancel, I found that damn tassel and flipped it to the left. It had slipped to the very back of the cap somehow. I was relieved. The crowd was relieved. The saints and demons etched into the colorful stained glass of the chapel were relieved. The whole damn universe was relieved.
That was my graduation. While everyone else was happy, excited, and celebrating the coming joys of their surely bright futures as they gathered on the perfectly manicured lawn outside after it was all done, I had had a tussle with a tassel. That is my memory. That is the little burn scar from my 18th year of life that for some reason really sticks out to me. It shouldn’t though, because over the years I have collected many more missteps and scars – much thicker and deeper ones. Such is life, I suppose.
I would think that for many people, high school was the highlight of their lives. For many people, I believe, high school memories are pleasant ones filled with friends, good times, laughter, dances, football games, parties, trips, dating, etc… Not for me. I was never involved in anything because I just knew I would have made a fool of myself, and those bastards would have jumped on that opportunity and torn me to shreds. And you may think I’m a psycho, but I actually burned my high school yearbook in our downstairs fireplace at the brutal Colorado house in the foothills where I lived. I just kneeled before that hearth of red brick like a monk and watched it flame up, curl, and finally turn black and tumble to ash. I don’t know why I even had a yearbook. My parents must have gotten it for me because it surely wasn’t something I would have chosen to have on my own.
Anyways, enough of that. I think this post was supposed to be about a dream… Yes. The dream.
In the dream this morning, I was getting ready for my graduation, and I was terribly anxious because I just knew, knew, my cap was going to fall off and I’d be made fun of… Again. So, in this dream, I was madly scurrying about in some cabinets searching for hairpins. I needed hairpins because I wanted to have them with me in case I needed to pin my cap to my head to keep it from falling off – which is really stupid because I never had hair thick enough to pull something like that off.
I was searching and scrounging and scavenging for hairpins, and in the process, I was making a huge mess of everything because I was just tossing stuff everywhere, like in a cartoon. My mother was in the dream, and I recall she looked really worried about me as I was just flipping things about in search of hairpins. It was as if she already knew I was going to have a very rough life and there was nothing she could do about it. She knew she had bred a cuckoo. That’s the look she had. The dream ended when I finished shoving everything else back into the cabinet and it was such a disheveled mess in there and that bothered me and I hated leaving it like that, but I did. I just closed the cabinet and then I woke up.
Fast forward umpteen years and at this moment my beautiful wife is gathering the laundry and clanking dishes. I’m madly typing away at my desk. I just finished my coffee and Greek yogurt sprinkled with granola and soon I will down my daily dose of prescription medication and head off to the gym. I didn’t need high school for this. What a painful waste. I just needed a chance to be what I wanted to be. I never fit into that small rectangular box that I sternly looked out from in that burning yearbook. I never will properly fit – not like they want me to.
The mutual poet and I wrapped our scars around rainbows like barbed wire cuts of rust wrenching the tears from the colored spine like lemon juice or the salty water from a baby’s crushed ice face. The mutual poet and I stayed up all night, for three nights, maybe a week, we couldn’t sleep, but a bit at twilight and the sun shook us from our slumbers and we blotted it out with a big patch of dark cloth the color of blood running from a split-open heart on some cold boulevard by a bar after a bruising breakup over loud music, cigarettes, and rum.
We ate nothing at breakfast and sauteed bullets for dinner; he wandered around in a daze mumbling things to himself, forgetting where he left his lit cigarette and I followed in his footsteps, perfect synchronicity as he did one thing and then another, rapidly changing gears and always mumbling like a freight train feather with a bad valve and he had a poor sense of concentration, his brain like a steam-whistle screaming away at 5 o’clock but five o’clock comes every 17 seconds or so; was this the end of it all? the great melting mind (and Joejack if you hear this, you’ve been there before but now safe in the bosom of the valley far north) — you will all hate this, say I am a tantric rip-off of some dead so and so … so … no love in this poem? love in every poem, even the most seething verse and the darkest string of words was once spawned from love and it is our gift to stitch them together in the ocean quilt with sawdust and bone.
But back to the mutual poet — he once put something in the oven, fell asleep and then woke to the stench of burning food and a choking cloud of smoke, he once put a gun to his head not really knowing if it was loaded or not — pulled the trigger — wasn’t that time.
Just trying to get back from wherever I came, haven’t had a home in centuries, no place to dwell with any decency, no place to settle in for the long haul; different doorways trap memories behind them, too many doors and different floors, and some places are filled with love and others filled within silence and fingernail scratches on the wall from just trying to remain standing and well the boo-hoo girl went back to white dinosaur in a green car and she should be happy there, then again she’s happy everywhere.
The moon, mutual poet, was muzzled pink tonight, hanging there like a faded ruby with bruises and the clouds all around it were like melting blue butter and black-eyed whipped cream, the brutal stars and stripes puffing away on another hand-rolled cigarette and the monkeys were swinging madly from limb to limb as the warm river rolled by beneath another freeway to another kingdom of fractured lives slaving away, day after day, to barely get by as strangers manipulate the development of their children’s minds and fights roar out of control and another head is buried in a wall.
They buried the mutual poet on Good Friday 1913, yet he remains with me here today; his motions are my motions, his forgetfulness and inability to speak coherently are traits we both share, but if he was here and I was there, would it make any difference at all?
Well goodnight Joejack. I picture you laughing at a sad movie or crying while watching a comedy; do you know a guy died in your house? — the one with the long hallway — it always creeped me out, but if you think about it, we are all walking over someone else’s bones. Goodnight Joejack.
Author’s Note: You might recall me recently posting a story about how Joe Pera Talks With You is my favorite new TV show and how in it I go on and on about how my wife and I spent part of our honeymoon up in Marquette, Mich. I wanted to add some pictures in that post but it turned out they were on my Mac laptop and not on my HP desktop so I had to go dig them up and transfer them over so I could make good on my promise. Anyways, what follows is my first attempt at a photo-centric post… If I can figure it out. Thanks for looking.
In and around Marquette, Mich.
Click on the photos to see them larger against a black background.
Restaurant in downtown Marquette. We had a mediocre breakfast here.Iron ore dockLake Superior Iron ore dock with wooden pilingsSkeletal remains of wooden pilingsMore skeletal remainsDowntown Marquette with historic Landmark Inn in backView from hotel breakfast roomAnother view from hotel breakfast roomSign in convenience store bathroom in MunisingPiles of dirty snowIcy Lake SuperiorStatue of soldier at war memorialLake Superior and lighthouseLake Superior with ore dock in backgroundMy wife contemplating life on the shores of Lake Superior. She’s wearing a coat because it was March and pretty coldMore beautiful Lake SuperiorOur hotel room. Sorry about the mess. If you look closely you can see a pair of crutches. My wife was on crutches during our honeymoon because of a bad knee that she had replaced the following monthA tree looking out upon Lake SuperiorA pier jutting out into Lake SuperiorAnother view of the lake from a lonely park we visited
About ore docks
I don’t think I ever saw an iron ore dock until I was in Marquette. They are huge… Things. I don’t even really know how to describe them. They sort of look like elevated piers in a way but much wider, and they are kind of creepy and imposing. I don’t entirely understand how they work, but from the reading I have done it seems they are used to fill ships (that pull up, or I guess float up, to the sides of the dock) with iron ore by means of a series of chutes that flip down. The ore is brought to the dock via railcars that ride along tracks at the top of the dock. If anyone knows more about iron ore docks and how they work, please leave a comment. Thanks for reading.
You invented love like dragons spit fire the longing when you are gone, is an immediate reaction I’m drawn to your eyes I’m drawn to the night the full vibrato of darkness the stars splashed so randomly across the universe we can touch them if we try
Candles melt away so quickly here this otherworld, this neverwhere We are a collision of chemistry wrapped in coils of electricity The ache of our day becomes the joy of our night empty wine glasses and ghosts the bluest tears, the reddest blood
The valve has been wrestled loose the drips drop incessantly throughout the house Impenetrable venom impenetrable malaise Someone broke the switch on the furnace and it’s coughing up hot laughing gas and I choke on my own experiences Am I sad? Am I happy? Am I a supernova, Or just merely a simple star, blinking randomly from within this skull of space?
Am I a colored moon peacefully napping with a nightcap perched upon my point Or am I a black hole, sucking on everything that exists? Or am I merely a chemical byproduct that sits in an empty room, waiting for night to pass and day to begin, when I can talk to you and feel my heart thunder against the world
But sometimes, I just want to be a rocking chair, swaying gently amidst the dust of a long-gone grandparent’s den, listening to the easy tick of the clock on the mantle, watching the footsteps fade deeper into the carpet, waiting for the sounds and smells of a childhood lost forever lost in the woods of autumn, across the icy bridge of winter, into the wet grass of spring and along the thick dreams of summer on some Midwestern small-town porch
And so, when do dreams end and reality begin? When is night’s finale and day’s birth? One fluid sweep of time and the Earth still tilts and I still stare at the ceiling, catching glimpses of you in my mind’s eye the baby’s breath in my fist falls, landing in a blanket of fresh snow, you pull up into the white gravel and I can see your smile through the windshield my heart still rattles as the sun breaks through the clouds, and your hand clutches me in dreams.
This isn’t my heart on a TV show isn’t my heart crushed on Cannery Row This isn’t my heart on a Dylan song isn’t my heart on a chain-linked town This isn’t my heart at all.
Feeling like junk in the high-blue sky Margaritas and needles and your sparkling eyes tell me why I don’t have to die so you and the girls go trippin’ all night as I sit back and watch the fight just another town just another landscape just another piece of misery just another place you want to escape so go back home and do it up right dance and drink all through the night feel the claw of a stranger touching your face why does everyone take my place.
Ronald’s in town with his big red shoes looking at the girl with the big red mouth he’s got a bullet and a burger a chomp and a stomp a trigger finger stirring ketchup and rain laughing while he tries to swallow the pain in another city by the sun in another remnant on a postcard another tear left to dry in a dirty motel ashtray he’s just junk and he’s learned to stay that way.
By
Aaron Echoes August
An online journal of fiction, essays, and social commentary.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 