There are times I go down until I am surrounded by yellow music.  There is nothing beneath me.  My mother’s dead lips smile and say, “See, there is nothing lesser than we.” The earth is my camp breath, her worms and the heat of my bowels.  Night sweat means nothing to those who do not sleep.  It is a balm, an outside offering.

Please take me to the circus, that I might witness the misery of other animals, the empirical majesty and absolute dominion of man, where only the elephant is sadder than me.  Lost in a sea of green money and fingertip fishes seeking greedy, sucky, moments of avarice, she has eleven open mouths and swallows the whole of me.  Did you see the frail lantern alight in the window and the name it was wearing.  Yes, its message of Phaedra and calling itself home.  

Falling into a forest of a thousand guitars, whose root strings are tender, is the master of chord.  He hangs himself from the nearest guitar, dies on the music of the wind.  “Meet me in your dreams,” she cries, the next best thing to being there.  Shadow shapes call out to my name.  I am blind in the periphery and in all dreams I die.  Like a wounded animal, I smell the rot of my flesh and damn the maggots for eating parts of me left better to putrefy and deliver me to the end land.

Sleep is the kingdom of the healthy, where the strong go to rest and the weak to escape.   There is a madness between sleep where pariahs such as I, alleys roam.  In a pasture of lowing, moon-swept, pastoral and fine, I am the hunter’s lust to slay with fang and claw, all that lives, to starve on a body of prey.

The pretty boys were singing downtown, making heat for long-legged girls, flinging epithets at the old men, beggars and high roller winos.  Midnight don’t mean nothin’ to strangers.  I got one foot in Jesus, the other in the ditch.  Spirituality is like ringworm.  It makes you itch, digs down deeper than your flesh.

Why don’t you take me out walkin’ until my feet are under water and my eyes are full of sand.  I’ll look down and wonder, all gritty, where the hell did they go?  The man on the radio says ha-ha, talks to girls about their titties and why don’t they join a swinger’s club, do it in front of their old men.  He breaks for a commercial about shaking babies to death.

Life makes about as much sense as two nickels rubbed together, don’t make a dime.  You put it all up front and, when it falls down, you walk away and wonder, was it something you said or maybe you didn’t.  I knew a man named Jimmi.  He got real pissed when they took away one of his m’s, set fire to his instrument and banged his head on the floor.  Ah hell, it’s all in the letters.

I loathe rooms with four walls, double doors and window mirrors.  They see everything you do, look back, contemptuous, to remind you of everything you don’t.  Yesterday there was something in my soup; I believe it loved me.  The prayer I said over it was beautiful.  You are woman; you are my hope, my dream and then I swallowed it whole.

There may be enough pills in this bottle to still the phantoms behind my eyes, that I might cop a few hours of death, leave this drifting shadow place for the delight of ebon fantasies.  Be kind to me, you damned night.  Allow me acceptance, her invitation and, with the blessing of Phaedra whose death by her own hand is the sleep death, a revenge of sons.
 
 
 
 
Sunday came too early, 7:30a.m., the dog banging on the door downstairs.  I took her some water, told her to be quiet, went back to bed.  A few minutes later she commenced to bark, bringing the neighbors into our morning.  Resigned to my fate, I got dressed and went outside.  Like a spoiled child, one way or another, the dog usually gets her way.

Sunday morning came too early, 1a.m., my wife and I finished watching a movie, Sling Blade.  John Ritter was in the movie.  He’s dead now in real life.  Dennis Hopper died yesterday.  It occurs to me that the deaths of these actors I’ve been watching most of my life, in some vague sense, has something to do with me.  As if my aching bones weren’t reminders enough this Sunday morning come too early.

Aging is relative to life, isn’t it.  Like it or not, if it isn’t occurring, neither are you.  So I’m thankful for the good ol’ dog, my coffee morning wife and stepdaughter still asleep in her room upstairs, especially gifted and thankful for my five wonderful children and their sweet little ones.  

I take several moments each day and night to dwell on those specific and special children of mine.  The night would never end if I hadn’t held them close in my mind and spirit with each breath.  Sunday morning wouldn’t occur.  Who would water and quiet the dog.  I am glad to be a man who has done so, three cups of coffee in to a Sunday come early.
 
 
 
 
We’re swimming in glaciers, drinking the floe.  We are fallout People traversing the gradient, challenging our lungs and skins to mutate with relative quickness to survive the results of our appetites.

All hail the warmonger, emulate his bullyboy strut, pig eyes, jealous and mean.  We gotta get ‘em, get ‘em, get ‘em before they get us, his hands full of dead birds, his face, a masque of innocence.

We are a nation starving for heroes, drowning in a television river, feeding our children an orgy of movie and sports’ stars, teaching them to be like, be like, be like and no sense of self.  

The lonely man might have wept into his hands at the mess we have made.  Resolution and resolve written on his stately face, he might take a note from his pocket, hastily written and say to us:

Eleven score and fourteen years ago our fathers brought forth on this planet a new concept, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all People are created equal.

Now we are engaged in war and threats of war, asking ourselves whether this world, or any world so conceived and dedicated, can long endure.  We are met on a global battlefield.  We are here to dedicate portions of the killing fields of our latest armed conflict as a final resting place for those who have given their lives there that others may live.  It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground.  The brave soldiers, living and dead, who have struggled on these fields, have consecrated them, far above our power to bless, give, or take away.  The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it must never forget the sacrifice they have made.  It is for us, the living, rather, to dedicate ourselves to the unfinished work which those who fought and perished have thus far so nobly advanced.  It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this world and its People, given each their vision of God and government, shall share a new birth of freedom – and that a worldwide respect of government of the People, by the People, for the People, shall exist wherever they are found and not infringe upon the beliefs and rights of others, that these may exist in peace and harmony and the tenets of their faith shall not perish from the earth.

We are standing in tall shadow, must remember to know, hear the echo of voices from the camps.  The cloying smoke of their ovens has joined our water, rides the currents of our winds, is reproduced and multiplied  in the shock and awe of our bombardment, breathed into the bodies of our children.  What will he say to us when he comes?  How will she see herself and know the way; will she say the words we could not teach that our children’s ears will hear?
 

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