2 Minutes. Go!

Misery

Eyes locked to the ceiling, feeding on insecurity, the eyes have it … they see you, they track you. You can’t escape them, and you flounce in front of them, smiling – you have not seen the brutal reality that you stumbled into. You sniff deep, smelling burnt blood. You are immune to human reason, and you are drifting away, untethered.

Used to be, you could see past the end of the tunnel, imagine a bright something. Used to be, you slept when you were sleeping, and craved your consciousness. Now you dig down into the muck of yourself, and you think that this is progress.

Watch the children play. They are preparing for adulthood. The assholes are busy assholing. The cheats are looking away furtively. The stupid are loud, and the wise are few and far between. No one cares about you and your sensitivities. They said they did, but that was a trick. To lure you into the woods.

2 Minutes. Go!

I know there's extra kool aid, but I'm not thirsty. I know there's ways to placate the rage, but I don't have a television. I know that fucking a supermodel will make me feel better until I come, but I am a premature ejaculator. I know the president is a fucking crook, but some folks really like him.

I know we've come a long way, but I ain't black or trans. I know the system's broken, but I'm a simple man.

I can think of only simple solutions, and I'm not there yet.

I know that you didn't mean to do it, but you did it. You weaseled your mask through the forest, and all you got was scratches. Bleed. I don't give a fuck. I didn't lead you there.

I know you got diplomas and lots of other reasons you think you're better than me. Hell, your Moms would agree. But I'm into three dimensional people, personally. But maybe that's too much to ask of you; your eyes are tired from rolling.

I'm tired of political reflux. Keeps me up at night. Makes my brain tweak out on guilt prophecies. So, we'll keep it simple. Fuck yourself. Fuck me. Fuck climate change. I'm down with driving this hunk of bullshit right into fire.

2 Minutes. Go!

The wind came gently through the low, dry branches and the dogs were light and liquid. The water suggested swift currents and deep eddies, soft entreaties. Jack, tired and lopsided, spit into the water and smiled - the air smelled of fish like he knew it would. The dogs knew. The wind and the trees and the beckoning evening. It was all right, and it was within Jack - he breathed it and his heart beat with it; he could feel the blood throb on the old cork handle. He smiled again, spit once, and cast into the loamy froth that he had seen in dreams, now revealed as he knew it would be.

The line slipped through his fingers as Jack worked the ideas and riffles and logs right through his mind, unconscious. Jack was part of the river and the river knew it. The river, which took only what you were willing to give it, but gave so much back. Jack gave himself to the water, let it carry him, there in spirit only as he became silk, flowing night.

Smells on the wind. Smoke from a fire. Good smoke, clean and fresh - Jack felt the warmth of the stranger's fire and nodded his head, matted grey hair stuffed under a red, woman's hat. Spit in the water and smell of the good night, Jack. Smell and breathe and you are the river, Jack. See what the river can give you.

And hours passed in tepid lifetimes and fish were caught, released, killed and eaten. Jack turned into stories and legends and ways to fool yourself into thinking things used to be better than they were. Jack doesn't care, nor does the river. Drought or flood, the river adapts, and it will outlast us all. Even when it disappears. Because rivers cannot die. And neither can anglers and storytellers.

2 Minutes. Go!

You can’t see high enough to know any better. You don’t know enough to duck, even. You’ll stare right into the face of everything, and you’ll wish you hadn’t. Sometimes. You’ll wish you were one of those stumbling adults in the corner. They are so big and they are so loud and they are not scared like you are. At least, that’s what you think.

Adults are free. They have agency. No one tells them to go to bed and not eat cookies and hug people they don’t know very well.

You sit in the backyard and promise yourself that you will leave and never come back. You hide in attics, under cars, in the abandoned lot behind your house. You scream at the trees and set fires just for the sake of watching things burn.

You get hurt and you cover your face, and you can keep it covered for years. Sometimes it takes years to learn to be childlike in the sense that we romanticize it. Sometimes, you never learn how and you spend your whole life running. Or cowering.

Maybe they’re the same thing.

2 Minutes. Go!

You tap into it and the whole world turns brown, man. Like that color you get when you mix all your paints up. A thick color. A heavy color. That brown is like heartache. That brown is pulling you down. When you were a little kid and you didn’t understand? Straight, gloopy brown. You know that brown; you grew up choking on it.

Yeah, it’ll change you and it’ll spin your brain right out your skull. Set yourself free. See Jesus. Don’t look him in the eyes or you’ll turn to stone.

My eyes are dilated on brown, man. My pulse is racing to the sound of the brown. I ate the brown, rolled in it. The brown dripped into my eyes and healed me. I set up a tent down at the revival meeting. Brown is the body and blood of Christ. Brown is hope. Brown is killing you slowly but you don’t know it.

Some folks smoke brown. Some snort it. Some carve it into the insides of their thighs. Some find it in a church and some in a bank and some in sport and some in solitude. Don’t touch my brown, man. I don’t have enough to share. You’ll get too much light on it, light it up. You’ll break my brown and then I’ll kill you. That sound extreme to you? Sounds extreme to me, too. Almost God-like. 

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By the time they rang the brass bell, Jep Winters was dead, his wife was no longer a virgin, and Sam John was wearing the leather winner’s belt, standing in the center of the ring and laughing. The maidenhead had nothing to do with Sam. It was a direct result of a repressed homosexual boxer who never tried women and a spurned wife who had never tried liquor. The death was tangentially related. None of it mattered in the grand scheme of things except to the old woman. The old woman smiled.

It took a while to sort out. New champion, death, and hymen destruction – that’s a lot to pack into the VFW on a Saturday night. All the yardmen were there. Plus there was a carnival in town. The carnival was full of junkies and miracles. People loved the carnival. They loved to fight and fuck and die there just like anywhere else.

Old man Porter, the mayor, liked to dress up in women’s clothing, but no one knew it except for Father O’Leary.

Jep’s body was burned. What was left of it. His wife ended up birthing a bastard right around the beginning of Spring, but she told everyone that it was Jep’s last gift to her. Sam John retired after his championship fight. He lived out his days eating pureed vegetables and shitting himself, the title belt around his soft waist. No one boxed in town after that night. Everyone figured the devil was going to the fights, and, in some ways, they were right.

Father O’Leary preached about the sins of the flesh, while he kept the secrets of his congregation in the back pocket of his pants to tinker with when he got bored. His diversions were God-sanctioned after all.

The old woman returned to the trees and vanished.

No one was around to see it.

2 Minutes. Go!

High noon. Remember that shit? Settle your differences. Vent your spleen. Sure, it was stupid. But it was contained. How many times you read about a cowboy loser shooting as many people as he can for some imagined slight? I mean, ideally, we wouldn't settle bullshit with bullets, but what the fuck? No one gives a shit about your manifesto. No one cares about you aside from the other pale, twisted weirdos on 8Chan.

I wonder if you will ever realize what you really took. Love. Faith. Family. Security. All gone in a second because an asshole in a suit told you things you wanted to hear and life has been so unfair. Gotta be somebody to blame. Gotta be some kids worth killing for your frustration.

I didn't get my side of ranch. I'm gonna punch every waitress in this place.

And I'm so tired of this gun debate. If guns aren't the problem, lets have a gun free year and see what changes. And tell me again about knives in England. You know how many mass knife massacres there are? You ever tried to kill someone with a knife from thirty feet away?

I guess I'll just wait until it's my turn. Go down with my knife in my hand, saying, "yup, told you so you fucking idiots."

The new American Dream.