Butt Gas

                                                             -I-

Sometimes snow streaks from a maddening sky....

Sometimes a maddening sky weaves streets of snow...

                                                                                     -1+1=2-  

 A crazy man...I exited my apartment...pushed by the bland hand of nothingness...nothing but the view of a whirling winter from a single room window...I wanted to touch the cold...I wanted falling snow to touch me...I needed to walk away my numbness...to restore my life like a colour photo retouched by memories...

A small table outside an out of business hamburger joint was empty. I sat there and faced the street...and talked to myself. I exhaled a jumble...a jangle of words that did not stay...that did not build sentences...only crazy random talk...Nothing cathartic...just moist human mouth steam billowing against the cold.

Then she appeared. I thought she was there...I thought she was real...I didn't see an apparition...Or did I?...a female vision in tattered white linen with a sunken shallow face atop a body of hard thinness...forlorn lips that got muted by life but were too sad to kiss...vulnerable, but not against the cold...oh, no...did I create her with my jangled, mangled mouth words...did I create a suffering ghost lady out of vowels and madness...?

"Love tore us apart!" She cried out, her right hand pointing to the sky, her eyes fixed on me. "We loved each other too much. Then he melted like a candle and died. I still hear his voice, see his face. I search inside a hopeless truth. He's gone."

I wanted to say sorry...loss is tough...I've known suffering, too...I hope I can help...but all I did was exhale crazy, jangled words...and she was gone...disappeared in between what I wanted to say...and what I couldn't...

I ambled back to my apartment. I opened a can of mixed beans, and ate them quickly with a plastic spoon. I lay under my covers and tried to sleep early for the night. With my knees pulled up near to my chest I erupted loud gas from my butt. I thought of her...the lady in linen...I could talk straight now...I wanted to say I was sorry I melted like wax...but I didn't die...I wanted to say I was sorry we both slipped into madness...I searching for streaks of snow... she searching for woven love that tore us apart.

 

Time after Time

It was three in the morning when I got a call from a friend:

 

"SC, I got mortality on my brain. I can't sleep. I do internet searches, and I can't sleep."

"What do you mean?" 

"I look for old friends, people I've known and I find they are dead...cancer...heart attacks...suicide...I don't know why sometimes. I feel bad. I feel bad. I wish I could go back in time. Say sorry for the things I've done. And say sorry for the things I didn't do. I know we get older. Some day it'll be us."

"Sure. Someday it'll be true," I added wearily.

"You know, once I heard a writer interviewed. He said you honour people like a fighter who's been beat down to the mat. You lift yourself off one knee and fight some more. That's how you honour their  memory, you struggle for life as much as you can."

"Sure, sounds right," I yawned.

"SC, you know what's real. The sound of the trumpet, like a dying man. He plays jazz against time..."

"Sounds wise...but I got to go to bed...work tomorrow." 

 

I hung up and slept under the dead of night, till the alarm clock rang. I lifted myself off one knee and made my bed...and thought of an old friend, my indifference gone...dancing like a dying fighter time after time...

Legs and Hearts

Above me turns a grieving moon,

I can't sleep

So I walk the night with memories:

Of a city of young men dreams,

Cars pass by

Early winter, 

I roll my shoulders 

Pull at my woollen collar,

Turn my hood above my ears,

I stop at a parking lot like a hundred days,

Empty, 

But for memories,

Of a city of young men dreams,

Seems a hundred years when--

We fought against our enemy lives.

With wooden sticks and curved blades

We rushed into a frozen made up game,

To hold onto a ball no one could control

We've all grown old--I assume

But in the end I know we disappear,

Rushing the goal--

before the night steals the evening light,

before the air gets too cold,

before legs and hearts grow too sore,

The ball races wide along the net...

Is it only me who cheers under a grieving moon?

Perhaps I've walked too far, 

Perhaps I think too much,

Recall too much of youth and the cold,

My legs and heart are sore

Time to go home...I'll walk the parking lot...disappear along a make believe

 

 

 

The Blows

I lay alone in bed. It's late, the night's grown old.

I can't settle down

It's the restless time between sleep and fear,

My woman left me

It's cold, the hotel window is open;

it wont close, wont quite touch the sill

The curtains carry with each breeze

A radiator steams, but barely keeps me warm

My women left me and I hear the street noise

Sounds hurry in the cold,

Men fight on the sidewalk below

I can't see, wont get out of bed

But I hear the blows

My woman left me,

I can afford more, but I searched this bad part of town

Found a heart broken inn, with long stairs and lonely blankets 

She said she can't take my moods,

My controlling ways,

She found another man,

I've come home wounded to this bad part of town,

I left for awhile, thought I'd never see the street again

Everyone's gone

But I should have known, women leave me, and the night always grows old,

The morning heals,

but the night always grows old,

And some windows never close, never in the cold

 

 

Stolen Car

I walk through a field around the edge of my town

Just beneath an autumn sun a sky settles down

White clouds shroud a golden soil

Every year I pray alone in the temple of fallen skies

...for stolen lives

People I've known...

like stolen ground

Cut short by the thief of time

Alone I ask to see them once again...

A silent sunset like a Raven's eye watches me

A pair of headlights along a country road passes by

Stolen car like stolen lives...I ask no more

A long walk takes me to my town

It's 1980... 

I see a passing headlight along the dark edge of time,

like a fallen prayer that's settled down

 

 

 

Waits

Every night I listen to the rain,

Sometimes it falls gently on my rooftop

Other times it presses hard against my window

I sleep easily to the sound of rain

like the rumble of a downtown train,

drops roll down in narrow streams

like waving dreams under umbrella trees

African elephants

Crying whales

Who awaits this reverie?

I sleep easily under the sound of rain,

and see drowning men as heart broke sailors on a downtown train,

and their forgotten women like wavy dreams...they take shelter from a crying shame

 

 

 

 

 

Thin Ice

I sit by a creekside and watch autumn leaves skate away,

sliding atop a Canadian stream

barren trees

as golden and yellow ships race aside rock and fallen branches

The sun is at my back-- casts a shadow over the encroaching ice

As a writer I need my solitude, a walk in a forest tires me quickly

I am as old as a memory

Time to move along, a stop along a creekside is short, the air is cold, 

I want more time alone; but a dampness breaks through my wool clothes

When I was I young, I would not take this rest at all--nor walk along this path

Then I was not a writer, I saw no beauty in solitude 

Thick as a Brick

Skating Away

Life is not the same,

I hear the change of aging music in solo winds

A walk down the path will take me to my writer's home 

There I will set a fire in a black stove,

and burn new words--not a verse from an old song