Eating Myself

The balding head

The broken nose

The trick ankle and

Love of crows

All so very ridiculous!

The numberless books

The pointless rhymes

The need to be needed

And thankless crimes.

Where should I go?

Trapped in a life

Thoughtless and cruel

Eating myself

Ego as gruel.

***

Early Morning Apocalypse

The horizon was set on fire by a tremendous fireball

ostensibly ending any possibility of life on earth as

he sat weeping in his car for the sorrow of it all,

waiting to be enveloped and utterly incinerated,

except it was the sun bursting through his car’s

windshield, blinding him on his morning commute.

***

The Joker on a Jacket

The Joker jacket was laughing at me,

gifted by a friend in a dream whose

meaning only Freud could guess at.

It was just so random and those are 

the types of dreams that provide the

best fodder for the probing analyst.

It was a gray zip-up type jacket with 

a collar and the original comic book 

Joker slanting across the front of it.

I was thrilled to get it, like I was ten 

again and arguing with my neighbor-

hood friend, “who is better, DC or...

Marvel?” I would choose Marvel but

there was no denying the draw of 

Batman and his nemesis, the Joker.  

Was it because he is “crazy” and I 

am a shrink?  A mind on the brink?

Hard to tell, but what do you think?  

***

“a land called Honalee”

It was the closest body of water to my childhood home at the southern edge of a small town in Indiana.  It could be seen from the highway that split the town in two if you were paying attention and didn’t blink, just north of the sewage treatment facility.  In retrospect, it was likely created from runoff from this facility, but to a kid it was a magical place we dubbed “Honalee” after the land of Puff the Magic Dragon.

And when I say “we” I mean myself and Ricky.  We lived two houses apart on the same road that constituted the southernmost border of Orleans, Indiana.  There were arguments about who saw it first and what it would be called.  There were always arguments between us which were mostly just attempts to shore up our insecurities or to try and assert some kind of dominance over the other.  Ricky won the naming war with “Honalee” and I had to admit I liked it.

The thing to do was create a seaworthy craft to explore the pond of Honalee even though it couldn’t have been more than twenty foot across and about thirty or forty foot long.  The idea came from finding a wooden pallet in the weeds that could serve as a raft.  The next step was to find an inner tube from a car or truck that we could inflate, the bigger the better.  When this was found and transported across the highway we lashed it to the bottom of the pallet with rope and found a long branch to navigate with, a la Huckleberry Finn.

I don’t remember who attempted to shove off first, but there was only room for one.  I am sure there was an argument about it.  I was short and skinny, Ricky less so by a good bit, so it was probably me who attempted the maiden voyage.  It was exceedingly wobbly and not a very practical craft.  I remember shoes and partial legs getting submerged from slips and missteps which, considering the source of the water, is pretty gross.  

We must have lost interest pretty soon thereafter because I do not remember any more adventures on Honalee after that.  And now that I think about it I seem to recall that Ricky’s Mom found out what was going on and explained the sewage connection, forbidding any further visits.  But for a few days there in my childhood it was something new, exciting, and full of possibilities.  For a brief moment we had created a magical place from the communal muck of our little town.

***

The Stowaway

He was a stowaway on an intergalactic freighter that had stalled just outside an arm of the Milky Way.  It was during the troubleshooting process that his hiding place was discovered and assumptions made about who had caused the problem.  He was sent out the airlock in an expired but functioning suit.  They weren’t barbarians after all.

And then the ship disappeared into the inner swirl of stars leaving him to float effortlessly in the void.  He did not know how long he had to live, but it hadn’t felt like he was really very much alive for quite some time now.  Who leaves what they know for what they don’t?  It had been a flight into the unknown, looking for something resembling hope.

He tried to orient himself towards the light of the stars swirling in numberless variations and put the blackness of space at his back.  He’d read about something like this once back on earth where people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge invariably faced the city lights and not the blackness of an impersonal ocean.  Ancient history, but pertinent nonetheless.

His heartbeat and breathing created a kind of rhythm that was calming.  It may have been an illusion, but the stars appeared to pulse in sync to this inner music.  For the first time in his life there was nothing to worry about because there was nothing to change.  He was just a part of the whole which required no effort, only acceptance.

And there was time enough to slip into timelessness.  Oxygen depletion would be slow and relatively painless if his body could adjust to it with a gradual lessening of consciousness.  He felt its pull and did not resist.  As he opened his mouth wide for one last yawn he saw the galaxy and a billion others rush in, like inhaling the fragrance from a field of wildflowers.

A Walk in the Park

“A walk in the park” 

means something is easy

and I guess it is

my 8 year old 

daughter holding 

my hand, arms swinging

we talk about 

things that 

make us laugh

and she gathers 

what is to be gathered

from trees

along the path

*pick-pluck-pick*

and places them

carefully in the

cargo pocket

of my pants

until that night

when she falls 

off to sleep

and I find the 

forgotten foragings

still there

like a half-remembered

promise to be

good and kind.

And Off I Ran

I feel like it has been one of my major accomplishments this past year to get Elias to run Cross Country (XC) in middle school.  It is not a sport that gives immediate rewards which is what most kids seem to look for these days in our increasingly consumer driven society.  “Delayed gratification” has gone from an essential skill to be learned by the developing child to being a dirty word avoided at all co$t.  

One of my biggest regrets from my teen years is that I waited so long to discover this sport.  It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I got my first taste of competitive long distance running, all the more frustrating when I learned that I had a knack for it.  When we finished our season on a golf course in Bloomington, Indiana at Semi-State I couldn’t help but feel I’d squandered so many years not knowing the freedom and joy that can come with a long run.

If I rewind that single season of XC I alight upon the moment when I learned it was something I could be good at.  It was early in the season and we were at an invitational meet in Loogootee, Indiana.  There were well over a hundred runners in my race and I was feeling pre-meet jitters with some nausea and shaky legs.  When the gun fired to start the race I felt like I was spinning in a clothes dryer with the jumble of bodies and the smell of trampled grass all around.  The only remaining memory I have of that course is running a corridor of grass between the road and a chainlink fence.

When I crossed the finish line there looked to be a lot of people in front of me being funneled through the chute.  After having my place, time, and number recorded I was released back out into the wild as it were and found myself wandering aimlessly amongst the chaos of such a large meet.  I was looking for familiar faces and at some point my best friend’s dad found me in the crowd.  He had a huge grin and clapped me on the back, “Haney!  Great job!  Man, you really ran well today.”  I couldn’t quite place his enthusiasm until he explained I’d placed 23^rd and three of our four best runners were in the top ten.  It was a dominant showing for our team and I had somehow contributed to it as the number five guy.

This was a big confidence booster for me moving forward and I consistently ran as the “number five guy” for the rest of the season (for those not familiar with XC, the team score is determined by adding the times of your first five runners to cross the finish line).  It did have its downside, however.  I spent the rest of the season at meets hearing the opposing team’s coach yelling at his runners out on the course “This is him!  This is their number five!  Catch him!  He better not beat you!”  The first few times this happened I found it disconcerting but I quickly learned to take it as a challenge and get motivation from it.  You will NOT catch me!  And off I ran.


***

One of Us

What if God was one of us,

an infinitely older man

seriously tired of our shit?

I certainly hope not,

but I would not blame Him

one.little.bit

***

Books & the Long Goodbye

From about 10 years old to 50 years old (my current age) I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time, money, and resources on collecting books.  I imagined there was a time in the future where I would settle down in an old house full of bookshelves or wallpaper the walls with them, stacked and steadied with gravity alone like the monk cells of Skellig Michael.

I think I reached the pinnacle of my literary hoarding some time in my mid-30’s at which time I went through all the different places they were stored and lovingly counted them, taking in the musty smells and reliving memories of where I was when I acquired them.  The number was somewhere in the 900’s and I felt like God near the end of His creation who “saw all that He had made, and it was very good.”

But geez-oh-Pete, getting married, forever moving out of my parent’s habitations (to include their warehouse), and being responsible to transport this library from place to place was daunting.  As a result the magic number of 1000 books was never reached and the library began to shrink.  Each subsequent move took its toll until the most recent one this summer.

The culling process had always been a painful and deeply melancholy experience for me,  but during this last move it was almost a relief.  What remained of my library was literally cut in half with hard decisions being made as to what had to go and what I felt was not yet ready to be released back into the world.  For at least a few weeks HalfPrice Books became a frequent stop for me with boxes and boxes of books flowing forth from the back of my car, the store speakers buzzing with “Aaron, we have your offer ready at the counter.”

It seems at some point my “children” transformed from paper and ink to flesh and blood. My kids have helped me realize there are more important things in life than accumulating material things to bolster my ego (a major motivating factor if I'm honest).  They’ve needed space to grow and flourish and the books have had to give way to that.

***