sometimes i wonder what goes on in this fucking city. sometimes i picture bundles of bills laid out on a collapsing old wooden table, lined with blood, bottles and oil. all while i lay here, my eyes welded to the ceiling, watching my tee shirts and underwear sway in the wind on the clothesline in my room. she walks closer to the window. i hear her coughing echoing through the concrete hallway. i jump up in bed, turn over, just to watch her walk by. i stop her and quickly make something up to ask her. she ends staying longer than i thought. she couldn't make out my outline through the screen on the window but i could see those peacock feathered eyes clearer than the sun on the wet concrete after the storm.
my mind stalled like a teenager driving a stick shift. she became bored with me and stepped back and away into her purple and orange mis-matched, beautiful pattern of a world. i hung off my top bunk frozen for a little while, staring out the window. stuck. then sporadically tossed back over to stare at the underside of the roof again. i lit a cigarette. it tasted like the San Diego entrance of the US/Mexico Border and i lapped it up like one of East Africa's sickly desert dogs scrounging for water. why do i get stuck staring and blowing smoke into Adonai's heavy, light blue eyes? i think myself in circles defecating largely meaningless shit on paper. i become an animal, scurrying nervously back and forth in the sweltering rear seats of an out-dated, mid-size four door automobile in the center of a giant parking lot in front of some American multi-national franchise superstore.
no matter.
the jazz keeps blaring next to my bed, while the television in the dining hall keeps screaming the scores of todays football matches. i still stare. i pick up a Time magazine off the wax infested desk and read an article about crimes, globalization, and gangsterisms. new piano chords come through the broken speakers like little fireworks bursting in front of envious stars. one day soon i will step out under california sunshine and dance on that classic kind of rainbow gasoline. i will stand in true freedom, turn my palms upward and it will all explode. it will come out of me as the confetti does in times square when that giant cheap disco ball drops and the drunks make all kinds of new lovers. like constant wind chimes and stardust i will roam the deserts.
still staring at the ceiling. i cried while she picked me apart on the cold hard floor in the hallway. i brought her back in the room and we climbed up to my bunk and laid there 'till the sun shrugged. we wrestled in slow motion until nine thirty. she kissed my forehead before i climbed out of bed. i found a beer and an apple and sat at my desk. i still stared. out the window. i had to open the beer with my teeth i had no opener. as i sat she asked me what i was feeling. i replied, "as wax does on the side of the candle as it descends." "why do you say shit like that?" she said. "i know, sorry",i countered back. "i have no idea how i feel, maybe a little sick. like being kicked in the teeth", i said. "sorry, im doing it again" it was silent, i didnt mind. i was pretty sure she had fallen asleep already, like a bio-chemical war victim on a hospital bed. her chest slightly pulsing up and down while her covered eyes twitched as she dreamed of what only i could wish to see. of trains en route to St.Petersburg and bicycles in India carrying massive bouquets of flowers, like moving graffiti on England's London Underground, throwing fashion models and teenagers back and forth in concrete and brick pipes. clouds blooming and trees collapsing.
im still staring. tapping my pen on my cheek. windows are my television. i know its her last night in town but she can sleep right now. i threw my white shirt over my head, grabbed my smokes, a newspaper, and the keys to black, French tank. i slammed the door behind me and flung my jacket over my shoulder. i sprinted down the innumberable amount of stairs in my brown brick, satellite dish encrusted, flat tower. skipping every other stair on the way. i jumped to the bottom. i jogged across the car park and watched my breath escape from my lungs. yanking open the driver side door violently, i begged the truck to start. as i sat in, i turned her over and heard the deep growl begin. i was off. forcing neon signs and soaking wet concrete past. im still staring. out the windshield now. moving my arms and legs in strange mechanical movements. staring straight forward. i didnt even know where i was going, i didnt care. either way it was far and fast, and thats all i wanted. its funny how the smallest, most usual thing can drive you up the wall. like a fly that keeps returning for moisture, pestering your eyes and mouth. or a splinter under fingernail. it just proves that trying to get away is useless. people are always telling me "youre to hard on yourself" or "your own thinking is gonna get you down". the problem is, i keep finding new truths in my thinking. its hard to stay away from things you know and feel are correct.
red light "FUCK!" i thought and screamed as i dropped 100,000 bricks on the brake pedal. i ended the squealing of hawks under my tyres in the center of the intersection. completely surrounded. thirty some odd headlights. all of them. staring. staring at me as i stare back. moments pass and horns begin to blare, as i slowly shift her into reverse and slide the truck backwards towards my place in line. i waited. still staring. staring at the aignal with my foot hovering over the accelerator like an impatient school boy waiting for the bell to ring. stomped on it and the truck leaped forward, careening through the city. as i turned up the main road on ramp, my phone rang. it was her, screaming at me to come home. she was crying my name as i threw the phone in the seat next to me.
i tore up the motorway as if i were on fire. a good old song came on the radio and everything went silent, except for the song. as i accelerated faster, i rolled my eyes back and covered them with my eyelids. i became suspended, and felt Adonai's breath on my body. my limbs sawyed as the trees do and my mind began to slowly blink like the blood coloured lights on the corners of skyscrapers do while guiding massive steel birds to the edge of the earth. in the hands of the God Of Machines, i fell. asleep and released as i careened into the concrete wall of the center divide. causing flowers and fireworks to bloom from the wreckage.
