Post by Steve on Oct 10, 2008 19:05:00 GMT -5
The monstrous stone building had recently become my own, the kid who was renting with me left the area after one of our neighbors brandished a gun during an argument he had walked through (the front of the house was a turf constantly fought over), and so the apartment became mine. It wasn't a nice building by any means. The ceiling in the kitchen was falling because of an old leak in the shower or toilet and the bars on the windows made everyone feel like a prisoner. I had long ago given up on opening the shades for sun. There were a few steps missing on the stairs to the second floor and the mice dashed in and out of the gap without fear of humans. It was the servants' quarters that I lived in; there was a door behind the refrigerator that led to the main house where an old Polish woman lived. She didn't like us playing music and I didn't care for her sobbing stories of her pony in Poland.
The back half of the kitchen had a Victorian style sofa and a computer on a coffee table. The only appliance that worked was the fridge. The stove had a gas leak. Derik plugged wires in and out of the computer then into his multi-track recorder. I arranged the microphone and the seating so that Liz was furthest from the mic.
"Okay. So do you know which songs you're going to do?" He was moving knobs and switches on his device. I was placing a flame to my smoking device and nodding to him
(add more...too short, too quick of a transition)HAPPENINGS[bottle after bottle derik and i slipped and found notes that people had skipped intentionally. Liz sat quietly at first until she realized that it was basically one song we recorded, we just put intermissions on each track in between songs so derik would remember to splice. hoopnhollerin fun, Liz cuts in bathroom- we're both zipping. keep recording a little he's tired. the following paragraph]
The night lightened with the anticipation of day and Derik began unplugging and packing up his gadgets pleased with a three hour song he could download and mix later on. We walked him to his car and watched as he U-turned then slid down the slope of Haledon.
It wasn't quite dawn, there were a couple hours left to a grayness that was the sickly night sky, we figured to get high and watch the sun come up. Neither of us had anything better to do. It always rose above the steeple a cross the street, a huge tangerine offered to God from church goers. It painted the front windows an awful orange and cream ice-pop color that was fitting for the children to walk beneath lined up for school.
We were baked jabbering about weird family attractions of what started as influential persons as Lord Byron and was now focused on the likes of Lewis, the old piano player. I found half a beer and downed it greedily. The orange disc was scaling the church as Liz opened the door submerging us in a citrus fruit shade sea. The screen door creaked when she pried it from the frame and snapped shut with a muffled thump when she let go. I lit the bowl, thought, nothing in particular mostly space and time and how people are like phone conversations. At times its clear and their voice resounds through the earpiece and those other incidences where there's so much static you can only make out the scale of notes the person is speaking. I didn't have a telephone; I stopped paying the company months ago. It was only a matter of time before the electric would be off as well. I sighed out the smoke as I followed behind her into the morning.
I'd followed her anywhere.
Chapter 9
The Sportsman's door was swinging shut behind me as I looked over at my usual liquor store. The same shabby cube that old heads remember going to when they used to have a Friday night peepshow. That was back when things were literally a nickel and a dime in those stores. Back when movie theaters were referred to as the cinemas or films. Back when music was sung on the same stages as great plays and operas. Nothing changed about it. Sunrise, sunset, the building survived for so long it became a mountain.
I had to go to the sports pub where the games are turned up far too loud and peanuts are thrown like confetti because my liquor store was closed. The smell of poorly grilled beef filled the air and hung on my clothes. There were a total of 14 televisions, all state of the technology squishible screened and Polberty enhanced sound that was pumped through 8 subwoofers scattered under the bar and in corners; 7 speakers in corners and I only assumed the restrooms, to piss me off first thing in the morning. The other liquor store was closed.
I began my walk down the upside of Pompton road with a bottle of comfort, charcoal and a pad. The plan was to sketch landscapes and illustrations for a children's book and poetry collection I had suddenly stopped working on. I had recently written a poem that was published in one of those magazines that thrive on the desperate writers that might make a name for themselves soon and if they don't, then the same magazine bashes them. It was one of those writings that open a gate or door of some kind that can't be shut. That poem led to the children's book that only needed illustrations then could be sent off to be rejected.
The plan was also to remain drunk so I didn't dwell on the rejection letter I had received that morning. Apparently my haikus weren't traditionally modern enough for them. They said that my poem was too wide a range, though genuinely interesting as a haiku. They were looking for more of metaphors than poems.
14 televisions on
rejection letter
it felt right to be something
numerous writings started
never completed
pretend to be productive
that i could, at least.
I hadn't a spot in mind. In fact everything except sketching was on my mind. Liz was starting to look sick. Not a turning yellow or cold traits but an exhausted gaunt weakness that affected even her movements. Her facial expressions had shrunk to smirks for smiles and a solid slate for anything else. Everything else was still Liz so I drank a bit and sat.
We hadn't had sex for almost 10 days.
Frank wasn't at the liquor store. He seemed sluggish closing up but that wasn't any different from the way Frank was. Slow, drunk, meticulous. Frank. I felt my face get warm as I thought back to the Sportsman. The Sportsman with its sharks and penguins, lions and tigers; aerial assault weapons and acerbic pollution; they charged me thirty percent more than what the old shack charges. I did the math and I knew Frank never gave anyone a discount. I drank more and flipped through the pages.
My pants were soaked from the freshly watered lawn. The pedestrian overpass was fifty feet or so away and there was heavy traffic. It seemed nearly polar opposite of Monet's painting. Instead of water there was a busy road; no flowers just green bushes; where his seemed to melt seamlessly with a lawn this one was anchored into two massive boulders. His had absolute solitude. This one was infested.
I rolled a cigarette over the face of a boy lying in bed. I lit the cigarette and remembered the story.
A young boy, of about your age, named Daniel hated his eye glasses. It started out normal enough, but then it went into the father telling the son that there were bugs on his face because he didn't wear his glasses that day in school. The father explains how the bugs will eat his face alive if he didn't wash them off and wear his glasses the next day. Liz made me continue one to send away; she made them sound like children. A mother hoping that she had done a magnificent, she wouldn't want to hear just great, job raising her child and that he's been accepted to some Ivy League cock school. Just in my case it’s a poem or story that is sent away to community college and returned to live at home.
I lit another cigarette I had been rolling while staring at the bridge, watching tuna girls swallow guppy guys, then the river altogether grow dry.
I take another drink, one sip closer to Monet.
Chapter 10
Liz watched him dress and felt his toothpaste coated lips kiss her on the forehead. She tried not to move too much, she didn't want him to know she had been awake. The door closed and she heard the keys topple the tumbler inside the lock then the squeak of the fence as Stan walked onto the street. She sat up and walked about the bedroom, which was on the second floor, then opened the back door to let some light through. The screen door was painted green with twisting ivy that had grown over the door as it spread across the house and Liz stared at the tic tac sized ants that were marching along the vines. A bird in the back yard chirped a few notes then flew into the trees on the property line. Through the ivy, the rose garden Stan had planted was standing high in reds and whites. There was a yellow one with red trim in the center that he grew just for her.
The other side of the yard was dirty, a shed barely erect held all the garden tools Stan used, emerging every time with some sort of insect sting. A shabby aluminum fence separated the properties. Over the fence was a family that had never been taught to appreciate the things they have in their life. Their yard was littered in trash, bagged and non-bagged, and the kids would often piss through the fence onto the side of the shed.
That side of the yard wasn't used. Stan and she had their picnics behind the roses, under the trees. Since then the rose garden hasn't been pruned, the grass where they used to lay hasn't been cut; the smell of urine had manipulated the scent of roses. She turned away and began the ascent of the stairs, hoping to find some food, somewhere.
It was getting late in the afternoon, the sun was high but looking exhausted and there were clouds that seemed like 50`s hoodlums waiting for night. A pot on the stove heating soup bubbled and popped as Liz spoke into her cellular phone. "I know, I know, it's the best thing but how?" She stood in front of the pot dripping the soup into a half-clean bowl. "Right, but I have the campaign to do tomorrow." Liz opened the silverware drawer and found a bottle filled with Adderall. The phone conversation took a backseat as she looked from soup to pills a few times before swallowing a handful of orange plastic that looked like toy submarine missiles. She opened the front door to Stan’s apartment; she left the bowl on the kitchen table.
She closed her phone and sat on the concrete wall in the front yard, waiting for a kick start before walking home. She rifled through the pockets in her jeans and pulled a torn piece of paper from her left butt cheek pocket. Jenton 821 4532. "Shit." She stared up at the sky and remembered the piece of meat that handed her that paper. A 5`6 brown haired kid that had Those Eyes. His name was Jenton but he preferred to be called Rohan, so long as it wasn't a big deal to do so.
Liz thought more about that day, how it didn't happen intentionally; her nose bumping against his groin. How it wasn't anything more than a coincidence that his address appeared on both the republican and democratic campaign route. It wasn't as though she had started the argument Stan and she had the night before she was to knock on Rohan's door. It was the whole universe's influence that muffled her judgment. Not the amount of stuff that was going up her nose in order to feel connected to Stan, or the amount he did to be able to see her on a regular basis. It was only a mishap that wouldn't happen again. She folded the paper and placed it in her pocket.
She dialed a number. "Hello, thank you for calling Greenwood Auto Insurance, this is Alyssa, how may help you?" "Yes I’d like to report a stolen car." "Okay ma`m, do you have the license plate number?" Liz asked for a moment and bent down and sat up again holding a yellow scratched license plate. "R T U 6 7." She threw the plate inside on the couch and scribbled a note for Stan:
Stan—
car gone; called Ins. Liz.
The back half of the kitchen had a Victorian style sofa and a computer on a coffee table. The only appliance that worked was the fridge. The stove had a gas leak. Derik plugged wires in and out of the computer then into his multi-track recorder. I arranged the microphone and the seating so that Liz was furthest from the mic.
"Okay. So do you know which songs you're going to do?" He was moving knobs and switches on his device. I was placing a flame to my smoking device and nodding to him
(add more...too short, too quick of a transition)HAPPENINGS[bottle after bottle derik and i slipped and found notes that people had skipped intentionally. Liz sat quietly at first until she realized that it was basically one song we recorded, we just put intermissions on each track in between songs so derik would remember to splice. hoopnhollerin fun, Liz cuts in bathroom- we're both zipping. keep recording a little he's tired. the following paragraph]
The night lightened with the anticipation of day and Derik began unplugging and packing up his gadgets pleased with a three hour song he could download and mix later on. We walked him to his car and watched as he U-turned then slid down the slope of Haledon.
It wasn't quite dawn, there were a couple hours left to a grayness that was the sickly night sky, we figured to get high and watch the sun come up. Neither of us had anything better to do. It always rose above the steeple a cross the street, a huge tangerine offered to God from church goers. It painted the front windows an awful orange and cream ice-pop color that was fitting for the children to walk beneath lined up for school.
We were baked jabbering about weird family attractions of what started as influential persons as Lord Byron and was now focused on the likes of Lewis, the old piano player. I found half a beer and downed it greedily. The orange disc was scaling the church as Liz opened the door submerging us in a citrus fruit shade sea. The screen door creaked when she pried it from the frame and snapped shut with a muffled thump when she let go. I lit the bowl, thought, nothing in particular mostly space and time and how people are like phone conversations. At times its clear and their voice resounds through the earpiece and those other incidences where there's so much static you can only make out the scale of notes the person is speaking. I didn't have a telephone; I stopped paying the company months ago. It was only a matter of time before the electric would be off as well. I sighed out the smoke as I followed behind her into the morning.
I'd followed her anywhere.
Chapter 9
The Sportsman's door was swinging shut behind me as I looked over at my usual liquor store. The same shabby cube that old heads remember going to when they used to have a Friday night peepshow. That was back when things were literally a nickel and a dime in those stores. Back when movie theaters were referred to as the cinemas or films. Back when music was sung on the same stages as great plays and operas. Nothing changed about it. Sunrise, sunset, the building survived for so long it became a mountain.
I had to go to the sports pub where the games are turned up far too loud and peanuts are thrown like confetti because my liquor store was closed. The smell of poorly grilled beef filled the air and hung on my clothes. There were a total of 14 televisions, all state of the technology squishible screened and Polberty enhanced sound that was pumped through 8 subwoofers scattered under the bar and in corners; 7 speakers in corners and I only assumed the restrooms, to piss me off first thing in the morning. The other liquor store was closed.
I began my walk down the upside of Pompton road with a bottle of comfort, charcoal and a pad. The plan was to sketch landscapes and illustrations for a children's book and poetry collection I had suddenly stopped working on. I had recently written a poem that was published in one of those magazines that thrive on the desperate writers that might make a name for themselves soon and if they don't, then the same magazine bashes them. It was one of those writings that open a gate or door of some kind that can't be shut. That poem led to the children's book that only needed illustrations then could be sent off to be rejected.
The plan was also to remain drunk so I didn't dwell on the rejection letter I had received that morning. Apparently my haikus weren't traditionally modern enough for them. They said that my poem was too wide a range, though genuinely interesting as a haiku. They were looking for more of metaphors than poems.
14 televisions on
rejection letter
it felt right to be something
numerous writings started
never completed
pretend to be productive
that i could, at least.
I hadn't a spot in mind. In fact everything except sketching was on my mind. Liz was starting to look sick. Not a turning yellow or cold traits but an exhausted gaunt weakness that affected even her movements. Her facial expressions had shrunk to smirks for smiles and a solid slate for anything else. Everything else was still Liz so I drank a bit and sat.
We hadn't had sex for almost 10 days.
Frank wasn't at the liquor store. He seemed sluggish closing up but that wasn't any different from the way Frank was. Slow, drunk, meticulous. Frank. I felt my face get warm as I thought back to the Sportsman. The Sportsman with its sharks and penguins, lions and tigers; aerial assault weapons and acerbic pollution; they charged me thirty percent more than what the old shack charges. I did the math and I knew Frank never gave anyone a discount. I drank more and flipped through the pages.
My pants were soaked from the freshly watered lawn. The pedestrian overpass was fifty feet or so away and there was heavy traffic. It seemed nearly polar opposite of Monet's painting. Instead of water there was a busy road; no flowers just green bushes; where his seemed to melt seamlessly with a lawn this one was anchored into two massive boulders. His had absolute solitude. This one was infested.
I rolled a cigarette over the face of a boy lying in bed. I lit the cigarette and remembered the story.
A young boy, of about your age, named Daniel hated his eye glasses. It started out normal enough, but then it went into the father telling the son that there were bugs on his face because he didn't wear his glasses that day in school. The father explains how the bugs will eat his face alive if he didn't wash them off and wear his glasses the next day. Liz made me continue one to send away; she made them sound like children. A mother hoping that she had done a magnificent, she wouldn't want to hear just great, job raising her child and that he's been accepted to some Ivy League cock school. Just in my case it’s a poem or story that is sent away to community college and returned to live at home.
I lit another cigarette I had been rolling while staring at the bridge, watching tuna girls swallow guppy guys, then the river altogether grow dry.
I take another drink, one sip closer to Monet.
Chapter 10
Liz watched him dress and felt his toothpaste coated lips kiss her on the forehead. She tried not to move too much, she didn't want him to know she had been awake. The door closed and she heard the keys topple the tumbler inside the lock then the squeak of the fence as Stan walked onto the street. She sat up and walked about the bedroom, which was on the second floor, then opened the back door to let some light through. The screen door was painted green with twisting ivy that had grown over the door as it spread across the house and Liz stared at the tic tac sized ants that were marching along the vines. A bird in the back yard chirped a few notes then flew into the trees on the property line. Through the ivy, the rose garden Stan had planted was standing high in reds and whites. There was a yellow one with red trim in the center that he grew just for her.
The other side of the yard was dirty, a shed barely erect held all the garden tools Stan used, emerging every time with some sort of insect sting. A shabby aluminum fence separated the properties. Over the fence was a family that had never been taught to appreciate the things they have in their life. Their yard was littered in trash, bagged and non-bagged, and the kids would often piss through the fence onto the side of the shed.
That side of the yard wasn't used. Stan and she had their picnics behind the roses, under the trees. Since then the rose garden hasn't been pruned, the grass where they used to lay hasn't been cut; the smell of urine had manipulated the scent of roses. She turned away and began the ascent of the stairs, hoping to find some food, somewhere.
It was getting late in the afternoon, the sun was high but looking exhausted and there were clouds that seemed like 50`s hoodlums waiting for night. A pot on the stove heating soup bubbled and popped as Liz spoke into her cellular phone. "I know, I know, it's the best thing but how?" She stood in front of the pot dripping the soup into a half-clean bowl. "Right, but I have the campaign to do tomorrow." Liz opened the silverware drawer and found a bottle filled with Adderall. The phone conversation took a backseat as she looked from soup to pills a few times before swallowing a handful of orange plastic that looked like toy submarine missiles. She opened the front door to Stan’s apartment; she left the bowl on the kitchen table.
She closed her phone and sat on the concrete wall in the front yard, waiting for a kick start before walking home. She rifled through the pockets in her jeans and pulled a torn piece of paper from her left butt cheek pocket. Jenton 821 4532. "Shit." She stared up at the sky and remembered the piece of meat that handed her that paper. A 5`6 brown haired kid that had Those Eyes. His name was Jenton but he preferred to be called Rohan, so long as it wasn't a big deal to do so.
Liz thought more about that day, how it didn't happen intentionally; her nose bumping against his groin. How it wasn't anything more than a coincidence that his address appeared on both the republican and democratic campaign route. It wasn't as though she had started the argument Stan and she had the night before she was to knock on Rohan's door. It was the whole universe's influence that muffled her judgment. Not the amount of stuff that was going up her nose in order to feel connected to Stan, or the amount he did to be able to see her on a regular basis. It was only a mishap that wouldn't happen again. She folded the paper and placed it in her pocket.
She dialed a number. "Hello, thank you for calling Greenwood Auto Insurance, this is Alyssa, how may help you?" "Yes I’d like to report a stolen car." "Okay ma`m, do you have the license plate number?" Liz asked for a moment and bent down and sat up again holding a yellow scratched license plate. "R T U 6 7." She threw the plate inside on the couch and scribbled a note for Stan:
Stan—
car gone; called Ins. Liz.