Post by Steve on Oct 22, 2005 6:03:56 GMT -5
CHAPTER 1:SECTION 1
i was a stupid kid. i was taught military time first and the conversion from that to standard time was difficult for me. i remember answering that a penny was the smallest U.S coin. i have matured into a stupid young man. I would attend a black tie party with a yellow lily in my tuxedo. this is my current stupidity. I crashed my car drunk, because i wondered if the delusions i had of victims of other accidents were in fact my own destiny. This seems to be worthy of more detail, but for now that is good enough. By the time you're finished reading this you will be calling this entire writing stupid, agreeing with my literary self-abuse. I know so because i am the author. I will write all mistakes, uninhibitted, censor-less as an obnoxious egotistical drunk that wants nothing more than to confess. Write all that will persuade you to give up on any benefit of doubt that you may have presently.
so there i was, running to catch the bus, barely saying good bye to my closest friend as he made his way back to his maroon toyota. Not even making a full attempt to see if he was waving fare well to me. Running with my guitar and a mountain pack of 70 odd pounds strapped to my back, mostly filled with books, with a wool sports coat and shorts sagging down above my socks expsong most of my briefs. I was running, it was the continuation of a habbit* throughout my life, a habit that I fight even while writing this. The urge to just cease typing, walk the stairs down to the garage and begin drinking to remain the philosophizing drunk court jester, is so great i am shivering. The thought of saying- Hey, we just got here, why don't we just chill and i'll catch the next bus- never once came to mind. I was out. I was ghost. I was figment of imagination slowly fading like the hazey grey of winter mornings at dawn.
We had to pass through the Lincoln tunnel, and the whole time i was worrying about whether or not i would recieve the change for the twenty i had given the bus driver. The whole drive from Jersey, with big bright eyed New York falling against the dimming evening, i thought about the other cities i would see, if they would be as tremendous of monsters as this one i was entering. Now that it is over, i must admit, the first of many, that there is no other that is quite like it. Through the tunnel i kept wondering what would happen if we were to get into an accident. If the bus were to be rolled onto its side, block other cars from getting through, and urinate gasoline over the lanes. I wondered if the walls and ceiling were too thick for our angel souls to pass through, if there would be a line to slide in between the cracking grout of the tiles. How i could prove that i in fact had a guitar with me, that i wasn't pulling the insurance company, to get reinbursed in case i did survive the chaos.
The skyline of the city was beautiful and i heard people gasping as they saw it that close for the first time. I drank the electricity that the whole place sent off. Cupful after cupful of frequency, swallowed, digested, its nutrients absorbed into my bloodstream. It was truely the city of heartache, of lost angelpeople wandering the streets, their wings tucked beneath coats; neatly groomed and trimmed for fashionable appearence, for their mortal indulgence and carnal desires. Thoughts of nails raking against backs with faces strapped in leather, gags and whips, the raunchy dense smell of drying secrement in the corners of the rooms; the bottoms of shoes; on the ribs of the blinds broken and bent trying to block the wandering light of the traffic below, in an abandoned warehouse by the river. Images of tyrant business women hunting with wet thighs, sweating lips, hair piled on the tops of their heads; prowling bar to bar in search of weak intoxicated man to devour beneath dawn yellow streetlights and high opiate moon barely shining through solar Times Square.
I was dry. I was paranoid of being searched, and crowding myself with people that didn't smoke left me bud-less. The last week i was in jersey i had fell victim to cunning foxwoman. Fell onto the mattress den and licked metaphorical past wounds with her. I don't even know now if i had spent that much time with her with hopes of starting something when i came back. She was chestnut hair flowing over shoulders of misplacement, confusion, lost and devoid of something that develops during childhood that is required to function correctly in later life, it felt good to be wrapped in something so scarred and torn as myself. But whether or not she, Michelle for the she i speak of has a name no matter if i want to admit it or not, was any comparison to lonely golden Faith sitting on backporch of secluded south jersey, walking rock driveway to sit with lemon hair tangling in myriad fingered shrub smoking a cigarette, i didn't know. I know presently that she was not, though now poor little heaven tear has grown into modern woman and no longer mine, and i am not hers but that of majestic exotic enchantress who marks me with her ancient lips and tongue. Such beautiful almond flesh that man me wants to crack, devour her meat and leave her a shell for me to crawl inside. To sleep through awful bleak days of birds' tweets, the rush whoosh of traffic, forget that there is an outside and just rest in between her; tripping myself to fall into her arms and cry little delirious dreams into her thighs and have her coo me softly into safe infant slumber. But this is what i feel now, all of my daydream wetdream visions of gorgeous Columbian girl sitting cross leg before me while wisps of my cigarette tangles in her hair, her back arched cracking a smile that swallows any stray thought not root deep inside desirable her, i can't tangent about her now. Hold on a little longer. grasp onto these threads that i dangle for you. ****
So i was smokeless, sober, standing lost in the belly of port authority with stupid smirk sleeping on my face, ready to board the greyhound heading west.
The bus was delayed for two hours due to overbooking, and the possibilty of having to sleep at the station began to circulate through the people in line. Fidgetting bodies constantly re-working their stance trying to make comfortable the cement wall against their backs. Lifting foot after foot to relieve the stress of standing for so long on the cheap tile floor.
Two hours later i boarded the bus with twenty-six dollars; a debit card with less than that available for use; the false pretext that i would have a large check from the retail job i had quit deposited into my account; my bag, guitar and small frame aloof me.
Visions in western Pennsylvania, induced by lack of food and sleep, i saw old Navajo chief hallucinations of mile high trees and endless ribbons of guardrails bending beyond the falling headlights of the bus. Behind the guardrails, with the highbeams blaring against the metal winding rail, a thick shadow hung on the base of the trees and on the ground around them creating a dense still pond. For miles , , , , i was certain that the forest was partially flooded. The roots submerged beneath water, diving deep into earth anchoring the massive bodies. Some high hill swamp with bathing trees and fish glimmering like gemstones under lunar light. * The driver stopped at a truck stop, i smoked a cigarette and bought a cup of coffee to keep me awake through the night. The morning shy sun displayed large kneecap hills, heavy wool fog slowly sliding down the legs of the trees-young women using mind to strip their clothing off and stand grey nude in misty morning sweating sweet secular dew trailing down each appendage falling silently to ground-and falling in piles at their tender feet as they stood in place as though they were awaiting further instructions of what to do. Crossing nothing wilderness, walking through empty wilderness mind of mine listening to strange animal noise thoughts, i stared out of the window.
The bus inched to a stop at St. Louis sometime during the night. i walked around the block to find a nice quiet place to smoke during our delay. I had met a hispanic guy with sweet cherub daughter and godess wife on their way to big end all civilality sin city to live, and he was walking with me scoping out the landscape. We sat in the parking lot of a small pizza place, some coporate franchise, and i packed some of the seedy green i picked up in Indianapolis into my first and most likely last bowl i had bought two years prior, when sweet dependent whisper girl was still at my side. About half way through small retro cat Tony crept up on us, trying to push a ten stack of hash. I was broke, only enough money for coffees and smokes to get me through the rest of the trip, and young hispanic wasn't having it from old black cat. Tony sat down, broke off five and slammed it into my piece, and told us that is the way they do it here. PP So we smoked. What was i gonna do, pass up the chance? Especially when at the time i thought it was free cause we were smoking my greens as well. Everything went from green to brown to black spilling over us in small clouds of ash that looked like a group of gnats flying round our faces. Friend and i get up, we had already ignored cat Tony (who had somehow invited a friend of his over and then there was four smoking) while toking, and now we were stoned and ready to neb the bus before it left us. Cutting the corner rock wall hustler's asking for my cheap running shoes that i had tied to my pack-Come on, let me get those kicks, let me get those reboks man- -They aren't even reboks man, they're cheap spalding running shoes i need for when i hitchhike man...can't get my shoes- -Let me get your piece son- -Fuck you man, you ain't getting my piece neither- It was about this time that his friend told him to stop trying to get my bowl, let me alone, and thats when we all heard -Where the FUCK can we get alcohol- the sound that would take the attention of hispanic and i. A group of young punks dressed in ripped jeans and leather jackets with inch spikes puncturing through the shoulders had crossed the street in front of the four of us. Before i could even suggest hassling them Tony was on them like an asshole would be on a broken hearted girl swimming in her mug of beer at a bar.
Kansas:
Hashish dreams falling like
wind stolen litter.
the field becomes ocean
a million golden infant fingers
waving and curling beneath distant moon
tips silver, a shadow of a silo
is only a memory of a Stone Harbor sail.
Day shatters with an arrogant sun
blue skies open fields
so much openess i suffocate
the heavens falling down upon me,
sinking further to earth beneath
dope-fiend shuffling god feet.
i miss my mother's womb.
Burden bus dove through state after state. Kansas, where hispanic and i went for a walk to some store to pick up diapers for his tiny princess, and walked through an Indian Sea sized cake of manure four inches thick. Wyoming morning, i had never felt so cold during summer than when i woke up at a stop to smoke a cigarette. Large hills blocked the morning sun and i was left in a shadow so dark i thought that there was a solar eclipse. Utah cliffs saw chieftan squatting on boulders bulging from the sides, surrounding him his tribe-around his head feathers fell over eyes with bow laid against thigh, pipe resting on ground, small wisps of smoke trailing off in his high cheek bones and flat lips, up under the feathers to his dark sunken eyes; glittering insane, onyx growing richer sadder wiser with every hallucination inhale from his pipe. Even now, three thirty in the morning, nearly two thousand miles away, i still have visions of my english heritage with open mouthed muskets in hand driving poor natives off end of the world cliffs, their innocent skulls splitting like walnuts against rocks protruding at the base of the plateau. Their dreams, pride of precious home only a creek of blood slithering serpent-like in between cactus, beading against dry desert. A furious anger boiled in my intestines and stomach, an uneasiness twitched in my eyes as i looked around the bus and saw no one else admiring the ancient land where there are more bones beneath cold highway than there are shells in the atlantic. On the outskirts of the plateaus a tiny cabin rested against the elbow of the road, nestled against the thick blue winter eyed river bend, left their minds as quickly as it did the driver's rearview. Not wondering the owners, the childhood difference between being raised here with big open wilderness and small congested metro-life.
Tiny boy running with his shoe laces tied, slung over his shoulders, as he chased little blonde along the banks of the river. Pebbles kicked up into piles behind him as he dug his feet deep with every lunge step. His pail of fish, fishing rod and tackle sprawled out on the ground under a small blooming tree, her hair flowing from the golden sun crown of her head laid out behind her in thin solar strand rays. Boy's pants are dirty and torn, his white shirt no whiter than the earth beneath his finger nails, and little girl swimming in old tattered cream dress-the shoulders of the garment pinned into the strap of her bra to secure it in place-and he catches her, or she lets him catch her, and they fall onto grass by the kitchen window. Boy's mother baking, the aroma of flour and fruit is suspended in the dry mid west air like clothing on washline.
Little boy dares not to kiss tiny girl, still young he doesn't want to know the sweet taste of lips, but he stares at the two thin strips on her face that resemble cut strawberries, smell like the juice of the apricot they shared an hour ago and just breathes in her breath as she lays motionless beneath him.
No one sits and looks beyond the windows, they can't see passed their own reflctions in the panes.
Last night across big sad america with her opiate history sweating through her mountains and growing heaven-wards from the wheat fields, met a kid with muscle relaxers. We popped a couple and started ranting about nothing in particular. I asked him the names of decent bud in this area, if pills were a hot market out here, and we began talking about the drug scene. Farmhand tells me about meth and how there wasn't much crack or other amphetamines because people over there like their meth and crystal meth. I asked about the H, if there were any places that are known for some good scales or opium and he answered that he doesn't touch the stuff, so he doesn't know. I find out that he likes valium and vicodin, so i tell him how i worked at a pharmacy for a year and a half so i am familar with most prescription drugs. He handed me the few pills he had left and asked me what they were. i looked at the tablets and already i knew they weren't muscle relaxers. The serial number and letter indicated that it was a sleeping pill. I told him the name, Seroquel, and the mg that i thought it was. Both disappointed we let the conversation go silent. His girl's parents owned a dairy farm and when i told him that i was lactose intolerant and had given up eating anything from animals, he seemed surprised. We kept this up for awhile but again it died, and i was happy because even if they were sleeping pills, they were starting to kick in, and i wanted to stare hazey eyed out into the mournful grimaces of the cascade mountains.
Passing a large dam on the Columbian river, somewhere in between oregon and washington, he fell asleep and i watched the lights of the damn reflect against the slate still water as dark as fresh brewed coffee, thinking that the lights were the eyes of fish coming to the surface. It was the first dam that i had seen, and it was marvelous. White concrete with lamp posts lining the sides, on the edge were green and blue lights that appeared to float directly above the water. I started to nod off and we stopped for a cigarette break that i was barely able to complete. I would drift into a doze and snap out of it with the smoke still in my mouth cause i forgot to inhale. The mountains to my left were so monstrous they looked like shadows through the windows of the bus as it slid along the curves of the road. I fell asleep in one of the shadows.
A small wooden structure adhered to the side of a mountain with a large metallic slide running from where the door would be down above the water. The mountain range stood high above it, viz a salad bowl disected through its radius, and the water spun into a river wandering in the opposite direction of the bus. In front of the lake was a railway, millipede freight chugging along exhaling charcoal grey smoke absorbed into the bleak grey morning-the whole scenery seemed to be washed away with murky dirty bath water, from the sky to the earth, we were all coated in this muck film of grey-making its way to the mousehole at the foot of the mountain. The engine was yellow, i remember, and the cargo cars were black; red; yellow and white flickering back and forth as the train sped onwards carrying crying archiac hobos cowering in the corners of shadows, tucking themselves away in safety from psychotic twat-breath youth, with shining blade like north star, trying to carve his initials into great white tree of earth.
I awoke to see this, my mouth dry and needing a cigarette, and wondered about the sound of tree trunks scraping against the metal. The loose bark grating against the gritty surface and the comsic 'splash' that must follow the horrible squealing of the slide. I wanted to run my fingers across the steel tracks after the train had passed, feel the fading electric current through the warmth rising off them. To feel the sawdust dirt the cargo cars wore and submerge my hand in the artic blue frigid water. We stopped at a truck spot and i got out and had my cigarette. Re-born ex-junky christian came on me with plague quickness and bummed one of my last cigarettes from me. I walked away before he began another useless conversation that would cause my eye to twitch. The air was crisp, painful to my lungs, empty of the toxins and pollutants emitted from the jersey factories. It was more than clean, to me it was like taking hits off an oxygen tank. My head began to ache from the altitude, cigarettes, diet and eating of pills, and i became dizzy as i headed to board the bus.
I sat with my face plastered against the window. Oil marks blurred the landscape while re-born began to reiderate his life history for me once again. Telling me how his wife was now a meth head and spreading for glass while his kid was in the next room. How he confronted a few of the dealers and asked them to please not sell to his wife-naive little religious ant, ads would not be run on television; radio; magazines if the predators would leave the prey alone-that he would give them different clients. But now, when i met him, he had enough, he fled florida. Left his little girl behind. Everyone is running when you are riding a greyhound. His little girl. His object in life that should be more important than anything else in life. I began to truely hate him. He couldn't suffer through moving out of the house, give up all posessions in order to keep his kid? Who cares about the drooling tramp sleeping in the bed with you on the ocassions that she is actually home? Disgusted i asked him to stop talking so i could get some sleep. Sanctuary Tacoma wasn't far now. Sanctuary Tacoma.
CHAPTER1: SECTION 2
The day was still grey, noon sun barely radiant, and slate coloured world made my pale skin seem even more lacking in pigment. Renea was standing there with wide arms welcoming me, exhaust fumes blowing past the two of us as looked one another over. Now, brooding over her, over the words that she slandered me with and belittled me to our friends; with forked tongue that turned rigid as cold iron-sharpened against drug induced delusions as coarse as brick and pathalogical lies wrought tight around her head digging deep into dirty murky soil blotted skin, slowing blood flow to the brain, she believes the lies spun with needle tongue that are growing until they become large enough to fold into her deceitful lungs and suffocate her-with that tongue she tore any sympathy and respect for her from me. But this is how i feel now, not at the moment i arrived.
The day was grey, to say this colour is understating the fact that it hung on the world like a thick wool suit, the only wind that blew was the 'swoosh' of buses arriving and departing. Renea was in company of a friend that i would only see a few times during my stay-one night i dropped by her house with a twenty sack expecting to smoke with a kid i met the day before, but wound up sitting packing bowl after bowl flipping through a collection of Klimt. her hands smooth cold dainty as she pried the pages apart with her finger nails, exchanging theories on why certain colours were chosen, expressions of faces; her own face bloomed into a bright oleander, large blissful grin with a pair of framed eyes hovering cautiously above it-and had arranged for me to hitch a ride with them back to Renea's house. The house never looked as it did the first time i saw it, as we pulled onto the block, into the drive, and stood for awhile looking around us-I can't believe you're in washington! you're here Ian!- -I can't believe it either- I couldn't say anything more than that, and even that was a struggle for me to say. My tongue was somewhere in the clouds, mind in the abrasive faces of the cascades, eyes blind from remaining open and tuned for nearly four days straight, that was the best i could have replied. The house was dupplex style, only in more of a ninety degree angle, with bay windows on both sides. Concrete squares made a path through the grass to her door, brick wall held a small garden of neglected herbs (sick, decrepit, so brittle it was amazing that just a sigh breeze didn't snap their necks), at the right corner of her side of the building there was a tall conifirous. We sat on the brick wall (may be two and a half feet high) and smoked a cigarette, most likely two. Across the street there was a fence, rusting and falling into great stalks of jaundice grass, enclosing a large area of land paved and littered with eighteen wheeler trailers. To the left, at the top of the small but steep hill, there was a florist and Pacific Avenue. We didn't talk much, or at least there wasn't anything that struck me to dedicate to memory, only stared at each other, being two years since we last saw one another. Cigarettes finished we moved inside.
Empty space greeted you immediately after opening the door. The parlor area was to the left, as was the dining and kitchen (which was where the two sides conjoined, a door leading into a laundry room then into the other side), bearing to the right as you walked in led you to the bathroom-left- a vacant room-right- the second right was renea's room, and at the end of the hallway was the last bedroom. I dropped my guitar and baggage against the wall in the unbearably empty square behind the parlor and made my way to the kitchen- kitchens have always been a quiet place for me. My previous two apartments have had either a recliner or sofa in them, and before, while still living with my parents, i would often sleep under the kitchen table and read sleep or write when i came home from school stoned-mostly because i saw that that was the only room with a table for me to write at. Behind the glass topped table were french doors, terrible aluminum blinds cracking bent seperated like deformed ribs covered them, made an awful clanking noise everytime the doors were opened. 'Clank', i opened the doors and walked into the backyard. It was larger than i expected, shaded by evergreens and raised to the height of the neighbor's roof. Along the perimeter were blackberry bushes and honeysuckles that grew dense around the legs of the trees. I was eating a dete, from the bagful that michelle gave me, and spat the seed over the edge of lawn, towards the next house over. Their dogs had begun to bark viciously when we were sitting smoking a cigarette, and i knew i would hate those curs more than i already did. There was the remains of a brick structure, possibly an old firepit barbeque, directly fifteen feet after walking out of the doors, right before the heavy masses of shrubs.
i was a stupid kid. i was taught military time first and the conversion from that to standard time was difficult for me. i remember answering that a penny was the smallest U.S coin. i have matured into a stupid young man. I would attend a black tie party with a yellow lily in my tuxedo. this is my current stupidity. I crashed my car drunk, because i wondered if the delusions i had of victims of other accidents were in fact my own destiny. This seems to be worthy of more detail, but for now that is good enough. By the time you're finished reading this you will be calling this entire writing stupid, agreeing with my literary self-abuse. I know so because i am the author. I will write all mistakes, uninhibitted, censor-less as an obnoxious egotistical drunk that wants nothing more than to confess. Write all that will persuade you to give up on any benefit of doubt that you may have presently.
so there i was, running to catch the bus, barely saying good bye to my closest friend as he made his way back to his maroon toyota. Not even making a full attempt to see if he was waving fare well to me. Running with my guitar and a mountain pack of 70 odd pounds strapped to my back, mostly filled with books, with a wool sports coat and shorts sagging down above my socks expsong most of my briefs. I was running, it was the continuation of a habbit* throughout my life, a habit that I fight even while writing this. The urge to just cease typing, walk the stairs down to the garage and begin drinking to remain the philosophizing drunk court jester, is so great i am shivering. The thought of saying- Hey, we just got here, why don't we just chill and i'll catch the next bus- never once came to mind. I was out. I was ghost. I was figment of imagination slowly fading like the hazey grey of winter mornings at dawn.
We had to pass through the Lincoln tunnel, and the whole time i was worrying about whether or not i would recieve the change for the twenty i had given the bus driver. The whole drive from Jersey, with big bright eyed New York falling against the dimming evening, i thought about the other cities i would see, if they would be as tremendous of monsters as this one i was entering. Now that it is over, i must admit, the first of many, that there is no other that is quite like it. Through the tunnel i kept wondering what would happen if we were to get into an accident. If the bus were to be rolled onto its side, block other cars from getting through, and urinate gasoline over the lanes. I wondered if the walls and ceiling were too thick for our angel souls to pass through, if there would be a line to slide in between the cracking grout of the tiles. How i could prove that i in fact had a guitar with me, that i wasn't pulling the insurance company, to get reinbursed in case i did survive the chaos.
The skyline of the city was beautiful and i heard people gasping as they saw it that close for the first time. I drank the electricity that the whole place sent off. Cupful after cupful of frequency, swallowed, digested, its nutrients absorbed into my bloodstream. It was truely the city of heartache, of lost angelpeople wandering the streets, their wings tucked beneath coats; neatly groomed and trimmed for fashionable appearence, for their mortal indulgence and carnal desires. Thoughts of nails raking against backs with faces strapped in leather, gags and whips, the raunchy dense smell of drying secrement in the corners of the rooms; the bottoms of shoes; on the ribs of the blinds broken and bent trying to block the wandering light of the traffic below, in an abandoned warehouse by the river. Images of tyrant business women hunting with wet thighs, sweating lips, hair piled on the tops of their heads; prowling bar to bar in search of weak intoxicated man to devour beneath dawn yellow streetlights and high opiate moon barely shining through solar Times Square.
I was dry. I was paranoid of being searched, and crowding myself with people that didn't smoke left me bud-less. The last week i was in jersey i had fell victim to cunning foxwoman. Fell onto the mattress den and licked metaphorical past wounds with her. I don't even know now if i had spent that much time with her with hopes of starting something when i came back. She was chestnut hair flowing over shoulders of misplacement, confusion, lost and devoid of something that develops during childhood that is required to function correctly in later life, it felt good to be wrapped in something so scarred and torn as myself. But whether or not she, Michelle for the she i speak of has a name no matter if i want to admit it or not, was any comparison to lonely golden Faith sitting on backporch of secluded south jersey, walking rock driveway to sit with lemon hair tangling in myriad fingered shrub smoking a cigarette, i didn't know. I know presently that she was not, though now poor little heaven tear has grown into modern woman and no longer mine, and i am not hers but that of majestic exotic enchantress who marks me with her ancient lips and tongue. Such beautiful almond flesh that man me wants to crack, devour her meat and leave her a shell for me to crawl inside. To sleep through awful bleak days of birds' tweets, the rush whoosh of traffic, forget that there is an outside and just rest in between her; tripping myself to fall into her arms and cry little delirious dreams into her thighs and have her coo me softly into safe infant slumber. But this is what i feel now, all of my daydream wetdream visions of gorgeous Columbian girl sitting cross leg before me while wisps of my cigarette tangles in her hair, her back arched cracking a smile that swallows any stray thought not root deep inside desirable her, i can't tangent about her now. Hold on a little longer. grasp onto these threads that i dangle for you. ****
So i was smokeless, sober, standing lost in the belly of port authority with stupid smirk sleeping on my face, ready to board the greyhound heading west.
The bus was delayed for two hours due to overbooking, and the possibilty of having to sleep at the station began to circulate through the people in line. Fidgetting bodies constantly re-working their stance trying to make comfortable the cement wall against their backs. Lifting foot after foot to relieve the stress of standing for so long on the cheap tile floor.
Two hours later i boarded the bus with twenty-six dollars; a debit card with less than that available for use; the false pretext that i would have a large check from the retail job i had quit deposited into my account; my bag, guitar and small frame aloof me.
Visions in western Pennsylvania, induced by lack of food and sleep, i saw old Navajo chief hallucinations of mile high trees and endless ribbons of guardrails bending beyond the falling headlights of the bus. Behind the guardrails, with the highbeams blaring against the metal winding rail, a thick shadow hung on the base of the trees and on the ground around them creating a dense still pond. For miles , , , , i was certain that the forest was partially flooded. The roots submerged beneath water, diving deep into earth anchoring the massive bodies. Some high hill swamp with bathing trees and fish glimmering like gemstones under lunar light. * The driver stopped at a truck stop, i smoked a cigarette and bought a cup of coffee to keep me awake through the night. The morning shy sun displayed large kneecap hills, heavy wool fog slowly sliding down the legs of the trees-young women using mind to strip their clothing off and stand grey nude in misty morning sweating sweet secular dew trailing down each appendage falling silently to ground-and falling in piles at their tender feet as they stood in place as though they were awaiting further instructions of what to do. Crossing nothing wilderness, walking through empty wilderness mind of mine listening to strange animal noise thoughts, i stared out of the window.
The bus inched to a stop at St. Louis sometime during the night. i walked around the block to find a nice quiet place to smoke during our delay. I had met a hispanic guy with sweet cherub daughter and godess wife on their way to big end all civilality sin city to live, and he was walking with me scoping out the landscape. We sat in the parking lot of a small pizza place, some coporate franchise, and i packed some of the seedy green i picked up in Indianapolis into my first and most likely last bowl i had bought two years prior, when sweet dependent whisper girl was still at my side. About half way through small retro cat Tony crept up on us, trying to push a ten stack of hash. I was broke, only enough money for coffees and smokes to get me through the rest of the trip, and young hispanic wasn't having it from old black cat. Tony sat down, broke off five and slammed it into my piece, and told us that is the way they do it here. PP So we smoked. What was i gonna do, pass up the chance? Especially when at the time i thought it was free cause we were smoking my greens as well. Everything went from green to brown to black spilling over us in small clouds of ash that looked like a group of gnats flying round our faces. Friend and i get up, we had already ignored cat Tony (who had somehow invited a friend of his over and then there was four smoking) while toking, and now we were stoned and ready to neb the bus before it left us. Cutting the corner rock wall hustler's asking for my cheap running shoes that i had tied to my pack-Come on, let me get those kicks, let me get those reboks man- -They aren't even reboks man, they're cheap spalding running shoes i need for when i hitchhike man...can't get my shoes- -Let me get your piece son- -Fuck you man, you ain't getting my piece neither- It was about this time that his friend told him to stop trying to get my bowl, let me alone, and thats when we all heard -Where the FUCK can we get alcohol- the sound that would take the attention of hispanic and i. A group of young punks dressed in ripped jeans and leather jackets with inch spikes puncturing through the shoulders had crossed the street in front of the four of us. Before i could even suggest hassling them Tony was on them like an asshole would be on a broken hearted girl swimming in her mug of beer at a bar.
Kansas:
Hashish dreams falling like
wind stolen litter.
the field becomes ocean
a million golden infant fingers
waving and curling beneath distant moon
tips silver, a shadow of a silo
is only a memory of a Stone Harbor sail.
Day shatters with an arrogant sun
blue skies open fields
so much openess i suffocate
the heavens falling down upon me,
sinking further to earth beneath
dope-fiend shuffling god feet.
i miss my mother's womb.
Burden bus dove through state after state. Kansas, where hispanic and i went for a walk to some store to pick up diapers for his tiny princess, and walked through an Indian Sea sized cake of manure four inches thick. Wyoming morning, i had never felt so cold during summer than when i woke up at a stop to smoke a cigarette. Large hills blocked the morning sun and i was left in a shadow so dark i thought that there was a solar eclipse. Utah cliffs saw chieftan squatting on boulders bulging from the sides, surrounding him his tribe-around his head feathers fell over eyes with bow laid against thigh, pipe resting on ground, small wisps of smoke trailing off in his high cheek bones and flat lips, up under the feathers to his dark sunken eyes; glittering insane, onyx growing richer sadder wiser with every hallucination inhale from his pipe. Even now, three thirty in the morning, nearly two thousand miles away, i still have visions of my english heritage with open mouthed muskets in hand driving poor natives off end of the world cliffs, their innocent skulls splitting like walnuts against rocks protruding at the base of the plateau. Their dreams, pride of precious home only a creek of blood slithering serpent-like in between cactus, beading against dry desert. A furious anger boiled in my intestines and stomach, an uneasiness twitched in my eyes as i looked around the bus and saw no one else admiring the ancient land where there are more bones beneath cold highway than there are shells in the atlantic. On the outskirts of the plateaus a tiny cabin rested against the elbow of the road, nestled against the thick blue winter eyed river bend, left their minds as quickly as it did the driver's rearview. Not wondering the owners, the childhood difference between being raised here with big open wilderness and small congested metro-life.
Tiny boy running with his shoe laces tied, slung over his shoulders, as he chased little blonde along the banks of the river. Pebbles kicked up into piles behind him as he dug his feet deep with every lunge step. His pail of fish, fishing rod and tackle sprawled out on the ground under a small blooming tree, her hair flowing from the golden sun crown of her head laid out behind her in thin solar strand rays. Boy's pants are dirty and torn, his white shirt no whiter than the earth beneath his finger nails, and little girl swimming in old tattered cream dress-the shoulders of the garment pinned into the strap of her bra to secure it in place-and he catches her, or she lets him catch her, and they fall onto grass by the kitchen window. Boy's mother baking, the aroma of flour and fruit is suspended in the dry mid west air like clothing on washline.
Little boy dares not to kiss tiny girl, still young he doesn't want to know the sweet taste of lips, but he stares at the two thin strips on her face that resemble cut strawberries, smell like the juice of the apricot they shared an hour ago and just breathes in her breath as she lays motionless beneath him.
No one sits and looks beyond the windows, they can't see passed their own reflctions in the panes.
Last night across big sad america with her opiate history sweating through her mountains and growing heaven-wards from the wheat fields, met a kid with muscle relaxers. We popped a couple and started ranting about nothing in particular. I asked him the names of decent bud in this area, if pills were a hot market out here, and we began talking about the drug scene. Farmhand tells me about meth and how there wasn't much crack or other amphetamines because people over there like their meth and crystal meth. I asked about the H, if there were any places that are known for some good scales or opium and he answered that he doesn't touch the stuff, so he doesn't know. I find out that he likes valium and vicodin, so i tell him how i worked at a pharmacy for a year and a half so i am familar with most prescription drugs. He handed me the few pills he had left and asked me what they were. i looked at the tablets and already i knew they weren't muscle relaxers. The serial number and letter indicated that it was a sleeping pill. I told him the name, Seroquel, and the mg that i thought it was. Both disappointed we let the conversation go silent. His girl's parents owned a dairy farm and when i told him that i was lactose intolerant and had given up eating anything from animals, he seemed surprised. We kept this up for awhile but again it died, and i was happy because even if they were sleeping pills, they were starting to kick in, and i wanted to stare hazey eyed out into the mournful grimaces of the cascade mountains.
Passing a large dam on the Columbian river, somewhere in between oregon and washington, he fell asleep and i watched the lights of the damn reflect against the slate still water as dark as fresh brewed coffee, thinking that the lights were the eyes of fish coming to the surface. It was the first dam that i had seen, and it was marvelous. White concrete with lamp posts lining the sides, on the edge were green and blue lights that appeared to float directly above the water. I started to nod off and we stopped for a cigarette break that i was barely able to complete. I would drift into a doze and snap out of it with the smoke still in my mouth cause i forgot to inhale. The mountains to my left were so monstrous they looked like shadows through the windows of the bus as it slid along the curves of the road. I fell asleep in one of the shadows.
A small wooden structure adhered to the side of a mountain with a large metallic slide running from where the door would be down above the water. The mountain range stood high above it, viz a salad bowl disected through its radius, and the water spun into a river wandering in the opposite direction of the bus. In front of the lake was a railway, millipede freight chugging along exhaling charcoal grey smoke absorbed into the bleak grey morning-the whole scenery seemed to be washed away with murky dirty bath water, from the sky to the earth, we were all coated in this muck film of grey-making its way to the mousehole at the foot of the mountain. The engine was yellow, i remember, and the cargo cars were black; red; yellow and white flickering back and forth as the train sped onwards carrying crying archiac hobos cowering in the corners of shadows, tucking themselves away in safety from psychotic twat-breath youth, with shining blade like north star, trying to carve his initials into great white tree of earth.
I awoke to see this, my mouth dry and needing a cigarette, and wondered about the sound of tree trunks scraping against the metal. The loose bark grating against the gritty surface and the comsic 'splash' that must follow the horrible squealing of the slide. I wanted to run my fingers across the steel tracks after the train had passed, feel the fading electric current through the warmth rising off them. To feel the sawdust dirt the cargo cars wore and submerge my hand in the artic blue frigid water. We stopped at a truck spot and i got out and had my cigarette. Re-born ex-junky christian came on me with plague quickness and bummed one of my last cigarettes from me. I walked away before he began another useless conversation that would cause my eye to twitch. The air was crisp, painful to my lungs, empty of the toxins and pollutants emitted from the jersey factories. It was more than clean, to me it was like taking hits off an oxygen tank. My head began to ache from the altitude, cigarettes, diet and eating of pills, and i became dizzy as i headed to board the bus.
I sat with my face plastered against the window. Oil marks blurred the landscape while re-born began to reiderate his life history for me once again. Telling me how his wife was now a meth head and spreading for glass while his kid was in the next room. How he confronted a few of the dealers and asked them to please not sell to his wife-naive little religious ant, ads would not be run on television; radio; magazines if the predators would leave the prey alone-that he would give them different clients. But now, when i met him, he had enough, he fled florida. Left his little girl behind. Everyone is running when you are riding a greyhound. His little girl. His object in life that should be more important than anything else in life. I began to truely hate him. He couldn't suffer through moving out of the house, give up all posessions in order to keep his kid? Who cares about the drooling tramp sleeping in the bed with you on the ocassions that she is actually home? Disgusted i asked him to stop talking so i could get some sleep. Sanctuary Tacoma wasn't far now. Sanctuary Tacoma.
CHAPTER1: SECTION 2
The day was still grey, noon sun barely radiant, and slate coloured world made my pale skin seem even more lacking in pigment. Renea was standing there with wide arms welcoming me, exhaust fumes blowing past the two of us as looked one another over. Now, brooding over her, over the words that she slandered me with and belittled me to our friends; with forked tongue that turned rigid as cold iron-sharpened against drug induced delusions as coarse as brick and pathalogical lies wrought tight around her head digging deep into dirty murky soil blotted skin, slowing blood flow to the brain, she believes the lies spun with needle tongue that are growing until they become large enough to fold into her deceitful lungs and suffocate her-with that tongue she tore any sympathy and respect for her from me. But this is how i feel now, not at the moment i arrived.
The day was grey, to say this colour is understating the fact that it hung on the world like a thick wool suit, the only wind that blew was the 'swoosh' of buses arriving and departing. Renea was in company of a friend that i would only see a few times during my stay-one night i dropped by her house with a twenty sack expecting to smoke with a kid i met the day before, but wound up sitting packing bowl after bowl flipping through a collection of Klimt. her hands smooth cold dainty as she pried the pages apart with her finger nails, exchanging theories on why certain colours were chosen, expressions of faces; her own face bloomed into a bright oleander, large blissful grin with a pair of framed eyes hovering cautiously above it-and had arranged for me to hitch a ride with them back to Renea's house. The house never looked as it did the first time i saw it, as we pulled onto the block, into the drive, and stood for awhile looking around us-I can't believe you're in washington! you're here Ian!- -I can't believe it either- I couldn't say anything more than that, and even that was a struggle for me to say. My tongue was somewhere in the clouds, mind in the abrasive faces of the cascades, eyes blind from remaining open and tuned for nearly four days straight, that was the best i could have replied. The house was dupplex style, only in more of a ninety degree angle, with bay windows on both sides. Concrete squares made a path through the grass to her door, brick wall held a small garden of neglected herbs (sick, decrepit, so brittle it was amazing that just a sigh breeze didn't snap their necks), at the right corner of her side of the building there was a tall conifirous. We sat on the brick wall (may be two and a half feet high) and smoked a cigarette, most likely two. Across the street there was a fence, rusting and falling into great stalks of jaundice grass, enclosing a large area of land paved and littered with eighteen wheeler trailers. To the left, at the top of the small but steep hill, there was a florist and Pacific Avenue. We didn't talk much, or at least there wasn't anything that struck me to dedicate to memory, only stared at each other, being two years since we last saw one another. Cigarettes finished we moved inside.
Empty space greeted you immediately after opening the door. The parlor area was to the left, as was the dining and kitchen (which was where the two sides conjoined, a door leading into a laundry room then into the other side), bearing to the right as you walked in led you to the bathroom-left- a vacant room-right- the second right was renea's room, and at the end of the hallway was the last bedroom. I dropped my guitar and baggage against the wall in the unbearably empty square behind the parlor and made my way to the kitchen- kitchens have always been a quiet place for me. My previous two apartments have had either a recliner or sofa in them, and before, while still living with my parents, i would often sleep under the kitchen table and read sleep or write when i came home from school stoned-mostly because i saw that that was the only room with a table for me to write at. Behind the glass topped table were french doors, terrible aluminum blinds cracking bent seperated like deformed ribs covered them, made an awful clanking noise everytime the doors were opened. 'Clank', i opened the doors and walked into the backyard. It was larger than i expected, shaded by evergreens and raised to the height of the neighbor's roof. Along the perimeter were blackberry bushes and honeysuckles that grew dense around the legs of the trees. I was eating a dete, from the bagful that michelle gave me, and spat the seed over the edge of lawn, towards the next house over. Their dogs had begun to bark viciously when we were sitting smoking a cigarette, and i knew i would hate those curs more than i already did. There was the remains of a brick structure, possibly an old firepit barbeque, directly fifteen feet after walking out of the doors, right before the heavy masses of shrubs.