Dead Winter
The view outside is shameful, to say the least.
Snow is sparse,
Thinning hair struggles over bald spots.
Is this really winter in the Rocky Mountains?
Is this really what we’ve been reduced to,
A fucking January that has no substance?
Has the sharp knife of the wind dulled the winter’s blade?
What happened to the days, when my spit
Would turn to ice,
Before it even hit the ground?
When you couldn’t leave the house
Without your arsenal of clothing.
Show me that “dead of winter,”
Not, a dead winter.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Thursday, December 23, 2010
A Mask
A Mask
It watches the world through
A mask, covers its face
Entirely. Either too much, or
Enough of life will kill one.
The blank monitor, It gazes
At a motionless glass,
Framed behind Its steel
Lifeless, faces it has acquired.
Means nothing tonight.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He winces, with
Shivers covering the spine, producing
The audible pops of a pain;
Seldom known as grief.
As It shifts Its gaze upon him.
She tries to call from within
The air is thin and the lungs she has known,
Burning, as a forest is wont to do,
But she knows life will end.
She allowed It
Inside, within, without,
She had no choice.
It assumed a role;
The parent consuming the child.
She can’t restrain.
The cries die within the being.
Of nothing, nothing is created.
The flicker dies within the eyes
As It stares back toward the screen.
It watches the world through
A mask, covers its face
Entirely. Either too much, or
Enough of life will kill one.
The blank monitor, It gazes
At a motionless glass,
Framed behind Its steel
Lifeless, faces it has acquired.
Means nothing tonight.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He winces, with
Shivers covering the spine, producing
The audible pops of a pain;
Seldom known as grief.
As It shifts Its gaze upon him.
She tries to call from within
The air is thin and the lungs she has known,
Burning, as a forest is wont to do,
But she knows life will end.
She allowed It
Inside, within, without,
She had no choice.
It assumed a role;
The parent consuming the child.
She can’t restrain.
The cries die within the being.
Of nothing, nothing is created.
The flicker dies within the eyes
As It stares back toward the screen.
Girl With the Pink Hair
Girl With the Pink Hair
I can see you sitting
In sinister cloth. You think
Nothing you do is acceptable
You.
Avoidance is key
Lackadaisical care of what others
Think. Of you the world
In sinister cloth. You think
Nothing you do is acceptable
You.
Avoidance is key
Lackadaisical care of what others
Think. Of you the world
Is
Devoid. Right?
I know you,
I’ve seen you.
Rebellious girl
In a plainclothes
World?
No, you’re just another
Fighting for something
Unreal.
The stalled fight strolls
On. And you, well,
You have
Become
stuck.
Devoid. Right?
I know you,
I’ve seen you.
Rebellious girl
In a plainclothes
World?
No, you’re just another
Fighting for something
Unreal.
The stalled fight strolls
On. And you, well,
You have
Become
stuck.
Irony?
Irony?
I still think about you from time to time. I know it’s been years since I’ve seen you, but you were one of the best friends I’ve ever had. It may seem weird, but the memory that always comes to mind is that day when you and I were walking around downtown talking. Not talking about anything in particular, just speech. Both of us bundled up against that wind. You know? It would come from the canyon and give you the sensation that your face had just been bitten by a black bear when it hit you. You remember that day right?
I remember how the smoke would be ripped from your mouth as we walked over the bridge and I would have to squint my eyes against the acrid stench as it hit my face. I didn’t really notice it all that much because our conversation was so lively. I remember that jacket that you used to wear, you know, the ratty one with all of the holes in it. You used to say, “it doesn’t matter how many holes I have in this fucking jacket, the only thing that matters is that your extremities are covered,” and then held up your gloved hands and gestured at the wool beanie on your head, “that’s all that it really takes for you to keep warm my man. Hell, if it weren’t for the wind I would wear a t-shirt.” Then you pitched your cigarette over the bridge where it landed on the frozen river smoldering. Then you turned back and we kept chatting. The topic of the day seemed to be how much you hated those who ran our city. Mainly the ones in the police force, but that was because you didn’t really know much about the ones behind the scenes. Besides, the ones behind the scenes weren’t the ones that kept giving you MIP’s. About once a month, it seemed, because you couldn’t seem to keep out of trouble when you would drink; and you were always drinking. So was I though.
I remember that, on that day in particular, you were complaining to me about your last MIP that you had received and how the only reason that you received it was because that was the only thing that any law enforcement officer was looking for. “When you get a national award for giving out a record number of MIP’s, the police force decides not to focus on anything else,” you said as you lit a new cigarette, “that’s the reason why our state’s DUIs and other crimes are so high. Hell, that’s why they still haven’t caught that homeless guy that raped that one girl; because he was probably over the drinking age.” I nodded my head vigorously and threw in my own comments on how inefficient our law enforcement was. I may have agreed a little too aggressively with what you said, but I was pissed about the recent MIP that I had received too. It was about this time that the Persian man stopped us and asked if we’d like to buy some jewelry.
“It would be a good for your girlfriends, eh boys,” he was a very common face in town and you could always tell him apart from others by his sunglasses, no matter how dark it was, and his greasy hair, “you know your girlfriends would really like some earrings!” I didn’t even look his way I just passed and kept giving you my opinion about the police force, it took me about half a block to realize that you had stopped and had purchased a bracelet. You were shaking his hand and thanking him when I got back to you.
“Who knows, I may have a girlfriend someday that may like this,” was your reply to my raised-eyebrow inquiry, “and at the very least, it might be some good karma down the way,” and then you slipped the jewelry into your jacket pocket and walked off with a half-grin and the cigarette protruding from your lips.
It’s been about three years since you were hit and killed by that drunk driver and you know what? They hired on about twenty new officers to the police force. Here’s the catch, though, they hired on the new officers to try and stop the underage drinking “problem” that our town has. In fact, they call it the “underage task force,” and they talk about them in the newspaper as if they’re some old group of Western gunslingers. Want to know something even funnier? The drinking and driving problem is just as bad as it’s ever been.
I still think about you from time to time. I know it’s been years since I’ve seen you, but you were one of the best friends I’ve ever had. It may seem weird, but the memory that always comes to mind is that day when you and I were walking around downtown talking. Not talking about anything in particular, just speech. Both of us bundled up against that wind. You know? It would come from the canyon and give you the sensation that your face had just been bitten by a black bear when it hit you. You remember that day right?
I remember how the smoke would be ripped from your mouth as we walked over the bridge and I would have to squint my eyes against the acrid stench as it hit my face. I didn’t really notice it all that much because our conversation was so lively. I remember that jacket that you used to wear, you know, the ratty one with all of the holes in it. You used to say, “it doesn’t matter how many holes I have in this fucking jacket, the only thing that matters is that your extremities are covered,” and then held up your gloved hands and gestured at the wool beanie on your head, “that’s all that it really takes for you to keep warm my man. Hell, if it weren’t for the wind I would wear a t-shirt.” Then you pitched your cigarette over the bridge where it landed on the frozen river smoldering. Then you turned back and we kept chatting. The topic of the day seemed to be how much you hated those who ran our city. Mainly the ones in the police force, but that was because you didn’t really know much about the ones behind the scenes. Besides, the ones behind the scenes weren’t the ones that kept giving you MIP’s. About once a month, it seemed, because you couldn’t seem to keep out of trouble when you would drink; and you were always drinking. So was I though.
I remember that, on that day in particular, you were complaining to me about your last MIP that you had received and how the only reason that you received it was because that was the only thing that any law enforcement officer was looking for. “When you get a national award for giving out a record number of MIP’s, the police force decides not to focus on anything else,” you said as you lit a new cigarette, “that’s the reason why our state’s DUIs and other crimes are so high. Hell, that’s why they still haven’t caught that homeless guy that raped that one girl; because he was probably over the drinking age.” I nodded my head vigorously and threw in my own comments on how inefficient our law enforcement was. I may have agreed a little too aggressively with what you said, but I was pissed about the recent MIP that I had received too. It was about this time that the Persian man stopped us and asked if we’d like to buy some jewelry.
“It would be a good for your girlfriends, eh boys,” he was a very common face in town and you could always tell him apart from others by his sunglasses, no matter how dark it was, and his greasy hair, “you know your girlfriends would really like some earrings!” I didn’t even look his way I just passed and kept giving you my opinion about the police force, it took me about half a block to realize that you had stopped and had purchased a bracelet. You were shaking his hand and thanking him when I got back to you.
“Who knows, I may have a girlfriend someday that may like this,” was your reply to my raised-eyebrow inquiry, “and at the very least, it might be some good karma down the way,” and then you slipped the jewelry into your jacket pocket and walked off with a half-grin and the cigarette protruding from your lips.
It’s been about three years since you were hit and killed by that drunk driver and you know what? They hired on about twenty new officers to the police force. Here’s the catch, though, they hired on the new officers to try and stop the underage drinking “problem” that our town has. In fact, they call it the “underage task force,” and they talk about them in the newspaper as if they’re some old group of Western gunslingers. Want to know something even funnier? The drinking and driving problem is just as bad as it’s ever been.
Monday, December 20, 2010
The Walk
The Walk
He woke with a start and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he looked around. What in the…? He couldn’t figure out how he had gotten here. The last he could remember he had been walking through the streets of downtown Missoula, Montana, trudging through the fallen leaves. He would like to say that it had been a plethora of beautiful colors, the leaves that is, but it wasn’t. It was one of those falls where the frost had come far too early and the leaves had all frozen to the trees. They were brown. Just brown. No different shades of brown either. Brown.
But now he was surrounded by snow in the middle of, well, somewhere. He stood up shivering and brushed the snow that clung to his overcoat. He scrambled through his memories but he couldn’t seem to remember why he could possibly be here. There was no sign that another human being had even been here. So he began to walk.
His boots were thin and holes had been worn through each one on the outside from years of use, causing each step to send a dull throb through his quickly numbing feet, ice chunks forming on the sweat that was being wicked from his exposed Smartwool socks.
He couldn’t help but glance around in awe as a couple of startled grouse burst forth from a bit of sagebrush. He found some deer tracks and decided to follow them, maybe they would cross a trail.
As the day wore on he started getting more and more sleepy and it had become difficult for him to stay on his feet. He began to tell himself riddles in order to keep his mind sharp but quickly discovered that he couldn’t remember any. In fact, he was finding it difficult to remember his own name, it rhymes with Scott? Steve… Sam… and his career. Had he even had a career? His mind was slipping, especially for one at such a young (?) age. The deer tracks had led him into a small copse of trees that had shielded him from the breeze and they were quickly bringing him back out the other side.
He pushed his way through a low-hanging aspen tree and what he saw almost made him drop to his knees with a cry of relief: another human. He, at least his stature looked like a male, was wearing snowshoes and slowly working his way up a ridge with the help of his ski-poles. He was wearing a bright red jacket with black windbreaker pants. His hat was a bright orange with red stripes rounding it in concentric circles from the bottom to the top. His breath streamed out through his black facemask in small puffs of mist.
He opened his mouth to shout to the stranger but no words came out; just a choked sigh of exhaustion. He cleared his throat and bellowed in the loudest shout that he could muster; Hey! Hey, please, help!
The hiker turned and stared at him for a time. He watched as this man came staggering out of the woods toward him, his face shrouded behind the mask and goggles that he wore. After about five minutes had passed he turned and kept hiking. He didn’t look back again.
The walker ran as fast as he could through the deep snow, but it made travel nearly impossible. Snow ran up the legs of his pants and packed deep into his boots, slowly increasing his risk of freezing. No, please, please, please… he had trouble shouting now because his breathing was so heavy, please, come back for me. He lost his balance and plunged into the snow. As he tried to get up he found that his arms wouldn’t support his weight and his vision slowly blurred as he lay back down in the snow.
Rick Johnson has been dead for ten years. He died of hypothermia after he became lost in a flash snowstorm while he was out looking for wood. He wakes up every morning disoriented and begins to walk. Every afternoon he sees the man with the snowshoes and chases him. Rick never catches the man with the snowshoes.
He woke with a start and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he looked around. What in the…? He couldn’t figure out how he had gotten here. The last he could remember he had been walking through the streets of downtown Missoula, Montana, trudging through the fallen leaves. He would like to say that it had been a plethora of beautiful colors, the leaves that is, but it wasn’t. It was one of those falls where the frost had come far too early and the leaves had all frozen to the trees. They were brown. Just brown. No different shades of brown either. Brown.
But now he was surrounded by snow in the middle of, well, somewhere. He stood up shivering and brushed the snow that clung to his overcoat. He scrambled through his memories but he couldn’t seem to remember why he could possibly be here. There was no sign that another human being had even been here. So he began to walk.
His boots were thin and holes had been worn through each one on the outside from years of use, causing each step to send a dull throb through his quickly numbing feet, ice chunks forming on the sweat that was being wicked from his exposed Smartwool socks.
He couldn’t help but glance around in awe as a couple of startled grouse burst forth from a bit of sagebrush. He found some deer tracks and decided to follow them, maybe they would cross a trail.
As the day wore on he started getting more and more sleepy and it had become difficult for him to stay on his feet. He began to tell himself riddles in order to keep his mind sharp but quickly discovered that he couldn’t remember any. In fact, he was finding it difficult to remember his own name, it rhymes with Scott? Steve… Sam… and his career. Had he even had a career? His mind was slipping, especially for one at such a young (?) age. The deer tracks had led him into a small copse of trees that had shielded him from the breeze and they were quickly bringing him back out the other side.
He pushed his way through a low-hanging aspen tree and what he saw almost made him drop to his knees with a cry of relief: another human. He, at least his stature looked like a male, was wearing snowshoes and slowly working his way up a ridge with the help of his ski-poles. He was wearing a bright red jacket with black windbreaker pants. His hat was a bright orange with red stripes rounding it in concentric circles from the bottom to the top. His breath streamed out through his black facemask in small puffs of mist.
He opened his mouth to shout to the stranger but no words came out; just a choked sigh of exhaustion. He cleared his throat and bellowed in the loudest shout that he could muster; Hey! Hey, please, help!
The hiker turned and stared at him for a time. He watched as this man came staggering out of the woods toward him, his face shrouded behind the mask and goggles that he wore. After about five minutes had passed he turned and kept hiking. He didn’t look back again.
The walker ran as fast as he could through the deep snow, but it made travel nearly impossible. Snow ran up the legs of his pants and packed deep into his boots, slowly increasing his risk of freezing. No, please, please, please… he had trouble shouting now because his breathing was so heavy, please, come back for me. He lost his balance and plunged into the snow. As he tried to get up he found that his arms wouldn’t support his weight and his vision slowly blurred as he lay back down in the snow.
Rick Johnson has been dead for ten years. He died of hypothermia after he became lost in a flash snowstorm while he was out looking for wood. He wakes up every morning disoriented and begins to walk. Every afternoon he sees the man with the snowshoes and chases him. Rick never catches the man with the snowshoes.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Thursday at the Park
Thursday at the Park
The last few notes of the guitar ring in our ears as we stand up and begin to stumble down the hill to mesh with all the people, each of us headed across the concrete pad to get to the stairs that lead up to the bridge. As we walk I can see two toe-headed youngsters running hand in hand together, still doing the occasional dance move. In the corner of the grassy area, you know, the one beneath the bridge, there stand the couple that is there every Thursday. They dance in jerky motions. Their eyes shimmer with the nostalgia of Woodstock and the years in between. The good Woodstock, the one with Jimi and Bob.
Colby, Ben and I have finally made it to the stairs and we proceed to shuffle our way up with short, jaunty steps. We each have a liter bottle of Coca-Cola that has been filled half-way with Black Velvet. I would like to think that Ben is the most sober because he’s going to be the one who drives us to wherever it is that he’s got in mind. Colby and I speak to each other in garish voices, we throw out obscenities and don’t care who may hear them.
As we get into Ben’s car I can’t help but notice that the half gallon of whiskey lay on it’s side and that it’s more than half gone. It’s almost a sick pride that overcomes one in a situation such as this. The thought that the three of us, but really just Colby and I, had managed to kill a quarter of a gallon of whiskey seemed like a feat, especially since we weren’t even ready to end our drinking for the night.
We arrived at the house, luckily only three blocks away, a few minutes later and we were greeted by the roommate of the house that nobody really liked. He greeted us in warmly enough and proceeded to seat each of us and pull out some beers.
So, uh, where’s Jeremy?
Ben sat and discussed the whereabouts of our friend while Colby and I wandered off and checked the place out. We took turns passing the bottle back and forth as we looked at the different posters on the wall and stared at the fish in their tank.
An hour later we all sat around the empty handle of whiskey and an assortment of empty beers and roared conversation at each other. Jeremy had never arrived home, even though he was at the same outdoor concert as us. I quickly found that nobody in the house smoked cigarettes and decided that I would go pick myself up a pack from the gas station that was only a few blocks away.
As I staggered out of the front door I noticed that the world around me had developed a distinct waver and that each of the lights carried a trail behind it as it passed by my vision. There seemed to be far too many lights.
It’s only a few blocks.
The next morning I woke up four hours late for work laying naked on my floor in a puddle of urine. My bed sheets, the bed is raised off of the ground so it requires a ladder to get into it, were scattered about the floor and I couldn’t find my cell phone or my wallet.
A smashed pack of cigarettes lay where I normally kept my wallet.
The last few notes of the guitar ring in our ears as we stand up and begin to stumble down the hill to mesh with all the people, each of us headed across the concrete pad to get to the stairs that lead up to the bridge. As we walk I can see two toe-headed youngsters running hand in hand together, still doing the occasional dance move. In the corner of the grassy area, you know, the one beneath the bridge, there stand the couple that is there every Thursday. They dance in jerky motions. Their eyes shimmer with the nostalgia of Woodstock and the years in between. The good Woodstock, the one with Jimi and Bob.
Colby, Ben and I have finally made it to the stairs and we proceed to shuffle our way up with short, jaunty steps. We each have a liter bottle of Coca-Cola that has been filled half-way with Black Velvet. I would like to think that Ben is the most sober because he’s going to be the one who drives us to wherever it is that he’s got in mind. Colby and I speak to each other in garish voices, we throw out obscenities and don’t care who may hear them.
As we get into Ben’s car I can’t help but notice that the half gallon of whiskey lay on it’s side and that it’s more than half gone. It’s almost a sick pride that overcomes one in a situation such as this. The thought that the three of us, but really just Colby and I, had managed to kill a quarter of a gallon of whiskey seemed like a feat, especially since we weren’t even ready to end our drinking for the night.
We arrived at the house, luckily only three blocks away, a few minutes later and we were greeted by the roommate of the house that nobody really liked. He greeted us in warmly enough and proceeded to seat each of us and pull out some beers.
So, uh, where’s Jeremy?
Ben sat and discussed the whereabouts of our friend while Colby and I wandered off and checked the place out. We took turns passing the bottle back and forth as we looked at the different posters on the wall and stared at the fish in their tank.
An hour later we all sat around the empty handle of whiskey and an assortment of empty beers and roared conversation at each other. Jeremy had never arrived home, even though he was at the same outdoor concert as us. I quickly found that nobody in the house smoked cigarettes and decided that I would go pick myself up a pack from the gas station that was only a few blocks away.
As I staggered out of the front door I noticed that the world around me had developed a distinct waver and that each of the lights carried a trail behind it as it passed by my vision. There seemed to be far too many lights.
It’s only a few blocks.
The next morning I woke up four hours late for work laying naked on my floor in a puddle of urine. My bed sheets, the bed is raised off of the ground so it requires a ladder to get into it, were scattered about the floor and I couldn’t find my cell phone or my wallet.
A smashed pack of cigarettes lay where I normally kept my wallet.
Crows
Crows
We sit and watch as the crow circles over the high desert landscape and the grass sways in circles around the sagebrush below him, prodded along by the wind. We watch as the crow dips and loops, each move he makes is different yet each move he makes keeps him suspended over the same spot.
There’s something poetic about a lone crow circling, you say, I can’t put my finger on it. I suppose it’s just the eerie connotation to death that they carry with them. You shiver. Too much like death.
More crows have come in and begun to circle. One lands on the juniper tree and begins to cough in a loud, low voice.
Yeah, I say, I can see what you mean. Let’s go get some food.
Okay.
That night on the local news we watched as they said that the body of a young woman had been found mutilated in the desert. The investigators suspected a possibility of foul play.
And still the crows circle.
We sit and watch as the crow circles over the high desert landscape and the grass sways in circles around the sagebrush below him, prodded along by the wind. We watch as the crow dips and loops, each move he makes is different yet each move he makes keeps him suspended over the same spot.
There’s something poetic about a lone crow circling, you say, I can’t put my finger on it. I suppose it’s just the eerie connotation to death that they carry with them. You shiver. Too much like death.
More crows have come in and begun to circle. One lands on the juniper tree and begins to cough in a loud, low voice.
Yeah, I say, I can see what you mean. Let’s go get some food.
Okay.
That night on the local news we watched as they said that the body of a young woman had been found mutilated in the desert. The investigators suspected a possibility of foul play.
And still the crows circle.
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