The old motel
with it’s teal doors to paradise
it’s walls cracked white paint of forever
it’s staircase that nobody ever figures out who comes and goes
the clamor of maidspeak
and I think about groggy bedheaded breakfasts and the sunrise over pool
toast, eggs, orange juice, terrible whir of politics on the lobby television
and I have been here in every city and in every time
I have seen all of these pools.
I can only get better as a writer. This stuff helped a little.
We can stare at each other all day like a situational comedy
over a bowl of soggy cereal or something while
I would tell you how much like a cup you are.
A little coffee cup.
A sad little half empty coffee cup.
Sometime in 1987 we all watched the birth of our savior on VHS.
We have since forgotten such perfection.
Milton bradley built us a machine that would teach us everything we ever wanted to know about the relationship between men and women and
he built it in the same factory and using the same schematics used to construct a Simon.
He made a pocket version and nobody was ever sad or alone ever again.
Color has changed itself into sound since then
and love has grown up and requires you to call it by its new symbol.
Love in the american dream has become extremely sophisticated.
It is based mainly on situations you can learn about on television.
If you fall asleep in front of a television you will know the truth.
The truth is thick and juicy
fast and sleek
it wont cost an arm and a leg
it is for sale.
During our national pass time, division, you could almost die during the commercial breaks.
I thought to myself, “John Locke and Kant were just thinking machines and I’m fairly certain being a lawyer ruins literature.”
“Fiction”
Cowboy apostle: You mean to tell me I’m dying for a flapjack!?
Sarcastic apostle: God’s only son, a gingerbread man…
Clever apostle: If I was bread, I would be banana bread. Mmmmmmmm.
Starving apostle: Anybody else still hungry?
Corporate apostle: I wonder if there’s a way to make any bank off this savior? You know, for more bibles and stuff.
(Here, I decide to take a nap.)
Radioactive apple glow worms
dark forest fed acid rain
flaming butterflies trail and smoke over a boneyard of poppies.
A burnt out cabin with only mirrors caged and bolted to the walls,
mirrors that reflect too well.
HD mirrors.
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“I’ll put the fear of bomb in you you scoundrel!” Screamed a many faceless eyeball.
I, wake in the reign.
Today is my birthday and I saw three doses of medicine: grey weather rainy, a bit of poetry, and a colorful image.
I was walking down a hallway when I accidentally footed a porcelain doll. “Wanton axe. Burden of Christian scars.” It bleated from its motionless mouth.
Bored, I poured a cup of coffee. I blew atomic explosions into its froth.
I remember thinking the other day that humanity must be on self destruct.
I spend my days thinking about the modern kiss, the wind bringing sweetness on the wind, (honey breezes) and how you smelled before perfume, flesh and heat and salt, I spend my days thinking about dreams, riddles, I am the alpha wave and the omega wave, I am Holden Caulfield and Ponyboy Curtis, and Stephen Dedalus, I am I am I am, don’t drag me kicking and screaming from my mind, I am my daydreams, I am my introspection, I spend my days on more dreams, currency/bankroll = rubbish and raw, bring me something you didn’t see with your eyes, bring me something you didn’t hear, bring me something that came naturally, I spend my days dreaming of perfect little glances, shining little stars, and warm hearts, I AM THE SPIRIT OF WHAT IF, I AM THE SPRYTE OF WHAT IF, I AM THE SPEAR OF WHAT IF, I spend my days thinking of why you so pretty, I spend my days thinking off steam, I spend my days so that you can call me nobody if you want.
Old loopy radio night, dark streamy bright and
sound surrounded and stirred up some stinking ghostly haunt
sinking sloping thought about you darling.
Sat in that old bed thinking and staring about you darling.
Shaking frost sleek night without you darling.
You look real like lovely in my mind you little fresh fox.
I’ll give that furry coat a real like good petting you little freshly fox.
Sit here next to my bed in my favorite chair where I put my records and read me a story you made up in a dream once with your friend and that other friend and make it exciting this time and use the funny voice will ya!?
Better yet lay here next to me and just let me kiss that perfect face for a while.
Oh, my little fresh fox.
You are so warm.
And you dreamed of me, you set me aflame.
You guessed my number.
Draw near to me and breathe me up
draw near to me and we’ll go blind
draw near to my heart and we’ll be nothing
draw near to me and ill whisper to you that I love you.
I’ll whisper I love you for a million blessed dark eternities or until you get bored.
There were so many faces on the screen today
and none of them said anything.
My soul felt so spread out over today, so stretched far and wide.
I saw grass today so green and gold, so blue and purple.
The heat today was so clean, it cleaned me right up.
Was I just perfect? Was I just perfect then when I felt like crying?
Music.
I’m going to go get lost in something now, something anything.
I would get lost on you if you gave me half the time.
Lost into your bold lusting shapely color of love.
Lost over and inside
warm blood
dripping.
I dreamed of a stroll through hell once upon a time.
And you offered me tater tots before I met your sister outside the pit.
She was smoking a firecracker and waiting to push me in.
I gave a knowing glance into the abyss…
I splashed into that scene bare boned and exposed down to the soul, fresh and newborn for your pleasure if you would have it anyway.
I smelled your fresh corpses like flowers
and It was all beautiful to me.
I walked among the furry smitten kittens right up to the wall.
They smelled great, like wild animals full of clean mountain air and hot sunshine.
There was a ladder prepared for me so it wouldn’t be too much trouble getting over the wall.
They had removed the barbed wire.
Is what the voice said that came from everywhere.
That dreamy voice that reassures you.
I spied a ragged dirty crispy man scribbling nothing legible into a burnt old manuscript with charcoal fingers just outside the escape hatch.
I think he was writing my book.
Down the hall a shadowy spirit wanted to lead me to the room where they made the planets.
The spirit wore a constellation overcoat and was spitting asteroids onto the path.
I made my planet a few times with too much rust and mud, too much land and not enough water, too much steel and not enough land, it was never perfect enough.
The other people in the class had such an easy time with it, just enough of everything.
Perfect little blue spheres with holy masculine robots, one for every peach in the tree.
Mine always ended up with too much rust and dirt, too much mud and steel.
And these are my dreams, these are my friendly nightmares and haunted bright darknesses.
This is what I live for.
To sleep and wake up.
And with an outstretched hand, some grey bearded oldish Greeky man said to me: To the one!
And I snapped awake in bed fully clothed and thirsty as a madman.
Away from home
on the road.
I smelled watermelon wind and dust and dirt in the air.
Further along I smelled wild onions and baseball fields and the smell of a campfire.
And what else would the wind bring me?
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Dreamy dreamy.
A sound landscape with fluffy white pillows of air.
And a happy machine handing out apples.
Tastes like summer and smells like the sea.
And because its just like you said: “You fall in love with so much.”
I never know anything.
Boredom cure number one.
I’m eating vegetables and fruit for ten days.
Cassette tape corrections.
And
A quick warm up.
Lovely chair.
I wonder how evenly my pain and my pleasure are measured?
The jagged breaking of a distant jackhammer.
The fresh and cooling sound of sweet music.
The burning and hot sound of jealousy.
And the soft and warm sound of loving words
All seem so balanced in my ear.
And what of love’s look?
Things can be made foul by sight’s imperfections.
For love’s eye sees only fair breath and gentle caress.
And is a bridge made whole by touch and understanding.
There was a canvas sunset. The speakers played sounds of streetcars and people talking and construction. We stood on a stage in front of a wooden building painted to look like red bricks. The lights were bright and hot and I couldn’t ignore them that day. I was with my favorite lady and she wore a flimsy yellow sundress with pink and orange floral print. It hugged her body and collapsed into her curvature. That dress had been made for that day. I looked up at the ceiling and asked: “It sure is a beautiful day love, wouldn’t you say?”
With the wind from the fans disturbing her obsidian curls she looked over her shoulder and said softly. “Oh, yes dear, quite.”
“Jim.” I asked. “What do you think about our new senator?”
My best pal and longtime confidant had only this to say: “I don’t think much of him that’s for sure; he’s a terrible fat and sweaty cow if you really want to know.”
“Good and well thought out point sir. I can always count on you for the best advice.”
“Tell me, what do you think of the political climate of our trying and turbulent times?”
He gave me a grim and heated glance and said: “It’s a terrible tempest of absolute manure and filth; I mean to say that it’s just an absolute storm of garbage!” He pounded his fist on the table and continued. “We would be better led by giving our house pets control of the governing body!”
“So, tell me, what do you think about the economy these days Jim?” Without a second for thought he screamed: “I was waiting for you to ask me that! I’ll tell you what I think! The economy is like a giant garbage can full of old rotting cabbages! It’s like a maggot covered fish head baking in the sun! It’s not unlike a heaping pile of old fruit!”
“So, Jim, what could you tell me about how to fix it?” He cocked his eyes and gave me a sinister and crooked smile. He said this: “Well I’ll tell you how we won’t fix it. We won’t fix it with any of these new hippie ideals! Work smarter not harder my tired old ass, that isn’t how dad did it, and that isn’t how I do it! We need good old fashioned hard work! Nothing will ever get accomplished if we can’t roll up our sleeves and be willing to put in a good solid days’ work. These kids today are lazy good for nothing hippies I tell you, they don’t understand an honest day’s work. Why, if I could do it all over again…”
At that very instant at Jim’s most triumphant moment a child walked into the café holding a storybook and sat across from us in a very comfortable armchair and began reading quietly. Jim asked me if I wanted to continue the discussion outside under an umbrella.
To remain a child at heart you need only catch your imaginations fancy. Take your mind swimming in the absence of protocol. Hold and maintain a disbelief in authority. You chose to wake up. You chose to walk out your door. You are interacting with people because you decided to. To let them affect you negatively is a choice also. This is not to say that you shouldn’t do what you’re told, just don’t agree with the visible distaste people have in their lives while they do what they have chosen to do. I find myself constantly asking why I have bad feelings, where they come from, are they real? Choose to be happy!
“Always act so that so that you can will the maxim or determining principle of your action to become universal law; act so that you can will that everybody shall follow the principal of your action” ~ Kant.
It’s always interesting to see what kind of things my mind will do with with what i give it. I started reading about black holes and philosophies involving the stuff of the universe and this is what came out. I think I will try to become a writer.
Devin Stroud is a graphic artist, poet, and Bohemian out of Waco, TX.
