American Houses

I woke up today.

I went to bed at eight p.m. on a Friday.

I woke up.

I awoke happy and goofy and all kinds of laughing.

I tuned in for a second and turned on the television. Pop punk was playing in my dreams the night before, and I wasn’t burned out like I was one of the mornings before, I can’t remember when, just before.

            I turned on the television and the markets fell even further, our credit scores were downgraded, and now everyone is like me and has bad credit. We’re all the same, we’re all Americans.

 I woke up.

I woke up with laughter and those old school Ramones were singing me to sign up for a surfing class, and well that was just a dream, and now we’re all the same, and now we can be a generation of love, of laughter, of good high fives, or we can just go back to our cages.

But we won’t. Because we know there is more out there in life than money, maybe karma, huh, maybe jazz and analog-sets of midi formats.

Maybe there is more out there. Maybe rhythms and blues and techno. Maybe indie pop and indie rock and indie lo-fi symphonic drum circles.

And what is out there? I’m not really sure. Maybe there is green grass and the soul notes of blues-blues-blues, the bluest of blue grass of the summer youth running down shady lanes, laughing under palm trees and willow trees.

 I woke up today.

I awoke to life songs and bible school songs and songs of death and debt, songs of the angels harp saying “now-now now”. I could only smile and say “now what?”

Maybe there really is love. Maybe it’s alright finding out as you age that this is just A LIFE, and soon you will die, but for now you are waking up to the sounds of laughter and being goofy.

And-and-and, well none of this really matters. It’s just another day, but what I woke up to, sure as hell beats the struggle I have on some mornings  to-to-to, to force my brain to remember… how to feel my muscles.

 Today I realized that you can believe you’re speaking for everyone when you’re really only speaking for yourself.

I discovered I try to speak for everyone when in truth you’re only amazed that somehow you’re alive.

I only speak for friends, when really, you only miss their smiles in old Polaroid’s, in houses, in rooms with candles and power turned off.

 In houses of kids and young adults and baby pictures of now grown men and women who want to know once again, what’s going on? What’s going on?

I have memories of all these houses with shutters hanging all of these visions of birthing hospitals with dreams hanging with cotton clothing. There is laughter hanging on a manic broken down swing set.

Houses with love on rivers and lakes of insanity, as the rapture is always said to be coming. The end of the world is coming. The apocalypse is only years away. But the end is always said to be coming.

 I woke up today.

I awoke from a lifetime of nightmares and memories of houses of debt and houses of rent and houses of money oh so well spent. Houses where guitar strings broke and were re-strung with fishing line. Houses where beer cans were pillows for the innocent stumbles of the bare feet resting with the yawns of dew dropping adventurers that passed out in love. Houses full of growing Americans that fell asleep inebriated in the front of the lazy streets and on sidewalks, and on green blades of twisted lawns.

So many memories of houses of youth and houses of yesterday and houses of the night, houses of me and you, visions of voices that will laugh together once again.

Houses of cherry and blueberry and apple gingerbread houses of candy houses and dusty houses next to library houses and revolutionary houses. Houses of music and houses of anxiety and houses of the winter frost on dirty windows. Houses leaning towards the beginning of the end. Houses of the fall.

Houses of the subprime bail out and our parent’s validation. Houses of education, brick by brick, built on the eighties over consumption.

Houses without care, filled with Reagan’s and Clinton’s united kids born with love on wintery snow days and the late night February lust.

Houses lived in by the cells of their grandchildren’s hope for our future

Houses full of books and stock markets and doctors and peace protesters.

Houses of American, of AMERICA, of American citizens.

Houses full of mornings with waking dreams of a history of classical happiness.

I woke up today. My arms were already stretched.