“War always seems worse when seen from far away. When you have to live on, when you are used to everyday horror; when you’re living in war, you sometimes forget that you’re in a war. You just learn, to get by.”
Those Rodent Eyes of Reality, taken from adventures of a dying young man…
(Re-mixed)
I’m not that good at spying, you know, like I say I am, but yeah, I was just lurking like a wise cat, and so well now, I was in the shadows, so Don couldn’t really see how afraid I was, cause man oh man I wanted to run right that moment. I wanted to run as fast as I could and as far away as I could, you know, ha, ta’ get away from this house, from Flamingo; away from all of this madness that I somehow walked my duh-duh-dumbly way into.
Man oh man, yeah, I was just like some fool that’s just a’ whistling himself some Dixie and walking blindly on a wobbling rope-bridge. Just like a fool in the amazon it was if I was the happiest suicidal maniac to ever be born. This was getting messed up. Dark man and too much; it was overused darkness at that, too damn much. Come on…
All of sudden and out of nowhere, well I now felt like I was walking on some bridge within the Lost World, the Jurassic times of a kinds of a rain forest. Slowly holding onto my shadow, as if a life jacket, and…
One feet one toe one foot and there I go, and over rocks and below in the river there were some nasty critters and man-eating crocodiles, piranhas too-CHOMP-CHOMP…and son oh shit, where did the flesh-eating goblins come from? These monsters of real life hatred that were just waiting ever so patiently for me to take a wrong step, waiting for me to fall into the water so that they could eat me while I was still hot and still breathing and they were some hungry evil waiting things man. They wanted to just go on and eat me while I was still alive. While I could still beg for my life. They were some sick bastards.
I could only be the shadow for so long, and man oh man oh how I felt as if I knew that there were all these evil things out there in the world, but now it was different, because and yeah, I had that fear, that fear that has propelled me onward since I’ve been a kid. It was all here. It was real. It was me VS. Evil. It was, man, it was, survival.
You never are, well I think, and I wasn’t too sure if I was cut out to live-on and fight-on for another day, and oh brother I say, and say this with a sigh of… oh not again; I didn’t know what’s I was bouts ta’ do.
Henry Henry Henry I said, in my dome of course. Henry, oh shit…
Lights on, shadows vanishing, and sure did, I felt it, oh sure I felt that fear of waiting for such socialized and manmade-up for some reason, those city and streets and seaweed infested maybe even salty evils too; so many kinds of darkness and drudgery, words of hate that fumed from dry bone and empty soulless hearts of men now demons, and I knew it, sure I did; I knew evil was out there. I aint no dummy. I might act like it, ha, I know more than you do.
As I was still plotting out and thinking about where my adventure would take me, when I was still in the mitten, and well I read books and waited under stars and listened to the televisions in the summer times when the windows are all open in all them homes, so safe in the swamps of the humid American summer months; so many people yawning and yelling and lighting shit off as I listened on my back looking at the stars as bombs dropped on all of those lands over the various oceans that it’s been so long since I’ve crossed. And why? Why act dumb?
Trust man. I just tried to believe in people, and I don’t know why people act like I’m dumb, because I knew evil was real, but now, well, but all of sudden I was on evil’s radar and why man, why is the only real important question that’s triggered from my non-evil mind.
WHY, why, and my eyes were dialyzed from the fangs of…only, the yawns of, evil; all these damn evil livins’, not zombies, humans, men and their dang women who don’t look when the good ones are cooked-up in-front of their dang ol’ eyes; the humans, people who like to huff the same air as me, and well man oh man, they wanted to come at me, and maybe they just wanted a fight, just rip me apart after I made one careless move. And for what? I just wanted adventure, whatever the hecks’ that is. I just wanted to walk around, man…and they, wanted, blood. Screw this.
Nothing was good enough for these people. Not my work, not my looks. Not my clothes and man, not my words. Nothing. They wanted nothing, and the piranhas of life seemed to only want to satisfy their hunger. I wanted to walk away, and oh how they smiled with a skinny man kinda desperation waiting for me to fall, only so that they could eat me whole, naw on my bones while that getting was good, while that meet was still fresh.
“You there Henry” he said.
“Yeah”…I mumbled out loud, but within my head, and that’s where my mind, they say, is; within the head which hides that which I call my thinkin’ dome I was going over whats’ I was about to do, and well, also within my heart, this is what that Don fella had caused me to feel: HATE.
And Yeah, I was a grown up man now, and I tell ya, oh how them emotions were a’ racing. I was getting angry. Darkness and I knew I could go mental or die but not go down notta swinging, and I was ready to start that fire, a fire that people don’t likes very much when it radiates from my very being and only destruction can be remembered.
Don woulda been hurt, but then again, he had a gun, ha, new, lazy…and the chances you take, you better be sure, and was this the time…the choices and still man, I was pissed and the raging was a’ boiling inside of body and shaking hands and grinned-up whites of teeth, and I was smiling a song of spite, and my eyes darts of life, my seeing sights were a focusin’…
That Don, He didn’t know who I was, just likes nobody knows where I’ve really been, and I was ready to take on a man with a gun, and well, nope, I wasn’t thinking straight cause sure did, and yep, I only had my bare mits.
More times full of shit, and this isnt what I wanted when I left.
More life and yeah, for a brief moment, and only less than a split second, I forgot that I wasn’t a fighter.
For a brief moment, I too wanted blood. I was, just another American.
Adventures In American Writing 