(re-mixed Visions of Michigan)
Ah. Ahhhh…another, new, day.
Same thing but newer, and The day started under a tree that was growing up big and fast on a recently mowed terrace situated on a city-block. The street has a name, and the name is, Vine.
Powdered French toast for nutrition but first, how? How the hell did it come to this?
Oh yeah…
I came back.
Dark roads and dark faces and memories of the future, and back from Ann Arbor my eyes awoke face first buried in a sheet-less mattress. Dimes and nickels to the sticky skin, smelling like a party, and one damn dark party at that. Dirty…and,
Home, back home, and the wood door to the room is shut. The deadbolt is locked. How, and why, ha, this doesn’t matter, but somehow, someway, no; somehow it feels as if I died last night.
Somehow… Somehow…
Why? No, and Ahh…ohm-oh… yeah, and that’s right! Somehow I made my way back here after drive on star-filled yellow-line highway without vision, without memory, without lights and sensual feelings. Somehow I found my way back into my empty apartment, and it’s not a fashionable kind of quarters; it’s a lonely temple where I’ve typed away my manically lucid mind all winter. For how long? Who… knows. Since. Since…
Since I gots’ back from Georgia, from Appalachia, from Paradise, from the morgue that is my mind, and…ha!
I roll over and look for Sophie. She’s still not here. Damn that girl, and where? She’s still a’ gone off somewhere in the countries of France or Spain or Portugal er’ somethin’…Oh…Oh…ohm… that’s right!
Sophie’s in Prague! That ol’ honeycomb of mine, well she met her brand new skinny man er’ somethin’ in Prague. That’s it, and damn, gone, back, and tossing her ghost on the ground I stretch my arms-AHH-oh-ohm-AHH, and back, here, and as I stand up like an infant with long awkward legs I open the windows to let them good ol’ vitamins in, and man oh man, HELLO MY FRIEND.
Who?
Who am I talking ta’?
Well look for yourself, because there’s the, Sun.
Around one I’m thinking based on the rays, and “Good afternoon ol’ girl” I say, as I bang my chest like an ape man, telling myself, “come on Henry, you can do it. Come on kid, remember to smile”.
Smiling gets me through the pain, the days, the heart beats of a negative charged life, through days like these days and so I constantly YELL at myself Ta’:
SMILE BOY. DAMN. SMILE
So much yelling in my head, this forcin’ of my life to live, and you can’t forget with so much starving, with so much yelling, and so I do remember, to smile.
Now walking around looking for bread taking out egg and bowl and spoon and butter; thinking about…and man oh man after tomorrow, well I’m going to stay with Dusty and help em’ pack his whole dang house up into tiny brown boxes.
Ex-college Americans are the riff-raft of the modern world. Both of us are on the run without anywhere to go. Nobody wants us, because we want everything. We want to make our own world up from our own recipe, because ha, we believe for some reason that the world is good and that it just doesn’t know it yet.
HA! What insanity. We belong in an institution. We just got kicked out of one. The University.
No more schoolin’ and handed the eviction notice, and so, PEACE OUT HOME; out of here and over there once again. This whole getting displaced over and over is making me crazy. I don’t even know what I have or want anymore. He has so much shit. OH-OHM, and NOPE, it’s all coming with us, because that Apostolo loves his things, and that’s cool, but it’s just I’m so tired and losing my home and never no time for the psychological clearing out of my own system of what the hecks’ happening to my dang life. No time and all him; all his stuff, no time to help me out, shit son, and there’s going to be so much to do.
With what I’m saying, well and so sure; one thing is true, my pal and that Apostolo fella’, well he has more knickknacks and chairs and paintings and old cameras, baseball-mitts and Mickey Mantle trading cards. Coins and hats and minted army stuff, and where the hell does one get so much stuff. He’s the richest poor man I’ve ever met. HA.
Inside of his home there’s so much packing to be done. Old chairs and paintings and scarfs and bowls of vintage bullets and medals from old wars, and GOLD. Kid has so many gold coins.
He kinda dresses like a pirate from the sixties. Makes sense too. I wondered where he got all of this shit. Never asked, because he’s insane, but maybe, maybe the kid’s a robber or something, because he has more of, well, as he says himself, more of the, “finer things in life that I always wanted. Stuff that I hadn’t gotten as a boy. Cause my parents were nutso-freaks, always on the move, cause well my asshole father was in the Air-Force er’ somethin’ like that. You know Henry?”
“What Dusty?” I would always just a’ say, “WHAT” when he said my name.
Crazy man, and that Apostolo loved to say my name er’ something cause whenever he said anything to me, well he always started out by saying, “Henry, you know what.” But this wasn’t a question, cause he always explained to me that I didn’t know a damn thing bouts anything whatsoever.
People would always be like, dude’s a dick to you. And well, I would just say, well who knows. I didn’t have anywhere to go, and he knew this, and he had a plan, or so he said, and I wanted adventure. Eddie said I needed me a Cassidy, and well so be it, here’s Apostolo, and man he wouldn’t stop with his rantin’ and high horse talking down; he always told me over and over again, that he knew some shit man, about all sorts of truths, and if I wanted ta’ know, well then, only if I shut-up and listened would he tell me about all of those little things that are all abouts’ everywhere within this life of ours. I didn’t really think he knew much but hell yeah I acted like he did. The whole thing was a con, to see how long we could keep this up. I never had any faith that he was anything other than insane, but sometimes, insanity is what you need to follow, that is, if you want to be a writer.
Adventures In American Writing 