some notes from 88
painstakingly sifting through refuse in the corner of this empty mind,
ill form collections and sort things which amuse simple hands, simple friends, the crunch of broken letters which break soundlessly under bare feet, these balls of unfurled, strangled words which skate in ink upon pulps water, ill create this mirage, this sanity loitering in the information-static mind, kicking empty bottles with no labels, sorting the words of peoples random actions, i choose taste over perfections, i tend to hover over what is a defect, the refuse of a brainblown child, whos mind turns in sloppy circles both in nature and online. it is not my job to question, it is just a habit, fulfilling needs and desires, always with bags overfilled with unknowns, i am weighted down with collections of affections, and for too long im saving ideas for future redemption, and today, now with 17 candles on the cake, my present has not the strength to rejoin my past. natural to me, the purpose and logic to rotate around numbers,
the systematic pathways with no random circuits, i do not like him, who makes me shake at my own desk, i close my eyes, praying for a nature, a purpose, anything but the concentric molds which afflict me at home and school, focusing always on the weakest points in my pattern. i spend all nights to work it out with a pen, in the morning the paper laughs, reminding me i could easily forget this habit of breathing, i ball up to the side of bed, hoping for a size small enough to slip through the hourglass without sound, i crawl up, hoping to creep beneath leaves and sleep this season through, until i awaken aware enough to recall my notions without the numbers, and the judgements which stake my fences. tired from the night which didnt sleep, and it grew to life,
treadmills, the career paths pouring out with a silent beat, footfalls hurriedly plotting the footfall to deadline, glassgleam aisles which issue forth lifelines, tired, before the night knocked, tired, from the hole where night creeps through, first multiplying then dividing, divine evolution, let them return flying in by night, making reservations to sleep, standing barely, this, the hypnotized peak of life, the transfer, the connection, the change of tides from push to shove, so exhausted this time, i find my aisle, i stake my seat, and at all once the song begins, this burdened creature groaning with fuel. the partys not over until the cops stride past the kegs and scoot us away,
the beers been tapped, the egos stumbling drunk, foaming out abandoned secrets, drowning in sinks on ships already sunk, a 1000 voices all frenetic, glazed ceramics, a 1000 watts of music in chains, the prime of our lives here unfolding, mushrooming, so that in future times we regret more then we forget, i dont think we will ever live as we did this single year, like a whole fire within a match, this partys not over, until we stumble back into our open graves, each predug by decisions, and our time is poured back to being bottled as the past; no more carbonation of spirit, and nothing else to spill out. the cold line which divides my warm heart, the bite of reality which tastes no doubt,
the pivot when what you see before you is not what there is in truth, but you are slammed with the revelation that what you see is only what you percieve, only one leaf in the tree, only one pane in the glass house, so small of a perception i can explain, my world is only mine alone. with the first step out from graduation, i saw more than just my vision, i had my back against that single partition of the i in myself, an unnamed figure thrown into the lions den of the working world, the raw meat good for only nameless production. i graduated only two nights ago, a class of eight, a bare whisper of a school, a loose collection of about 60 misfits peppering this private school in palm beach. so my senior year was spent there for about 5 months in total, i tried two schools last year, berean christian private school and palm beach lakes public school, both short lived, and before that i went to kings academy private christain school from 4th grade to 10th grade, its too bad i started so late in doing a journal, ill fail to pinpoint exact places and people, but i was too busy to fill my mind with facts without grades, i was living life, and at seventeen im young enough to be called a boy but about to be mistaken as a man. ugh. the year is 1988 and the last summer i will ever categorize has begun, life is a blind route from here, i live in the extreme western suburbs of west palm beach, in a place called the 'acreage' or 'the boondocks', out on a dirt road without cable tv, without garbage pickup, without paved roads, without friends, with a car. im in a city which is quickly overcrowded, yet has no central downtown, just sprawl, i have spent the past few days staring at the wall, staring at the stars, staring at the face in the mirror, trying to find an inner voice to answer my questions, what i have just earned thus far in life is a piece of reinforced framed paper which will sit in my parents attic for decades. on monday i saw a movie called 'big' with tom hanks, it was not funny, i thought it would be, then i returned home to this dark morgue and sat on the floor of my bedroom in darkness as it rained outside for over a glorious hour, then i got a phone call about a job, it was starting the next day from 1pm to 6pm, i dont have a car so i asked my parents what i should do, my mom said she would drop me off at work when she leaves at 830am, and my dad said if i really wanted a job i would wait there for 4-5 hours until the job started. tonight ill lay in bed trying to coax a future out of my mind, this is not life, last night my friend kris came over and spent the night, we shared a random assortment of dreams for a prosperous future, we talked up a yogurt store, starting a progressive band, talked about the video rental business. we enjoy turning options in our minds, though they might not deliver cash they are still fun to explore and talk out. kris is a quiet but hyper person who shares a house with his brother and mother, i have known him for 5 years, since 83, from kings academy. now its the next day, its 11am and i called my mom and asked her what am i supposed to do about getting a job while living miles deep in the woods with no car. she says i need to deal with my own problems now and hangs up, i hate when she does that, nine times of ten she will hang up testily without saying goodbye or some warning, she only goes on nonstop without me getting a word or idea edged in, then click. this is a very cold line in life, where i don't know where im supposed to turn, and who can help me get there. its a rainy late tuesday night, at the last minute today i got a ride to work with a friend, and we drove to the 9 story building on palm beach lakes building called the jb haneour building, in fact im using a logo'd pen of theirs right now as we read. we worked on the 7th floor, one big room with perfect rows and columns of wood desks and metal desks interspaced, paperwork shuffling and flying with the sound of perpetual white noise, people running and people pacing, a sealed 4-walled envelope of high pressure. i sat at a temporarily empty desk with my stapled list of numbers and a old-world telephone. my job was instructed within 10 minutes by an anonymous guy; to call these companies on the list, to lie and do what it took to get the presidents name and hopefully phone number or contact information on him. my mentor told me it was easiest to say i was calling from some financial magazine, and i wanted to chat loosely about a possible article with a qoute from him. within two hours i realized it did have an art to it. any time i got a name and number i just jotted it on the paper in a neatly-arranged grid, one sheet would fit 20 names and numbers, and at the end of the day i hand it over to this curly-haired jewish guy in stripes who called us all 'cowboys' and did the whole 'are you excited' routine, at $6 an hour he can call me anything.
every hour we get a 5 minute break, just long enough to dash over to under the stairs where the vending machines were, winding my way through the torsos and chairs of number-crunchers all pecking away at dirty yellowed keyboards and granola bars. the machines offer chocolate, chocolate-covered, colored-chocolate, and dark-chocolate, and theres a broken coffee machine and dirty fridge next to them. i had no change so i ate nothing, which gave me a headache after 3 hours of these phone calls and all the background chatter. after the job, at 5, he explained we'd be getting $6 an hour under the table, and we would be paid every thursday. by 6pm i was dropped off home by my friend, and i fell right to sleep with dreams riddled with anxieties. when i awaken i find FOX29 tv on with an old star trek rerun, a show i dont care for but the goofiness keeps my attention sometimes. on the show, they never get any direct concrete information on their enemies with all that technology hidden behind tungsten colored party bulbs, its always some obscure geiger reading that only indicates they are dangerous somehow, not exactly how they are a danger. then they must land upon a cratered ball of paper mache with suns of colored pool lights. whoever the name-brand-people beam down with are always the ones who will be dying on the expedition, and the aliens sound like a broken santa klaus held underwater. i watch to see if once they should happen to land peacefully on a utopian green landscape with no enemies, only friendly characters. it has yet to occur. usually late at night, after midnight, i write poems to stave off the boredom, but monotony has even crept into that lately, leaving me with an empty pen and dry mind. when i look over the hundreds of poems ive written in the past year, i get depressed that i have so much time on my hands to even have written them. direct evidence of a life unlived i say. but they are a good release from pressures within and things which itch under the skin. star trek is over, the nemesis ended up being a cross-section of a flea which seemed to freefloat through space, so i pumped myself full of nose spray so that i could breathe enough to drift off, and then i began a random prayer to help my mind unwind the past and account for the future. the next day i awake to the phone ringing, its the guy who found me the job, he asks if ill be going in today, i say yes, and my mom, on her way to work, drops me off at his house where we wait for kris to pick us up in his toyota. naturally he was late, naturally. the 3 of us got to our job all fresh in long pants and collared shirts, it was depressing, i felt empty and old. blablablabla i spent 4 hours trying to fit bullshit through the phone and did pretty well. kris left early from the job after 2 hours, he promises to return at 5 to pick us up, but it wasnt until 545 as we sat sweating in the vast hot parking lot that we saw kris, on the other side of the road with his neck craning wildly, searching out the building in confusion. a squirrel runs out to the side of the road to take account of things, i watch as his paws patter across six lanes, i was amazed at creatures who know how to time things right, but by the 5th lane splat, a front tire spins him round and the rear tire flattens him. his bushy tail still retained some 3rd dimensions and was whipping back and forth before finally freezing crooked up as a broken surrender flag of static fuzz. i felt bad for him, i wished i hadnt seen him but i had to keep an eye on the everlost kris in case he gave up. eventually i made it home and tried to sleep right away, but after 10 minutes of drifting the phone rings with a girls call. a dark figure whos life story i dont understand because it constantly morphs as she sees fit. we had met 9 months before this day at some party, she had went with two friends of mine and i caught up with them there with my friend, we all arrived early right before the party would actually explode into an 'event', where the host was rambling around her kitchen with cokeshot eyes offering us ingestions of mouth and nose. we said no and chose to wander around her yard until more people arrived. the next to arrive at the party was kris, so i disappeared with him to her garage where we listened to u2 and i tried to drink a beer. after 4-5 songs you could hear people had arrived because it sounded like they were funneling beer in the kitchen, people were cheering and counting, and the sound of quarters hitting the side of a shotglass were heard in the dining room. thats where i first met the girl whos calling me now, i got to go see what shes got to say... 1986. two summers ago, when i was 14, i worked at winn-dixie making $3.20 an hour, well 2.65 an hour after taxes. i was a shelf-stocker and bagboy for about 10 hours a day, days when i wasnt in school, and it was a 4.5 miles bike ride to and from there, which sucked because it was pretty hot so by the time i got to work, i was already sweaty and exhausted.
anyways, a new vice-manager was there, named mr k., i never knew what the k stood for, but i knew him by his squat posture and thick overlapping moustache, his thick-framed glasses, and those turtleneck sweaters. one busy sunday there was all eleven aisles open at once and over 6 customers per lane, and i was switching between bagging and going out collecting carts, since they were constantly being depleted and i could overhear people complaining about having to carry things in their arms. after 10 trips for carts in 3 hours i came back inside to bag groceries next to my friend eduardo. ed was a puerto-rican giant teddy bear sized boy, his brow was furrowed and he was burning in the eyes, he was pissed and whispered over to me that mr k had walked by him and said out loud so others could hear 'hey eddie wheres your faggot boyfriend' which was his way of asking where i was in his redneck way. he never liked us working around each other, and this was his way of expressing it in a public way. well that comment broke my worn out back, for he had been making snide demeaning comments all week in front of others, but never privately expressing just what his problem was with me, and this was one step too far. i felt a ball of angry string unwinding inside my guts. gears turned within and gained speed until glowing with friction, and turned me into living 'the moment', which causes much of the actual event to be forgotten. i remember immediately finishing my bagging task of the moment, then going over to the main overlook 'roost' where the managers were, and i stood down below him and just silently glared from 6 feet below, i glared as my brains were gurgling out from eye sockets, and finally he noticed my attention and stared upon me from his nest of a turtleneck, it took a few seconds for him to realize i was not really doing anything except concentrating on him, so he says 'gary, you need to get back to work now' with a wagging finger back to the checkouts. i didnt move or blink, only felt my skin turn colors because i was breathing so thinly. 'gary get your ass back to work' he said in a louder tone, and i shakingly said up to him 'what did you tell eddie' and it came out so loud, but anyone beyond myself and him were just part of the grey blur of anger to me, so the exact strength of my voice i couldnt gauge. 'shut up and get back to work' his eyes narrowed behind his bottle glasses. 'what the hell did you say to eddie' i spoke again in the trance of a rotating energy. 'i asked him where you were, now back to work' he calmly issued, aware of the audience we had gained. 'you called me a faggot' i asked. 'no and if you want your job youll get back to work now' he said. 'fuck you' i said strongly and with a humming calmness, and that quieted a good portion of the store down, a measure in the dozens of people. 'im sick of your shit, who the hell are you to call me a faggot here, if youve something to call me say it in person' i continued, it was all the weeks of him demeaning me to others but never to me, and calling me so many names. his nostrils flared and glasses sunk, he leaned down over me, close enough that i could smell his stale cigarette smoke baked into that winn-dixie vest, 'you little shit' he mouthed to me so as none could hear, and then he began moving out of his bunker, he spoke out loud 'youd better shut up-'and i cut him off redfaced and told him to fuck himself again, and as he was now on the same level ground as me, he told me about how i didnt want him to come over to me, of which i invited him to. he then out loud found himself saying he was going to kick my ass, and his eyes were now as wild crazy brown saucers, his red face prickly and veiny, he looked away from me for a few seconds, breaking the building tension, to see all cashiers had stopped their checkouts and the whole store was now an audience watching this duel. he noted this and headed to the time clock saying with confidence 'your ass is out of here you little piece of shit, youre fired' and as he was looking through the timecards to find mine, i came over and from behind him grabbed mine, warning him not to touch my card as per state law, and i slammed my card into the clock, and calmly placed it onto the counter meeting him eye for eye, and then i began out the front door which was clear of people, as everyone had either left or frozen in time to watch. i left the interior, all while hearing a number of claps or laughs or yells or gasps, and only faded when the electric door then shut life to my first job. i went to the payphone and called my parents to pick me up, as i was too rattled and scared to take my bike. in the end, it was nasty. my parents and i went and met with regional management and some legal go betweens came to represent winn-dixie. we all agreed that i would return to my job, and that mr k would be transferred to another store. so there i was back to bag groceries a month later, but returning to my old job, it turned out that the replacement was a good friend of mr k, so he immediately began with a whole new set of harrassments without even talking to me or trying to know me. indeed, on the fourth night under his reign, he told me to mop the entire store, all by myself, which i did for 40 minutes. then he told me to do it again, and so i did for another 40 minutes. usually its a job done by 2-3 people once in a night. then he told me to do it again, while the rest of the workers stood around grinning, knowing exactly what was going on. i just simply said no, i thought it was clean enough after two moppings, and he very dryly and calmly said 'ok youre fired, get out'. i said i was not going to leave, that for 8 months i had cleaned these floors nightly, always once and always with others, and never 3 times by myself. he then said get the fuck out or hed 'kick my ass' out. i told him he could try that, but i guess he had already spoken to some of the older redneck stockmen, because now here comes some guys 10-30 years older then me, they came up and told me if i didnt walk out theyd personally beat the shit out of me. well, then i left, and walked to the same payphone i had called my parents on a month earlier. while waiting for my parents, they all crowded around me, exciting themselves by having things like brooms and metal objects and things in their hands, circling me and really freaking me out. i mean, i was 14 and heres these beefy rednecks threatening a kid who they certainly knew was being messed with. they only spread out when 15 minutes later my parents showed up. they had the logic that if it happened twice, well it must be me, and not 'the other side', and anything i said was an excuse, not a reason. my first on the clock job was the worst, and only bought me one buger-king hamburger an hour. 1985. a tight click, very small metal unpainted door, darkness in total,
silence, the only tempo of time is my own heart, a single burlap for a sheet on a well weathered hay mattress, i roll onto my feet, no points to focus, indian-leg seated on the always moist stone floor with the numb bite of ice cold, rotate my neck to hear the it crack with escaped nitrogen, less then a minute awake and im already swollen, i rise to my knees, hands stretched out to feel for the wall and then the corner, and there relieved myself, making sure to hit the spot where most would roll off and under the stones. i turn around and fell back to all fours, feeling back across where the mattress is stacked, the mouldering humid hay scent drowns the weeks of urine in the corner, i dig my fingers deep into a loose section of hay and feel deeply to where sounds could be heard, on one finger the movement, then pushing and pinching in that direction with intent, tugging at war with a thumb sized beetle, blind as myself, it loses its grasp, i get it out after some seconds and clasp it with one hand, my other hand poking at its underbelly so as to tell the type of flavored insect this could be, its swollen underbelly felt well-fed, oversized, and soft, watering my mouth, i get my hopes up that this one was pregnant and full of larvae, that would not only be a less bitter taste, but would be the peak of its nutrition, this alone could make my day worth remembering in unwritten days to come. i pulled its four main legs off without much of a battle, still the antennae prod at my lips, i slip its pudge in my deep mouth, i clamp down with a slight crunch and squirt, and chew away hastily to mix all its juices and textures together so that the sweeter parts would overpower the bitter. a minute later i break back into the rhythm of my circular thoughts, and feel back up the side of my mattress, still with the taste and numbness around the inner rim of my lower jaw from my tiny dinner, i thought with my luck already the chance to catch a mole cricket could too exist, for last night i had heard one chirping, bringing some cadence to my life other than my inner cycles. but though the taste was one of the better ones over the past possibly two years, their music i had to preserve as it was a slight salvation, for my last cell, one with a bare ray of light creeping in, giving me form and functions, that one had brave rats, ones standing on two feet ready to stare me down. in there, i would take minutes creeping so very very slowly while keeping its attention trained on one hand i would twirl n twist, slowly moving it away from my body, then i would come down with a grunt upon his tail with the other hand, trapping him, crushing his life with a bare heel, but soft enough as to not pulverize his body, only to stun and crack the skull. then i would flip him over while the grey body still beat, and take his lower jaw in my fingers, pulling down and unhinging its joint, then tugging, so that the median of his body was exposed, revealing a puzzle of glistening pink twists and purple turns and yellow sacks, and with a watchmakers precision i would remove the better parts first, saving the darker meats for a bad night, and tossing the tail and legs and skin in the corner where other varying shares of decomposition lay, but my nose was so numb to the cachophony of rot. looking back on those days of white light and grey rats, i wish i hadnt complained so loudly, for now in this vigilant blindness my life is the scratch of a beetle, the beat of my heart, not knowing whether i am counting time up, or counting it down. my life, as such, is an animal force without human vision. |