Three Dogs

The trash cans have spilled their guts in the alleyway. There are no more lies from lovers and the pursuit is for levitation, cash, and adrenaline. In my bedroom, at night, hunkered into a lightbox, I expect to see a gruesome face peering through the window. Sometimes the moon disappears. No zombies ever knock. But the upstairs neighbors are loud and I can hear them fucking.

The other day, after coffee and dope and eggs, the dog and I walked to the park. A naked man meditated beneath the trees. People balanced on slack ropes. The sunshine was brilliant, full force, smitten, and the dog wandered up to a yogi. She petted him. He shook his ass.

   Someone shouted, “Hey, is that your dog?”

   I turned to a man walking his Border Collie, pointing. The dog ran up to the Collie, and the Collie bore fangs and lunged at him.

   “Hey, come here!” I sprinted up to the dog, ready to grab him. “Sorry about that,” I said, panting as I got up to him.

The man was older and frail. “Ah, she’s just a little protective. I just wanted to let you know I saw a bear up the street since your dog is runnin’ around. He pointed up the road. A black bear sauntered out an alleyway and casually strolled up the hill.

   “It’s just a youth, doesn’t have a momma though. I’ve been seeing him around lately.”

   “Thank you. I leashed the dog and watched the monster fur ball meander between two trucks.

   “Other day, when we were on the trails, I saw a momma and her baby,” he said. “I asked if she would let us by and she moved on up the trail with her cubs to let us cross. She was fine with us.” He reached down and scratched the Border Collie's head. Her hair was standing. She didn’t like the Dutch Shepherd next to me.

   “Thanks for the warning,” I said.

   “Oh yeah, no problem. You have a good day.” The man continued his walk and took his dog with him. Why she was so angry had me. I didn’t understand how some animals could get so mean with all the right care.

   The yogi strutted up to me. Her nipple rings poked through her shirt. I lingered on my simpleton nature and looked up to be more appropriate, confused to what she wanted. “Is that your dog?” She asked.

   “Yeah, something like that. He lives with me.” I patted him on the back. I didn’t say it, but I never like calling the dog mine. I feed him, water him, have lost in several foot races to him, give him hamburger now and then, and once we got arrested in Texas, but I don't own him. He is his own and I'm grateful for his companionship.

   “I work at a dog shelter back in Salt Lake City.” She bent down, petting his face. The dog let his tongue fall. “He’s a sweet boy.”

   “Thanks. He’s my buddy. Did you see that bear?” I asked.

   "What bear?”

   “A bear popped out in that alley a few seconds ago and walked up the street. Some old guy warned me because he saw Gonzo running around”

   “No way?” She put her hands on her hips and looked up the hill.

   "Yeah, I’m surprised you missed it.”

   “Me too. So, why are you here?”

   “I’m new, moved here a few months ago.”

   “For what?” She adjusted her stance.

   “A change of pace, I guess. I’d kept waking up with this sensation of millipedes on my spine, and I developed this notion fleeing the South like a midnight bandit was the righteous thing to do. I think I’m right, but I don’t know… I’ll settle on walking the dog for now,” I said.” It felt like an overshare. One of her friends fell off his slack line. The clouds buffered forwards, descending the mountain tops. Our conversation fizzled and she smushed the dog’s face once more before skipping back to her friends. It was a harmless interaction I didn’t really believe in anymore. I collard the dog and we walked back up the street, opposite way of the strolling bear, past the chicken coops and yard dragon back to our home.

   Later that night, I stepped outside with a joint in the breezy eve and heard a rustling over the fence. I knew Starbucks and tampons were in the dirt on the other side. I imagined the bear and prepared to throw lightning, but when I peaked over it was just an old dog with a leash on his neck, rummaging through the remains. It was a Labrador with ribs you could see.  I opened the gate and shooed him down the alley. He retreated and rounded up to his patio. Then I was standing alone. An ember manipulated in the dark. I swallowed. It was an easy night. Animals were eating. They had to. The marijuana was finished. I could feel it in my eyes, a warmth, retreating from the onslaught of winter, trading it for home.

Fire in the Front Range

Jay called me in the afternoon on my break from Tokyo Joe’s and told me it wasn’t working out at the farm stand, I was showing up too tired, and my peach bagging pace wasn’t an acceptable stamina. I couldn’t debate her. It was true. I was grinding four jobs, losing sleep, and the smallest job I had took the brunt. She said maybe I’m not a morning person. She liked me, but I had to part. I said I’d figure something out, and I immediately forgot about freestones and alarming Saturday mornings of peeled skin and ear wigs. I have spunk despite a few unknown diseases. The blooming around my home held enough fruit. The squirrels chattered down the bark, taunting the dog’s blood lust, and I was whimsical and okay watching. I exhaled and hauled to Tokyo Joe’s for the night rush to hustle over dead birds, cry over onions, and squeegee the water away at close.

After work, I headed to the Sundown Saloon to drown my worries in Pabst. I walked into the cellar, found the bartender, and he gave me a mug swashing the stuff. I found a seat and crossed my legs among pretty girls, quaff collard men, pool shooters in the echo of arousal. The crowd moved in cliques and split and came back together like magnets. We were all in osmosis. Two men flirted with each other at a table. The blonde one stargazed skywards to his adored iris and flicked the craned, love-locked boy in the dick before they kissed. They knew a love that was better with violence. Girls passed with midriff and lips drenched in wonder, in dreams, in gloss. I could’ve been their stuffed dime sack. I was malleable for the evening. A man sauntered with a bandana hanging out his pocket, a bill low on his nose, dangling a tooth pick from his mouth, stroking women’s wrists, pulling them close. I watched them turn butter. He was the jazz’s devil. The waitress weaseled up. I asked for another beer and contemplated “Hi, my name is blank,” as a recycled introduction. I talked to nobody and ordered three beers. I was in atmospheric gossip with an unidentifiable block. I left.

Outside, a fight simmered over a girl that didn’t want to be owned. Haunched outcasts in the alley sucked cigs squatting in dark corners, chatted about times and Fahrenheit, declared fatigue, and chased easy highs like me. I settled in my suburban and whipped my luminary out to swipe through electric flames and honey. I was disgusted by my lacking reality. Dirty to-go boxes glazed with teriyaki were scattered in my floor boards. Numerous energy drinks were crumpled. I didn’t know the stains in the carpet. I fizzled into drive and found home. The dog was wagging at the door. I rolled smoke and planted on the patio aware of peach pits on cobblestones that were the choke hazards for the dog. I was happy to be outside where freedom always seemed to be found. I gave the dog all my love under the moon for five minutes and he understood. We went inside and he crawled onto the air mattress with me. Is there anyone that’s okay with feeling lost, okay because we’re okay until we die, okay because of the debacle between Whole Foods and King Sooper’s, of barrels and free penetration? I was okay my dick wasn’t flicked and I was no hen’s rooster, okay drunk falling, hoping Mom came my way for Christmas, knowing all generations in the river were incarcerated, hypnotized, suffering of sleep apnea, and fighting the bank. As long as the pulse shoots everything is inevitable and okay.

The morning came in its errands. I needed an outlet past home to not feel like a blanketed parrot. I needed to know humanity’s thumping. I called my grandparents. Grandma said her feet were cinder blocks. Grandpa asked me if I had faith. I answered honestly, feeling the distance with my ears. I drove to Peet’s Coffee and ordered a cold brew. I grabbed my cup and spun, looking for a table that had two eyes and a mouth full of electricity, but there were no outlets. I walked around looking between wood legs and up skirts for a place to plug in. A group of girls chatted in Mandarin. A loner brooded over his brew. A man in spectacles used his red reserves. There was no place for me. I had to return to the roommate with mute mannerisms, to the dog curled like a question mark, to the den beneath elephants barreling cosmically. I contemplated a return to god without an answered prayer. I just wanted a new taste and free power. My slim apple was almost rotten. I was too cheap and caffeinated for another cup at another cafe. I needed to deal with the arachnid in the drain murdered by my slipper and bare nudity, the roommates hair in the sink, the dog’s fur on the tile, the dust on the sills, the olive oil on the hot plates. I needed to pick up where nobody else would. I needed to read more about John McCain’s eulogy and the poetics of burial. I considered my expiration date, the almond milk supply, if a peanut butter sandwich would do me justice, which never felt done. The bathrooms were gender neutral and there were no outlets. Changes were happening for comfortable improvement, but I didn’t understand the lost plugs and I had to work.

I wanted the sensation of flight, a great fall, some limitless proposal, an unleashed future— a drive through the Rockies, green jags stabbing the blue invisible, loud music deafening ambiance, dog breath on my nape, a port worthy of my hollow belongings that die quick. I would kiss America in clear consciousness, separated from the satellite hive and social cues absent of crow’s feet and marionette lines. I’d spindle into oblivion and return again in some form of myself at nightfall, touched by earth and helium, and skewed anew.

Bantamweights in a Basement

I drank from a mohawk orange while watching the cage fighters. Sobriety is like spring water and a drunken stupor is like shapeshifting into a worm. Tj Killashaw, the King Cobra, ducked and struck “No Love” Garbrandt with thunder dome rights and the fight ended by TKO in the first round. It wasn’t a surprise, I felt the heat in the Red Hot Chili Peppers ballad before they stood in the cage like sharpened roosters, like most pivotal moments in history, a good soundtrack is needed— it’s time to admit the national anthem is poor writing and melodramatic— ode to the United States— Trump has presidentially denounced kneecaps, kings, and lemons in sporting, although I’m not sure he’s considered the repercussions of collusion, triggered bluebirds, or the fact we’re in peach season. I rolled a joint and realized I had no papers.

Heaven wasn’t at Seven Eleven. The cashier joked about green papers and I thought of Mexicans. I said, "More like one centimeter wide and two inches long.” He told me the ultra-thin Zig Zags were the best. I said I’d be back if they weren’t, but they caught flame easy, and I think that’s what we need on a whole basis— a nation to catch flame for each other, for us all to become madly in love and stick flamingos in our lawns as winks to those in weekend orgies.

I found a high and started “Swimming” by Mac Miller. When the action requires the continuous flow out of a lion’s mouth you make sure the cord is plugged in and there are no leaks. I’ve good feelings I’m achieving something, or nothing, having moved into a shanty basement with good light and a porch on North Street. Pearl Street and the mountains are walking distance from my pillow. I’ll bring the dog with me. He smiles by the cattails when we hike. I focus on good moments instead of the wolf spiders humping in my hair. My mom is a safety net I’m trying not to use, but who can say that while they dance above a swamp? The plumber said he could drain it, but instead, he’s only showed me his ass crack peeping out denim like the sunrise. I don’t like politics or its paid liars because I fib without a profit. Maybe it’s due to the internet’s confusion— angry avians stacking opinions without proper education— which is what? Black people surviving, big cities that smell like piss and the American Dream (which is piss), Arabic civilians unable to sing to Allah, European descendants pawning jewelry for goodwill and horoscopes, hype beasts overpricing exclusivity— nobody tends to their feathers— they paint them on— rip the lackluster ones out— you may not be a polaroid, but you’ll be ugly.

I’m devising a philosophy on the ruins of journalism, cracking eggshells where the hounds sleep, driving drunk through the evening. Street dwellers are at risk for my satisfaction, which is like piano music streaking oblivious, rhythmic and saccharine. I can’t write a good story because I’m stuck to streams of Shameless. I scan the news of a community I separate myself from with several layers of two-ply around the toilet lid. If I could, I’d make every American lop the head off an eagle. We’d all be better knowing sacrifice. It’s a somber thing, watching your spit vanish from a bouncing pinky on delete. TIME steams forward and the national consciousness becomes hyper-analytical to the point of inducing anxiety.

This week, I wandered into a bar with heads on the wall and thought this is the type of venue I like, where it’s obvious I’m being watched by big game that wasn’t fast enough to outrun a bullet— neither was Tupac, Biggie, Kennedy, or Abe. Rest assured, I have no insights or racial struggles. I just sit in stupors enjoying “The Light” by Jeremih and Ty Dolla $ign. I’ll steal what I value like most vultures claiming appropriation, although they forget the rat tails dangling from their lips and the foundation of pilgrimage. White people are only good for thievery and mountains, good weaponry and monopoly, but when the cash turns liquid and dice roll we opt for casinos and regulation. We’d rather not use our teeth as game pieces. We put our gambles on the Native Americans and watch the liquor erode reservations. We make women carry around our cock(tails) and pretend mafioso’s aren’t watching the cameras. It’s better to be air-conditioned with SECURITY looming by the pillars. We’ll bring a Starbucks to the hinterlands, which are actually inside the gates, and we’ll raise the property values. We’ll do a lot I don’t condone.

I just want to tread lightly, avoid snakes and ladders. Luck is something you’re born with, but it can be found, and it can be given away. I’m depleting my Irish reserves, risking melanoma, blaming Shakespeare’s boring initiative. Nobody wants to say their racist or admit they deleted a tweet. Nobody wants to be bombarded by bluebirds or lose their cabinetry, but tradition is ill— we’d be better if Romeo and Juliet never met— romanticism died— people took to clippers at the sight of male-patterned baldness— if we kept the entertainment and canceled reality’s dramas— it’s too much to think about alpha male’s and loyalty when it’s for a fight.

Ravens in Ink

I wake up beneath a pale obese beauty peeping through my blinds at night, and that’s the way I like it— like a river— yipping in bubbles at moonrise and shadow boxing through the den. The dog has his hiccup spells, but my diaphragm and anvil shadow have vanished.

At work, Chris told me his heroin history while he spilled cherries from a cut in his knuckle, and when Tokyo Joe’s releases me from the line I cruise down 30th— in the lung of a world breathing easy— to spend the excess on gin and three wishes, smoke, and avocados.

I don’t mind replacing the split skateboard or my car’s antifreeze tears. The mechanic said I could go longer with a broke right sway bar. Freedom is work, lakes, and scenery— a good resume exposes its thyroid— a good haircut is like oil. I spit on tablets, fruit, and into outer space unconsciously sharing predictions like a fool’s Nostradamus, split in blooming weeds, craving expression in licorice and cordite larynxes. Politics have been complicated— let more expensive ARs out-price gun freaks.

I’m finding a present future despite a shoddy compressor, trekking into tangled evening currents from The Hill to Pearl Street— where fire jugglers can’t catch their knives and entertainment is better because of it. Security guards know our different identifications. There is Pho on the corner and burgers next door. I won’t get fat if I stay moving. Twenty-three is a fraction of heartbeat, yet I feel like I’ve stolen my humor. No eagles yet, but the Ravens are dipped in ink, and they peck at roadkill for dinner.

Innisfree Poetry: Freedom Is in the Dirt

I’ve sniffed around, buried my head in the clouds, and let my legs dangle to have my intestines float away like balloons. I tried to wrangle them in and keep it all inside for a moment, but I saw strangers and was paranoid towards mountain lions in the canyon with the dog sniffing alongside me. That’s to say, the danger here is real and different from the hail of 9 mm crescendos in Tallahassee’s harvest. There’s actual hail. That’s to say, despite the fangs, claws, and weaponized flowers I’ve put my tonsils on display in the valleys, and I wandered into Innisfree Poetry Cafe under rumors of soul songs and buggery.

I was low eyed and found my seat in the background while a girl shouted rhythmically wild. The crowd spewed cheers like a volcano. The girl had gone somewhere and returned like we all do. She said she was home. I felt foreign, displaced from the South, thrust into America’s pancreas. There was the rainbow community, scholars, bodybuilders, blazer boys, rag girls, men with blueteeth and typewriters. It was a groovy scene. I saw more black people than I’d seen in a month in Boulder. I thought they’d disappeared and was beginning to worry, but they were where culture melted ultraviolet and it made sense. I was looking for someone with lightning in their throat.

I couldn’t keep from crawling up to ask how I could throw myself to the Jabberwocks. A lady said I just needed to put my name on the list. I scratched it and ran back to my seat like a mongoose. Queen May’s Revenge was up. A trans woman stood ahead of us all. Her first sentence was like green gold, but her narrative was a firecracker. Her tongue boomed. I siphoned my beak, strangled my elitism, sucker punched my gooch. I had no badge in my pocket, no star power. And she relived her pain in an open mike: prison rape, helpless as a bird with broken wings or a straitjacketed woman. All we could do was watch and applaud.

Then it was my turn, in the midst of American wounds healing. I spit a departing poem to an escort and failings as a collegiate drug dealer. I was a shadow slithering by. White men can be anything in this country: poets, doctors, comedians, morticians, wolves on wall street, the president, but they can’t be quiet in remembrance of Columbine, the Crusades, and our wandering eyes. For the first time, I was the outcast with a haircut. The others had bare feet, long hair, unbuttoned shirts, exposed navels. They were smiling. I was concerned. Everyone was supporting humanity, but I was into the art. Why did no one toss their creed into a burn barrel and dance around? They were there for the community, the floor of hands waiting. That was the art.

I bought a poetry magazine and went to their writer's workshop the next day, downtown, attached to a dance studio of girls strutting to Beyoncé. We were assigned to write what we hate— ego noise naturally— Kanye should have his Achilles snipped— and I decided to buy thicker socks. Others wrote about gender politics, identity, failed polygamy, and fists of fury. Their poems were obese and had gravity. They asked my pronoun. I’d never been asked that. I was tempted to say “it,” but thought my comedy rude. We weren’t on the same vein. No, we were in another locale altogether. I held my phone up for a better signal, whether it came from God, herpes, rope burn, or money in the flamingo's mouth, whatever, I wished it’d smite me.

Something with history will flip the opposition, turn us all cohesive: less walls, more footpaths, trees, water stations for Mexicans in the desert, and shattered borders altogether. We’ll be ready for the jam thieves and Conor McGregor and we’ll show them the American way. We are superglue thanks to the bluebirds in the wires that are faster than any pigeon coated in oil. No one cares how bald you are. Consciousness is changing just as California becomes an island and floats away. We stopped writing in the workshop and began talking.

There was an older fellow I met who said he’d been attending the workshop and the poetry nights for a few years. I said I found it odd no one offered criticism. He said it happened rarely, but he liked it that way. The community is what kept everyone coming back. I grabbed a Hershey’s off the coffee table. Of course, it was sweet. It was made in America. I drove home that night. The dog sniffed my balls at the door. I drank some beer and flew without wings. This new metro was retro and patriotic. All in the fray were welcome. How could they not be? Nobody wore shoes and everyone had tar on their heels.

Boulder Farmer’s Market

I woke up at 5:30 AM and let the dog out to piss in the wind and sniff grass. I brewed coffee, put on pants and a jacket, and cooed myself slowly down the stairs to my car. The morning was bright and the mountains were clear and green and massive and that should be enough. I drove to the farmers market and drank the java and listened to tunes.

Boulder was thriving by 8:30, all sorts of folk with jam in their eyes floated by, tasting samples, doing ungodly things with their mouths. A man with a cane hurried by and grabbed a handful from the bowl of dried fruit, decimating the contents, and if I wasn’t smiling in a farm stand I may have grabbed his ears and put him in the gutter. Children were the most unsanitary, wandering up with big hollow eyes and agape mouths. “Can I taste that?” Of course, you must grow so that you can fly, although you’re already so quick to grab the jam, you little golems. I saw girls with long-haired pits. A homeless man with a feathered hat parked his wheelchair turned into a plant. Toddlers with red around their lips and mad crazed eyes sniffed fruits. One chickadee ate a cherry and chewed it like a lemur on National Geographic, all gums, a young geriatric.

People revoke their origins while eating their oranges. We’re the same as we were, however now we’re concerned about gluten-free data. We’ve halted our chemical nonsense and are turning to robots instead, too scared to trust ourselves. I consider the midriff of a star-gaze blonde girl perusing, seemingly content with her bread. I tell everybody we’re in another day of paradise when they ask how I’m doing, certainly not that we’re most likely all diseased and a balanced diet can help your lifespan. I suggest the apple butter to anyone interested in preservatives. Allspice and cinnamon are what gives it the flavor, I say. My heart is tart and amused by jars of boiled fruit better than dirt. We’ve have removed rats off the menu, yet still, feed them to our snakes.

After a while, I ventured into the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art Museum to use their restroom. The paintings looked like they were stolen from a kindergarten class, skewed textures with rogue strokes, hangmen on the wall, in vain and as trivial as a walrus in the desert. The bathroom had a full sized mirror behind the toilet and I watched myself piss in real time, concerned with this newly analytical state I found in a building of art. I walked out of the bricks back to a wild crowd watching the sky.

The day wound around two. We took down our shade and hauled our efforts into a truck. A man with a long beard and questions about freedom walked up to us, wanting the sample jams half-consumed by the mob. The boss said take them, we wouldn’t sell them or be liable should he get avian flu, and he wandered away with holes in his smile. I will not lie. He was a vulture, and like most birds that don’t dig for worms, he was skinny. I grabbed my things and went home. The air was clear and I watched suburbans full of tourists going somewhere they thought was better than home, but I was home, where I could sleep in a cloud, drink the creek water, and squawk until the evening.

Creek Water and Hot Sauce

I’ve centered myself here in Boulder, Colorado. I’ve got my grips and the electricity in my chest has died to a low hum. That’s to say I’m in tune with my heartbeat. I’m carving my groove, looking for open poet stages to sniff around and things to squawk about. I’m sure residents are familiar with how the mountains kiss the sky, but for me, it is still a whimsy gander. Even the tree leaves shimmer like water. Is everything here so fluid? It would seem. No black bears have strut on my street yet. If they wandered into the city what would the reaction of citizens be when they topple their garbage cans? Stay indoors and shelter from the storming helter-skelter? That is the Floridian way. Light a candle and grab your favorite bottle while sinkholes swallow your yard and the roof flies away with the gulls. But there is no storm here in Boulder. So far it’s rained for an hour one day and the lightning was a pipsqueak. Can the mountains feel me watching them? The eyes of the wild lookout during the day and prowl when it’s cool at sundown. The cottontails stay still as fear itself in wealthy yards saturated green and my dog just about yanks my arm out of socket dazzled by some wild bloodlust for their ears. I keep a scarlet rabbit's foot with a gold Achilles in my top drawer. And I look out the window working my ways, chugging coffee and spitting smoke in a house of rotten bananas. Quite frankly, I’ve lost my appetite and my stomach is no longer growling. I’ve acquainted myself with the wanderers behind my apartment building, who cuddle bottles under waning and waxing loons and roll cigarettes by Skunk Creek when it’s sunny, and I’ve decided I would stop handing out money to the able. I’ve found the skate park and Pearl Street. I’ve found the radiant audience littering the cobblestones, sampling fruits at the farmer’s market, turning their ears to the wind, laughing like baboons, and being sweet as clementines. And where is my valentine? This morning I made a spinach omelet, a large Tervis of coffee, and played a Youtube fight between Sugar Sean O’Malley and Khashakyan, who got punched out in the first. The guy who left me his den also left a bottle of Dave’s Gourmet Hot Sauce that claimed to be hottest in the universe, and since the guy wasn’t coming back I put a dollop of it on my plate, cautiously, just in case. I smelled it. My nose hairs singed. I put it on a bite of omelet. It felt like I swallowed bees. Sweet fled my pores like they were fire sprinklers. I needed water, which I got after finishing my omelet minus the devil juice. Hell, I felt like a dragon temporarily, fuming at the taste buds. Only if I could conjure that fire in my mouth for something worth bruising for. I’m seeking adrenaline and zen, contradictions and good times. I guess that’s my approach to life: trail blaze, keep moving, hustle for money along the way, write for amusement, and if it’s good enough maybe find an audience too. There’s no crime in profiting from your talents or poisons, a thousand eyes, a whisper towards the fantasy, a watermelon joint on my lips, low eyes, low blood pressure, a demeanor as smooth as creek water, to be okay whatever being is, to be in the speeding stampede with hot metal by my cheeks and mountains turning pink on the horizon— Can the Flat Irons feel all our eyes looking towards them at dusk?—  sunfire dulling to moonshine, night settling, and a town turned liquid.

I Gathered My Teeth and Shed My Skin

I left Tallahassee. It took three days of driving, but I shot my bucket into the middle of America in the foothills of the Flat Irons. And now what? In a letter, my mother told me that she hoped I’d find what I was looking for, but I’m not looking for anything. Survival maybe? I just had to get out of my hometown. I was staring in reflections, seeing geography that wasn’t there, so I saved up and fled like a prison escapee. I can barely breathe in this altitude, but it’s magic and I can’t hate that. I suppose I came here to write, lose the distractions and get lonely with my dog, find a spark in me, or a shot of adrenaline, but I’ve been calm. I've felt like a worm. The best writing is truthful and I’ve been a liar lately, so now that I'm barely breathing maybe I can find some truth. I have time to think not every person gazing on the horizon has. I have Apple music, Netflix, and legal weed now too, but I still feel like I’m breaking the law. I’m huddled in the fourth story of a sublet feeling all too green to find wisdom in my gut. I hope this lacking quality isn’t due to a lack of alcohol. It’s just, when I drink I feel a song in my chest and typing is like playing the piano. Birds are whistling outside. The rush of traffic sounds like waves. My shutters are drawn. I’m staring at a picture of me and my mom ahead the Gulf of Mexico. I’m pushing my limits typing for a sliver of divinity I don’t think I’ve ever believed in. Who will listen to a confused rant? I could write all night and lose sleep reminiscing Kerouac sentences I’ll never recreate. My confidence is a seesaw. I’m rolling over my sentences like an alligator with a deer clutched in it’s jaws. Maybe I sink to high. Maybe I maybe too much. I should probably go out into the world, pull my pants down, and sprint through traffic for freedom sake, no? It would be arrest, yes. And I don’t want to go back to Hudspeth County Jail where the guards fuck in the pantry and take three hours to walk ten steps down the hall with bale bondsman numbers. I think I’m melting. I think I need septic shock or divine intervention. I need God to grab me by the acorns and say he’s here. I need my dog to live forever. I’m not selling this shit to anyone. Seriously, if I keep up I’ll deteriorate into feeding birds in the park, talking about how happy come together we are when I keep a knife in my pocket. I still shout at people on the freeway. I try to be nicer, but damn I am ugly. My soul makes foul sounds. I search for ways to suffer and alienate myself wherever there is good ambiance when I should go out and smile and wink at appropriate times. There are mountains stabbing clouds, bars, panhandlers, and a few unrecognized phobias I’d like to uncover. The lint roller is on my desk corner and I'm easy in my chair. Earlier, I saw a wall mural with instructions on how to make a dragon fly out of clay. Wouldn’t that make me God? Or a Disney Imagineer? I read they cloned some monkeys in China on the internet, and I’m wondering if it’s true. My lips have been chapped since I arrived. I wonder how the altitude will affect my dog’s health. I wonder when my mom will live her own life and be selfish, and why my dad is selfishly living his own life. I’ve been having swells in my eyelids that I don’t understand, but I let build looking for the kamikaze. I am just allergic. It is turning night. The soft blue is outside my window and the scene is narrowing in. Tunnel vision is on the back of my head. You hear a rattle snake and a bright light surrounds my silhouette. There’s a stream of smoke, a howl, and my selfishness. I swallow and try to think of what to trace. A smell is in the air. I have picked up my teeth and shed my skin. Blood is on my lips. The world is crying through radio waves and wild frequencies. The blue birds are delivering more sad news in the evening, but in the morning they will bring puppies and good jokes. They will unleash the commentators on us all and turn the villain into fun while reducing the hero to grey hairs and alopecia. Fuck them. Have they no dignity in their underwear? Why do my grandparents call me when we have nothing in common? It is a mystery that they care, but I am so appreciative that I try to think of things to say while they ask me about this new country. I tell them the architecture is very modern, the air is thin, it’s hard to walk up the stairs, the view is grandiose, but I don’t provide any good imagery. The most I come up with are the homes look like glass shelves. They say okay and “We love you.” I hang up and hope they are well. I don’t feel capable of loving like them. I think I have too much to achieve, but I know these puffs of smoke are no guarantee. Simply, I'm a contradiction pushing forward for the high white notes Thompson said Fitzgerald spoke of. "Say something important,” I tell myself. Indent the mountains with your hand on the country’s jugular. Go to the strip mall and walk around surveying for outcasts, the rainbow community, those with dirty nails, slunk smoke spitters with raccoon tails and giant backpacks. Bite the brick. Skin your elbow. Talk to yourself, you crazy motherfucker. Calm down with the language. It doesn’t suit you. Jeans and a t-shirt do well. Calling your mother once a week might. Stop being embarrassed you can’t love her as much as she loves you. Get to a vista point and scratch your head. Take a piss into the wind. And please, try to take deeper breaths.

Love, Violence, and those Outcasts too

I’m nothing but a smidgen of man crawling out of The Hole for adrenaline and fascination, wondering about the future for myself, my family, the girls I’ve fucked, my country, and humanity, although I will probably die only a few inches of knowledge further away from where I am now. If anything, life is dictated by a set of forces and circumstance, a plethora of things evading comprehension, but love and violence certainly are two of them, and nothing is more American than that. My understanding primarily comes from searching recollections for a cue on what will be, scanning for patterns and synchronization, Google, and what I read under the bluebirds belly.

Rumors were several cruisers had surrounded a home in the neighborhood earlier in the day to take a man to jail. He had arrived home on lunch break to slapping echoing throughout his home and found his wife getting fucked in their bed, so he grabbed a pump shotgun and chased the bare philanderer through the living room out the foyer to the open breeze, where he grazed his hind side with a righteous blast in the front yard. I was in elementary school when I heard my parents detail this story in the kitchen, and it’s always stuck in my mind. When another man’s love is stolen, there’s no tellin’ the lengths he’ll go revengin’. I feel like that’s something Johnny Cash would say. That’s part of the America I know, a series of anti-heroic warped mementos glorifying the rush, flirting with lost love, trying to make it independently— a country rooted to Slavery, the Gold Rush, Woodstock, and now a more modern hush— a paranoia of domestic implosion, a slender, unspoken fear you can feel on your nape in malls, theaters, schools, and Waffle House.

I originally caught whiff of this fog in first grade. My brother, Wesson, was born on September 6th, 2001. I held him while my mom slept in her hospital bed. And five days later two planes crashed into two towers, one into a shape, and one in Pennsylvania. I was in Ms. Angel’s class when the airwaves became visible. I didn’t know it then, but I was looking at the DNA of humanity, a composition of atrocities and beauty consistently shedding.

Violence honed in like a looping vulture as I grew. My father taught me how to shoot and took me hunting with him during the season. Eventually, it became my time. We woke up early and we sat in a shooting house on the edge of his friend, Cardew’s poppy field before the sun rose. When light came, a herd of whitetail meandered into the shade of the forest line, where the light kisses woods and beyond’s mystic. “Shoot that doe, right there.” My dad said, pointing to the middle of the herd.

Their heads hung in the grass, grazing. I jutted the barrel out the window and placed the crosshairs on a whitetail’s shoulder. My heart whispered in my ears. The whitetail lifted its head, chewing seeds. I pulled the trigger. The body fell. All the deer scattered and vanished in the forests cover. Smoke dissipated from the barrel into the wind. White fur peaked through the grass. “You got one buddy… You got your first kill.” My dad’s voice shook excitedly and he patted my back. “Not the one I pointed at, but that’s fine… You done good.”

We climbed down from the shooting house and walked up to limp doe. The dew-speckled the grass shimmered across the field. The sun singed the shade. Steam crawled from the bullet hole torn in the shoulder. “Go over next to it and lean down for a photo,” my dad said.

I walked over. The tongue tasted the grass. I kneeled, grabbed the ears, and put my knee on its ribcage. Blood spread through the mud. Two nubs rested on its skull barely poking through the fur. “I don’t think this is a doe,” I said.

My dad hung the camera around his neck and stood, speculating with his eyes squinted. I held the limp head up for him to see. “That’s a button buck.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” I asked.

“Yes, but no one will know. We’ll skin it fast. It was an accident. You did good.” He took the photo. I let go of the ears and the head plopped in the dirt.

My father magnetized the memento of my first kill to the refrigerator at home. Does that make me a murderer before I got to the age of ten? We ate the meat. The action stuck. I still hunt today. Was I taught cruelty, ruined by my father?

I grew up in the countryside biking to my friend’s homes on the weekends, and when we weren’t meeting at someone’s house we met at the local holding pond. It was our coliseum, where we exposed our elbows and let blood flow until a mom forced Neosporin on our open wounds. Dirt was always in my fingernails. I’ve lost most of the finer details of those days, but not the summer of fights. We all met in the holding pond in the heat and shine, and Feral held out two pairs of MMA gloves. “Who wants to fight?” He asked. Everyone wanted to. And everyone did.

“What are the rules?” Jackson asked.

“Just stop when you’re done,” said Feral.

I was paired against Skid. We stood across from each other and strapped the gloves around our hands. The insides were sweaty and damp from the other boys’ hands. Feral stood a few feet away on the boundaries of an imaginary ring and yelled, “Fight!”

I’d never thrown a punch, but the first time I connected one to Skid’s cheek was a whirlwind of exhilaration. I jabbed Skid a few times on the nose. Then he tackled me and pinned me in the grass. Sugar ants grabbed hold of my legs. I held Skid’s arms between my armpits so he couldn’t punch me, but he slipped out and raised his fist, eclipsing the sun, to come back down on my face with the other following suit. I bucked and squirmed taking hits. My ears turned hot. With a good throw, I tossed his balance off of me onto his side. I stood to him still in the dirt. Simply scared to be the punching bag again, I repetitively hammer fisted his face into the sod. Jackson pulled me off. Blood ran out of Skid’s nostrils and tears fell from his ducts.

“Whoa, we got all of that on camera,” said Feral.

Jackson asked Skid if he was okay and he nodded his head. Feral walked over replaying the video on his phone. He was also the only one with a camera phone at the time.

“Damn, Charlie. You got your ass kicked,” said Feral.

“What? Y’all pulled me off at the end.”

“Look at the video.” Feral said holding the phone out. It was nothing to be proud of either way. I walked over to Skid and leaned over, holding my hand out.

“All good?” I asked.

“Good.” Skid said. We spit in our palms and shook. My eye felt heavy. Feral told me I had a shiner. Later, the mirror did too. But appearance didn’t matter, the gloves switched many hands in the passing summer and we found independence in the holding pond through a fury of fists and late night games of tag below fruit bats racketeering through the night sky.

I had enough love from my mother to never be a worry, I suppose. She loved me through soccer. I played from kindergarten to the end of high school, addicted to going shoulder to shoulder, the glory from winning, the competition, the lack of restriction. I walked in games angry to play, unhinged in a weird, focused anger, all nerve, excitement, and instinct like a dog that catches wind of a jackrabbit. I was in a mixture of primal action and strategy, breaths, shouting, kicking, pushing, while my mom screamed like a banshee from the bleachers. She paid fat sums of change for me to play on a travel team, driving across the armpit of the Southeast to different tournaments on the weekends, paying for my food, hotels, gas, miscellaneous giant pretzels, and tickets to the newest Harry Potter movie. I became captain of the high school team, which she took pride in by spamming her Facebook friends with the news. After I graduated, she gifted me a quilt of old tournament shirts, a sentimental reminder of our time together.

And how did my upbringing affect me? I bought a revolver and put a scope on it, ditched my faith, and sold drugs when I got to college, always to think “sorry mom” when I touched the money in my pocket. Was I set up with ruffian tendencies? I was just looking for a free way to smoke and a badass gun to hunt with. I still heard my father’s advice in the woods— “Point the barrel up. It’s not a joke your holding. Don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you’re gonna shoot”— and his guidance in the Gulf of Mexico— “Look over your shoulder before you cast. Don’t reel too fast. Work the bait through the water.”

I never looked to maim anyone. Where’s the split? Do we have answers for those outcasts running amok with ARs, minivans, and Youtube channels? Or what about the man that wandered into Strozier Library with a pistol and a death wish as me and many other students studied for final exams? I don’t remember the names of the victims in Parkland, Fl, but I remember Nikolas Cruz. His blank gaze was deadpan on my screens for days. Why is the news selling his story more than the victims? Why is tragedy bought more than the elated punchline?

Now, I sit in the corner of restaurants so I can see the entrance, I look for exit signs in auditoriums, and I haven’t been to AMC in years, although that could be another issue altogether. I’m confused towards the rogue motives plaguing people. If we put a leash on the all the beast’s barrels and tentacles will we control it? I keep in mind the pound is always in business, some dogs being repeat visitors. Do we reverse after the candlelight vigil and memorial? Arian news anchors yell at the comedians for being plastic and ugly, although they are smiling and really being quite polite. No one understands the entertainment, but they’re waiting for it’s scheduled time slot. When will bullets be in a story below my feet again, and where will they hit? I am coping hopelessly. The attention is on hot metal and gunpowder, but someone is sniffling behind the walls as we speak. Listen. Did you hear the hammer pull?

American Youth Lost

So I'm starting this blog and that's about as far as I've made it in the decision process. I'm starting this blog. I don't know what it's going to be about or if it's really got potential to gain much notoriety, but I wonder if there is an audience out there for what I have to say. That's really why these things exist, for a more in-depth viewpoint on something. Usually, some honed in topic like "Pregnancy Tips for Moms," "My Travel Blog," "Confessions of a Webcam Model Dominatrix Vampire," really, the usual. And these people have audiences, or at least the delusion of an audience that they write to. I assume, often, that I'm operating under the same delusion: people will care what I have to say, that my writing is a decent effort, and my mother loves me. I know one of those is right and the rest is pollen in the wind. At least, I hope. I've got a pack of beer, a little weed with me, and I've just downed a pot of coffee so I'm fueling to full extent, farting and pulsing. I hit my dog earlier in the parking lot because he ran away from me while I was mesmerized by the reflection of headlights in the apartment complex's lake, real bleeding streamers, elegant and blissful. When the sucker bolted, slave to rodent bloodlust, I called, but didn't see him and took off myself. He came from behind a car a few seconds later and I spanked him on the ass. I don't need anyone to tell me I'm a monster. I felt revolted by my actions. And I don't need anyone to tell me I'm being an oversensitive dog owner either. When a dog goes straight for the neck of an angry heffer charging you he deserves a heist's worth of beef jerky and to never be on leash again for life, no matter what crap apartment rules or shitty, swervy motorist tenants are present, which is the exact reason I freaked. I don't want some suburb asshole to slam my buddy and sue me for the damage on their BMW. I tell myself not all people are like that. But some definitely are, and in this country today I'm not taking any chances on the people that park horizontally through three parking spaces.

I guess what I'm figuring out right now is this thing is gonna be a confessional. I was thinking lifestyle genre, but now I'm opting towards confessional of a young American trapped within miscellaneous fascinations, suburb bred, given antlers and potatoes at the ripe age of 5. That's me. And a good pen name too, I'll need to be incognito so those Christian relatives of mine don't go into coronary when they find out I might not have enough fingers for the drugs I've done, but that was all for curiosity and an occasional real good time, there's nothing to worry about. My habits fall into smoke mainly. I only dabble in swallowing the hornet's nest. I'll try to keep this whole experience as raw as possible. When you see signs of latex abandon ship. This blog isn't worth it anymore. I've realized I'm losing grip. I've begun this awful life stage of floating between the tips of so many tantalizing opportunities resting within an emerging Spirit, and becoming stagnant in Tallahassee, collecting water and mosquito eggs. Gross. I've got a lot of thoughts and a few hobbies that sustain me when I'm not breaking for money or chasing adrenaline, and with that maybe a convo will open up. Maybe I'll dig deep enough to find some hidden truth, some glimmer of gold from the American Nightmare, this treadmill of an existence. Hell, if I didn't need money I probably wouldn't be doing this blog. Say I'm good at it, there might be a monetary gain in the future, and wouldn't that be swell. I'd have vomited all sparkly for y'all and got a slice of pie too. But, don't worry. I could stay working my same job for twenty years, earn raises, and never leave the humidity, bite a curb, or catch an STD. What a life that would be.

How do we make sense of this insanity? These temporary great motions felt in the belly, forces beyond control, beautiful vista points of waterfalls and infinities of evergreen that you pull over on driving in mountain ranges, or even the neon brilliance cast on skin in a Miami strip club. You have to admire the spectacle, the straight range this world provides, despite its volumptious skewed crowd. No matter the despicable mass shootings, the political show, Jersey Shore's reunion, or that even Canada is not safe from this craze sweeping over the land. We are in the shifting tide. Do you feel it? The air is smeared with glitter and gunpowder. And don't forget, we'll all be losing something when the Big Flip happens. It's just a matter of time. Jesus works at Starbucks. Our most reliable news source is a ghost. The internet is turning into a race. All the money is evaporating. Hallelujah! I think that's where I'll find my niche, centered in the storm, where I could say I feel the wind in my hair, but I shaved my head last week and haven't looked in the mirror as much because of it. There is a failing here, in an effort to communicate I have muddled all my intentions. Which really are noble to an extent. I want to write. I want to put something out there. I want to prove my existence. Isn't that what we are all doing? Building a monument to the life we lived, a legacy, a family, a career, a high? Finding some reason to entertain ourselves no matter how deranged we've become? This blog would be my ball if I was in a cell. I'm entertaining myself, waiting to be nipped. I wish there was more to it. If I'm wrong, I apologize. I can only say don't take me seriously so that you're not lead astray too. If there is a path we should be on, it may well be overgrown in kudzu, lost to the wilderness. What a shame. The moon is high. I'm drunk. And all the strong movements that lead me to sit under an artificial light tonight are beginning to flee to the balcony. Forgive me, if I have sinned. I am not burning, and I've missed any clue that may have been found by a better man.