FHC Fridays

Yesterday I sat down on the curb outside a grocery store under a lukewarm sun as cars drove by and pumped me full of expended gasoline. The stains on my jeans camouflaged me into the gum splatter cement and it was only my cigarette smoke that gave me away to the mothers carrying children by the hand, the father’s and bastards buying beer in their golfing clothes, the girls in too-shorts and flip flops smacking away the last days of the summer. Dusty clouds had covered the chilly sky all day and for once working outside required me to wear a shirt. Look at that asshole and his Ford truck, shiny black and new, chrome running board that’s never seen shit packed treads on the bottom of a boot. I flicked my cigarette in it’s direction, at least it went farther than my thoughts, and put my hands behind me on the cement. I wanted to drink.

misdirection

Black or was it brown? Memory’s single light flickered and swung across her face covered by her hands. Green or blue eyes peered out between her fingers. If color exists only in our minds what else lies in wait only on the inside?

Mirror Mirror on the face.

The mirror. The mirror always showed his reflection, proved that light was still bouncing off of him and that it might enter someone's eye. He was observable even if no one was looking. It would never do for him to shout as he always spoke barely above a whisper, an ironic side effect of his fear of never being heard. And the cut of his clothing was along the same lines. There were no brightly colored prints hanging in his closet, no checkered shorts, or ripped blue jeans, there were grays and browns, blacks and whites, blues and greens, and two red shirts which he never wore.
The mirror. Standing before the mirror in the morning he looked at himself to make sure that there was nothing out of place, nothing out of the ordinary in the way that he looked, nothing that would cause people to stop and stare take a second glance remember his face and wonder about him long after they had walked past him. He made sure that his shirt was tucked in, but not too tight. That his fly wasn't down or a nose hair peeking out. He checked his hair to make sure that it had some style but not too much fearing that a bowl cut could be just as memorable as a mullet. He stared into his own eyes, scarrily similar to everyone else's in their failure to reflect the internal thoughts of what they saw.
The mirror. Reflecting everything the mirror thought nothing. It's true that if you got really close to a corena you could see your own convex face translucently staring back at you, but most of the light was taken in and reflected back and forth sometimes penetrating the brain where it was possible that it just might be part of some infinite reflection, never making it's way back out without being translated into something else: a word, a judgement, a look, a gesture.

Currency for Sale by a Penny Pincher

With my thumb and index finger I held two sides of a copper coin together. Kept them together as I walked down the wet cement sidewalks towards the pink lights of the bar up ahead. Pushed them tight against each other as I climbed the black and white squared stairs to the upstairs. Sitting down I lost concentration as I ordered another drink, let the coin slip, a millimeter crawled between my fingers its many legs shucking and jiving to the clink clinking of empties on the glass table top. Three burgers I ate, two ales I drank, and one night shifted into a blur.
I ambled toward the jukebox shouting Dinosaur Jr. through its ears as its maw opened for money, but it wouldn't take my pressed together low-fi coin.
A face to a monument, a face to a monument, a back face to the service entrence. And I danced with one hand occupied with the pressure of holding everything together against the garage guitars and the loose drum slaps.
I danced with one hand held high over my head against the rushing crowds that threatened to bop in, that jostled against my alabaster coat, that smiled as the beer rushed from their mouths to their stomachs to their heads.
Eyelids waved from a distance, pupils looked from afar, my coin held high dropped into my pockets and only a miracle held it together as I found it wrong side up the next morning.

all quiet on the Dog front

Delicious. I raised my hand among the rest, as the man on stage said " - ".
White robes and caftans sprinkled through in groups of ones and twos.
"Did you hear?" the person to my left.
prodded by an elbow-arm stuck to a chest.
good evening, the tongue felt thick, clicking on good. a tar paper runway surrounded by scraggly fields of half tall grass and shrub nothings planted by an invisible hand.
"What moves you?" and I stumbled over people sitting on the ground on blankets marking spaces that weren't there an hour before. Is this the edge? But there were more people still swaying to the marshall stack sound. I was in the canyon again, the grass shrouded walls poked up infront of me lining the background of port-a-potty's disgusting blue in the summer heat. Throwing up I spit out my last. Remained empty on the nowhere path. I shut my eyes against the searing sun gorged up from space below.

This is life, this is listening, this is now and it's happening right here in nowhere quadrant universe sector bajillion. On whose authority?

lemon aide that cool refreshing drink

august: fueled by sunset desire's dream of following the road into town and then out the other side without stopping at the lights or drinking another beer or getting anything close to a breath of the corn dog air we sped through, dimming the lights with our trance like transmission.
yesterday: listening to the sounds of sawing through boards that made shapes to be nailed together to hold us in i couldn't help but think of moving and wondering if i ever would again.
may: falling through rosebuds that hadn't thought of growing I was sure that i felt secure in the lessons i had learned in the beer gardens, at folded tables with wobbly chairs, and scrawny tablecloths full of the stains of gone-by years. however, it wasn't the case at all, the ground was still soft, the spring still warm, and a rock the size of a chicken egg split open my head.
thursday: hearing the sounds of vipers we quickly picked up our impromptu picnic and headed for the sandy rocks lining the canyon, there was something out there, either in front of us or to the side to the back somewhere a thing was coming up inside our personal space. I spilled some lemon-aide on the parched tongue of land we walked upon its taste-bud-cracks sucked it up. You smiled as you ran not knowing if it was into or out of danger.

ask yourself a question and be still, not looking into the future nor gazing at the past, listen for the answer provided by the now.