Thursday, January 25, 2018

Deferred

You can't get anywhere lazy,
if there's even somewhere to go,
so you apply oil, heat, and too many
contrasting seasonings to the last of
the three eggs, not exactly what others would
recognize as a scramble, but you get it
down.

Long ago a friend observed that everything
you ever cooked, which wasn't much,
ended up the same color. Brown. You
haven't seen that friend in many years,
not because he insulted your cooking, but
because you lose track of things, because
you lose things, because everything is
loss.

A half empty glass,
glass bottles, coffee cups, clutter
the night stand which is really just
an undifferentiated surface to be defiled.
You should really clean this place.

The past week took the lives of two word-men
who impressed upon you and have been
among the voices in your head for many years-
Joe Frank and Mark E. Smith. It's a little worse
without them.

Two days off work with a broken car -
a tie rod snapped after months of deferred maintenance
causing your left front wheel to turn right against your
will and efforts, thankfully it didn't occur along the 600
miles of highway driving you did that day, some of it
with your daughter in the car - half empty, sure, but
half none-the-less.

Business casual stroll after the tow truck departs
nine or ten miles home as the wet road surface
turns to a skating rink. Who's the one person you call
when everything turns to shit and you need help?
No answer comes immediately. Your brother, sure,
but he's in another state. It's better like this though-
walking, feels good to have distance to close, and
you step off determined.

Call an Uber? Fuck that. You realize quickly that
your night vision isn't what it used to be,
and when cars approach with their high beams blazing,
you are blind, stumbling and slipping a little
cursing a lot through the darkness beyond the edge of the
pavement. There are no sidewalks. Not too much traffic,
and when there are no cars your mind goes where it used to
when you walked all the time. It starts revisiting, bringing faces,
most of them smiling, laughing, funny stories, memories.
There's no one else walking. No one to tell them to.

You could be a ghost out here, but the cold air
stings your face, the heat of your breath steams your glasses,
on-coming headlights blind your eyes, your feet are unreliable
on the ice - ghosts don't deal with shit like this.

When you leave the main road, you get
over an hour without seeing a single car or person. The
stars are out, it's quiet and cold.  You spook a deer, you think,
hearing it crashing through the trees and then the sudden rushing
sound of a swollen brook coursing under the road as you walk in
almost complete darkness.

Your stride returns, but cautiously, on ice.
Unlike your long walking nights before, you can feel your
knee and hip joints. The bell in the Congregational church,
confident it's steeple is bigger than the Catholic's,
 chimes twelve times.

You slide down the frozen street on your shoes.



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