Highway Miles

The guardrail is a blurry silver ribbon in my peripheral vision
And the same ten trees are running the same marathon as my car.
Sticky clumps of cloud hang static in the sky.
Fluffy and opaque, they lead me onto an odd train of thought.
Chug-chug-chug-what if-what if-what if

What if we were living in a sandwich.
This highway is a crack in a slice of crispy toast.
Is there another piece of bread on the other side of these clouds?
The people there looking up at the same marshmallow fluff in the middle.

Or what if we were hanging off of someone else’s sky.
NYC is their Orion, Hong Kong the north star.

“Look! There is a meteor shower tonight!”
“Our hearts go out to all those whose homes were lost in the forest fire last night”


Why does anything I write have to make sense.

The nonsensical and uninterrupted whine of the oboe is an over-sweetened tang that barely moistens my rattling eardrums. And meanwhile the Moses grass blows by, but still fastened in that pond, tickling my retinas with its cotton-tail tips. But that tree is hurting my head. It has given up and allowed its limbs to sag and lick the ground. That hut is mysterious. Maybe the musician with the oboe is hunkered in there, in the secret things of this life. Like trying to image what a new color would look like or that my children are actually with me where ever I go. Microscopically of course. Glowing glass gushing light particles that are being eaten by that candle dripping on this white counter. All of a sudden oddly colored pinkish walls climb the air on both sides of this road. The pedestrian crossing signs are both white and yellow. But the man is always black. Those previous two statements mean nothing, don’t even try. Merely observations. My mind is climbing up that water tower, stabbing it with a screwdriver, which I guess is the first thing that my mind thought to bring to the top of that water tower. But I want the water to bounce to the parched desert and fill the cracks in its tongue. The wide eyed children with the bloated bellies may have some too. If I wasn’t afraid of bumble bees, not saying that I am, would I still heed to the unwritten message on the caution tape? It just flashed past on the beginning of a guardrail. Is this making you dizzy? My mouth is still hairy from my nap. If this is dizzily tangling with your thoughts just be happy I do not have a hyperactive disorder. Or any disorder. They haven’t come up with one yet to diagnose me with yet. Is American currency discounted if I am going the other direction? If my eyes are not fast enough to see to the ends of this island, how can my hand be fast enough to paint this changing ocean and stagnate cheetah who is actually oozing over the plains like the slowest of molasses drips because this world is one of those tops with the rainbows on the side and all the colors become one as it whirls. They can’t fool me. That is a organized pile of colored metal, not mountains. Actually it’s a casino. I guess the American Indians are looking back to their roots for their design. And the first thing I see when I enter Canada is a Chinese Restaurant.

Development

A tree with curling arms and leaved fingers
All the houses on this block are all the same.
Identical.
Their blank white faces plead with my creativity and itching eyeballs
Their eyelids with creaky hinges latched tight
Encrusted with conjunctivitis of stucco and secrets.
The secret is no secret. The insides are the same as the outsides.
Identical.
Leave it to Beaver to mold these lives from the same stencil.
His practiced fingers will never find me.
No.
The chainsaw rips through that gnarled trunk and my heart.
Leave that tree be. It was beautiful.

Cavewoman

My nighttime rituals always give me opportunity to think. Ponder non-sensical things. Like these things I do night after night after night after night in front of this same splattered mirror and clogged sink. A women immemorial, draped in animal skin and tearing apart a freshly hunted mammoth would split her gut laughing at me. The soft, white, practically hairless animal, like a pudgy fetal mouse, scrubbing off the blue sparkly powder caked on her eyelids. That cavewoman would take me down in a millisecond. She would fight her way through turmoil and disease, while I am going to the doctor to get my blood tested because I bruise easy. Just some wonderfully colorful splotches on my arms and legs. She would poke them and giggle. After scrubbing all the fake color off my face, I pull the covers off my eyeballs, and put covers on my teeth. I have to keep those teeth in they're beautiful, fake, altered state. I wouldn't want them to shift back into the positions where they grew naturally. What a tragedy that would be. Especially after all that money it took to fix me.

Also, as I peel the contacts from my eyes, I wonder if my art career would benefit from my lack of adequate vision. Paintings blurred, objects and landscapes indistinguishable, all with furry edges and over blended colors. I've always emulated Van Gogh. Maybe I wont have to cut my ear off, just terminally break my glasses. My eyes will be constantly burning, but maybe I might sell a painting. Or two.

The Primer

I am drinking root beer. It is 12:05 am. I gaze down at my belly. It is pot.

It is at times like this, where I am awake in the wee hours of the night, all of my homework assignments but partially finished, that I wonder where my priorities lie. I spent all afternoon working on a mediocre charcoal drawing to be posted before untrained eyes, purely for my own satisfaction of a job done, if not done well. Obviously, this attitude does not extend to my school obligations, as I have settled for a job undone on all my assignments. I would rather write this account, and scramble to translate don Quijote, outline 11-1 and study molecular compounds in the moments before they are due. Therefore pure expression is my motivation. Whether in words or brush strokes, it far out ways any urgent and soon forgotten assignment. How funny it is that personal expression, a thing without a time limit, is prioritized in my momentary life as if the due date is fast approaching. All my life's work must be passed in 4th period. There is no time for history notes before then. In a way, every second of every day is in itself a deadline. Trillions of seconds have gone by that have not been recorded on canvas, or scrap wood in my basement. So the books and binders lay gaping on the table, as my paint-stained fingers drum out this first record, and my contacts dry out on my sleepy eyeballs.