Today, I am unable to find the focus to write or do anything productive besides horse around. Tomorrow is going to be a day of writing however, so look for either a new story or the next chapter in my thinly veiled story!

New friends lost in the foggy blue of midnight
Trees crawl up and hang above like great ancestor thoughts
I wish for a different stream and a lot less pollution

Self Portrait

I am the never changing face of America
Consuming anything that gleams forbidden
Slaughtered cow, pig and sheep
I am the painfully average American Male
Bathing in polluted bathwater oil slicks
Drinking the sharp tart of Acid Rain
I am the blank and wide eyed face of John Q. Public
My environmental woes hide under sweat shop shirts
Buried deep in the thick fat of moral ambiguity
I am the embodiment of the Human Locust
The ever sucking deer tick
The black plague of greenery and beauty
I am the lecherous maggot of a dying World
Feeding as deep wounds are gouged for cell phones
Feeding as the future goes up in a cloud of exhaust
I am the voice of righteous indignation
Screaming to be heard by gilded ears
Whispering in quiet defeat
I am the ever burning Generational guilt
Crying for the mistakes of my parents
Sobbing for the mistakes of my own
I am the brightening face of hope
Protecting my Mother against carbon bullets
Standing stoic against the quickly gathering smog
I am the rising turbulent winds of change

Believe yourself
instead of believing those teachers
who dig and dig and dig
deep into the catacombs and fetid sewers of
Yeats
Whitman
Updike
Dickinson and Poe
Believe yourself
not the colorful driftwood of
PHDs
Profs
Deans
Shit-slingers and Critics
Believe what you feel
Not what they know

Small

He was born in a small house
down a small dirt road
of a small country town
in a small state
of an even smaller country
He had a big imagination
that housed big adventures
and created big plans
for a big future
Then someone told him
that he was too small
to possibly dream so big
so he stopped dreaming
and shrank down
until all
that was
left
was-

I muse and you shudder
I can just barely see
the tiny typhoons pouring over your skin
You wonder aloud
Can this be all there is?
And I answer silently
Yes.

Late nights in growing spring heat
Fake ambient noise fills the stale air
I wish I could fall asleep

A Bedtime Story

He sat down next to me in a dirty old flannel shirt and coughed loudly. He placed a weathered and well worked hand on my head and breathed a crackling sigh.
“Christ on Sunday, I wish I was still a smoker…so then scout, I’ll be guessin’ you want to hear a story. Like the ones your dad tells, eh? Well seein’ as you’re all snuggled under those blankets I suppose I should tell you one. Let’s see… how old are you Tommy? Seven right? Yeah yeah…seven… Alright, tell you what Tommy…I’m going to tell you the last story I ever told your father when he was a kid… I think he was right around seven…Anyway, here goes.
Once upon a time there was a little boy with yellow hair and eyes as blue as the sea. He had everything he could ever want in life; a home, two parents who loved him and a dog named Spot. Spot was a good dog, full of energy and life. He loved the little boy and the boy loved him. One sunny day, Spot and the boy were playing outside by the road, even though his mother had told him time and time again to never, ever play near the road. Anyway, the day was sunny and bright and the boy was playing fetch with his dog. The boy would throw a tennis ball to Spot and Spot would jump up and snatch it right out of the air and the boy would laugh and Spot would bring the ball back. Everything was going fine until the boy threw the ball just a bit too hard. Spot ran after it, straight into the road and under the milkman’s wheel. Poor Spot. Poor boy. He cried and cried and cried and there was nothing his parents could do. They took the boy out of school and he lay in his bed all day, cradling Spots collar and crying and crying. His mother became worried and took time off of work to stay home and look after the poor boy. One day, as the boy lay in his bed crying and crying, there was a knock at the door. The little boy heard a man’s voice talking to his mother and, being a curious tyke, wiped his nose and scurried down the stairs to investigate like only a little boy can. He crept into the kitchen and gasped! The milkman was in the kitchen with his mother, kissing her closely and slowly. The little boy was sad and confused, so he crept back upstairs and pretended to fall asleep. The boy lay in that bed for days, listening for the milkman’s arrival. He came everyday at the same time, and every day the boy pretended to be asleep. One day was different though. One day the little boy heard his father bang open the door and cheerfully shout: ‘I’m home! And look what I found on the way over!’ The little boy heard the yip of a puppy dog and his heart soared. His feet had scarcely hit the floor when the yelling began. He heard the milkman yelling and his father yelling and his mother yelling and the puppy barking and he became scared. He crawled back into his bed and put the sheets over his head and clutched Spots collar close to his chest. He finally fell asleep, and when he awoke the house was silent. He crept downstairs and found his father, all alone at the dinner table with red eyes and foul smelling breath. He looked at the little boy and said ‘Mommy went away for awhile. It’s just you and me for awhile, OK buddy?’ and the boy looked at his father and asked ‘What about the puppy?’ His fathered smiled and told him it had gone back where it had come from, that this home was no place for such an innocent and lovely thing like a puppy. The little boy’s life was ruined. He grew up and never saw his mother again. He went to a state college, received a degree in economics and spent his entire life behind a desk working for a jackass named Mr. Johnson. All of that, just because he played near the road.
There, wasn’t that a good story?” He laughed and turned out the light. “Good night Tommy."

Typical.

“Oh sweet Jesus, what have we here boys?
Some lost stray mongrel cat
Dressed up in a bum’s finest attire?
Doesn’t he know where He comes from?
Money and Respect I imagine.
Look at this Faker
This horribly empty shell of honey soaked bourgeois
Somebody please
Slap the stupid out of him and get him a desk to write at
Quickly now, before he gets lost again!”

An Apology Note (From Me to You, Whoever 'You' May Be)

To Whom it May (and May Not) Concern,

I am truly sorry for the way I have been acting as of late. My "creative pieces" are scattered and poorly written...unfortunate products of laziness I must confess. I was, and still am, burned out. I ain't got no steam no' mo', but my stokers are shoveling as fast as they can, and hopefully I'll be shipshape and tearing my way through Microsoft Word soon enough. Thanks for standing by me, those of you who have, and thank you for reading. Keep yr. eyes peeled...something good is a comin' round the bend...I can feel it.

-Stephen, The Guilty Author of This Blog

Quiet spring days
tainted with insurmountable boredom
Exhaustion and mindless staring

Cynicism

"Let us write a poem shall we?
It will be full of metaphors and typical prose!
We will bury the meaning
deep
deep
deep down inside.
Hide it among bits of fluff and pretend angst
It'll be 'real purdy' as the sidewalk bums say.
We can sell it too
Twenty Dollars at least.
So let us write a poem
For the sake of being known."

A Quick Poll

For those of you who have been reading the longer piece, is it worth it to continue writing this piece, or should I move on?

Summer Wishing

The sun is shining
I am outside and barefoot
Please summer, come soon.

Staller

Nothing to post yet, still working on chapter four! Sorry again fellas, but I don't want to rush it.

Chapter Three: Caroline and the Roadkill Bums

It was only two hours from Johnsville, my hometown, to Boston, so I pushed the gas in with level pressure, drove to the highway and fell into a mesmerizing speed of seventy. I popped a tape into the cassette and as he wailed out of my worn out speakers I laughed to myself and thought back to when Caroline had given me the tape. It had been the summer before our junior year, and she was tearing her way through an eight track phase. For three months she had believed the cassesette to be the pinnacle of musical recording, and in a terrible fit of vodka fueled madness, tossed all of her modern day, “digitified, demonified, demoralized” compact disks and thrown them, discus style, deep into the burning heart of a summer bonfire. They curled and cracked with a popping and then she turned to me and threw her arms around my neck, kissed me, and then led me on a wild, cockeyed dance around the swirling, burning ash and smoke. She came out of her insanity several months later after her tape deck ate one too many recordings of Pete Seeger. She sold that player and the remainder of her tapes to a shady junk dealer for ten dollars. She kept two tapes, a Hank Williams and a Stevie Ray Vaughn. She gave the Hank Williams to me and she ripped the cuts out of the other and tied the stretchy pieces of music to her hair. She looked like a wild woman in some apocalyptic record store, scrimping and scrounging desperately amongst the rubble, searching and searching for forgotten chords and faded notes. I was crying then, my stomach burning in longing for her and for a bit of booze. I pulled over to the shoulder of the road and flicked on my hazards. I was blind and writhing with misery in my seat. I ripped Hank Williams from the player and shoved him deep down inside my pocket to rest between two nickels and a faded photograph of Caroline staring out and smiling at who I used to be.
I sat there in my seat, with the cars blasting by me and my hazard lights blinking in perfect rhythm to the beat of the highway. I realized then, in a moment of miserable, withdrawn lucidity that I was lost. I had no future behind me in Johnsville, and I had no future ahead of me in Boston. I was tempted to give up, to bolt from the car and kneel on the hard asphalt and scream to God and Jesus that I give up, that they can take me and throw me somewhere cold and dark, anywhere as long as it isn’t here, as long as it isn’t now but I didn’t. I gritted my teeth and straight down the road and gunned myself back onto the highway, driven only by gasoline and desperation. I knew I wouldn’t find whatever I was looking for in Boston with Ada, but I had nothing else to do and nowhere else to go. I tuned the radio to a classic rock station and found a quiet piece of temporary zen.
After about an hour on the highway I came drove by two guys in orange vests waving and waving their arms. I had never picked up hitch hikers before and I felt a wave of paranoia sweep through me as I pulled over to the side of the road. I had heard the stories, of murderers, thieves, rapists and convicts on the run, but I shoved these far from thought and put on a friendly face. They ran up to the truck and one of them threw a burlap sack with something fleshy and heavy into the back of the truck. My stomach dropped as I imagined the horrific contents of the bag and by the time they opened the cab door and crammed themselves inside I was sweating and sick throughout my bones. They smelled terrible, and looked worse for wear. The one nearest to me flashed me a toothless smile, while his partner, a fortyish something hick of a man in a beaten baseball cap spoke up, his voice thick with mountain drawl.
“Well now, thanks a bunch amigo! Names Olly and this tarkative fella is Kenny.”
Kenny laughed low and stupidly.
“Names Jack. Where you guys headed?”
“Oh no where’s too far. Just the next exit ‘sall. Ain’t more than…five mile I’d say.”
I shifted nervously in my seat and pulled out onto the highway. I kept thinking back to the truck bed, back into that horrid sack. It was a mile of silence before I caved in and asked in a voice that dripped with fear: “So fellas…What was in that sack you threw into the back?”
Olly smiled. “Ain’t nothin’ but a couple of road kill bug.”
“Roadkill bugs?”
“Oh yeah, you know. Small bits of road kill…possums and skunk most times,” he snorted and spit out the window, “they ain’t no good to eat, but sometimes we get lucky and find ourselves a deer or a fresh kayote. Those ain’t bugs; those are the cream o’ the crop if they ain’t too rotted through or nothin’.”
I felt an immense pressure fall of my chest and my nervous sweat turned itself off. I chuckled to myself, “Dinner for you fellas huh?” Olly laughed. His laugh was high pitched and crackly, like a witches cackle. “Oh yassir, you got it right. It’s the best way to eat I tell ya. Free as free gets. The cops don’t like us scroungin’ on the highway though, so we stole ourselves these orange work vests to make it seem like the state sent us or somethin’. It works almost every time, but sometimes they stop and ask us what we are doin’ walkin’ the highway with no car or work crew in sight. That don’t happen too often though, lucky fer us. But yep,” he sniffed again and pulled a cigarette butt out from behind his ear. Kenny lit him a match and they started smoking the last flakes of tobacco. “We bums, that’s fer sure, but we ain’t no regular bums. We’re road kill bums, and the best in the whole damn world I tell ya. Ain’t no life better than the one Kenny and I got.” Kenny smiled at me again, glaze eyed and slack jawed. Olly pointed up the road towards an oncoming exit. “There it is amigo! Home sweet home. You just drive down that ramp and let us off on the side if ya don’t mind.”
I did as he said and stopped by the edge of a big green forest. As they climbed out of the cab and Kenny grabbed their sack from the bed, Olly asked me if I wanted to join them for dinner that night. “It’s the bottom half of a Kayote, the best part I tell ya.” Kenny stuck his hand into the sack and held up the mashed up haunches of a recently dead coyote. I politely declined, gave them some money from my jar and drove away. They waved goodbye, and as I pulled back onto the highway I looked back towards the Roadkill Bums as they bumbled off towards the woods with half of a coyote and a crisp five dollar bill.

Stall-o-matic

So sad to be stalling like this...I hope I'm building up to much anticipation...sorry fellas!

Still Stalling

I'm sorry to continue to stall, but I do not wish to rush this...and now, a haiku:

Oh sunny weather
how good you feel on my skin.
Will you stick around?