that was a mouthful.

The waves catch me by surprise every single time. Just because there’s sand between your toes and arches and heels and ankles doesn’t obligate the waves to crash all around them. It’s like the Rainbow Fish, with the shiny scales, the crabs and lobsters and jellyfish all staring away. Not that the Rainbow Fish would ever mind, except maybe when she’s shy like she is sometimes and likes to know that the dots connect on the other side of this ugly bridge, with the swampy water stains branded into the casual wood. It’s an adventure of sorts, it is the Never-Ending Day and the dim starlit nights that for some reason you just can’t stop talking about. Which, in all practicality, is annoying when the story must be told over and over, but the point never really seems to poke its head all the way through the clouds. And who could forget those clouds, and the way they shudder right above our heads, nestling into our uninviting hair. It creates a need for better security, a more stable view from an alternate perspective so that the point may, at some other point, slither out for just a quick dance, then to return with an equal amount of velocity. The demographics are desperate, desperately in need of a change, a new flower, a new tomato garden, maybe just a whistle here and a snip snip snip there. But it has to be so much more, so much closer to home, and closer to reality and further and further away from the glass concept of time. Don’t bother telling me that time is an oil drum concept, I know I could prove you wrong in no more than five minutes. Minutes you will waste wondering why you meticulously count seconds and minutes and hand movements and noise! How can anyone hear anything over all that numerical racket.

Losing one’s mind is frequently considered dangerous, but sometimes it’s necessary to leave the realm of comfortable and completely let go, until it is unfortunately once more time to grab hold and take care of business. But the business must be attended to, even in the event of a holiday so misconfigured and backwards that moral ethical philosophy itself would spit on it, and throw the trash from under their mildewy backseat of their car onto the sign announcing the holiday. The trash is definitely rotting, and the holiday is only a few paces behind, so things will soon be lucrative at the Distillery of Disgust. Time to make an investment, perhaps. Maybe a large one even. But no. The refrigerator magnet stuck to your back just keeps pulling you back…and farther away from the “x” next to which your signature belongs. The refrigerator magnets, so all the colors can blend together against a common, lesser skin. The funhouse mirrors twist and turn, throwing off the concentration of all parties involved, forcing the fridge to make that weird buzzing sound it makes when it just wishes it could fall through the floor and disappear into some sort of basement or storage container, preferably of the portable nature. But the waves. They catch me by surprise every single time. I’m never ready for them even though my toes and arches and heels and ankles are filled with sand. All the sand me realize that the dark isn’t nearly right without the stairs that keep the light in fair strands, and that I really should figure out how to wind them into my hair, so that they can stay comfortably and still shed every drop of their brilliance on any interested bystander. How expansive the dark seems when the light moves on to something else. Regrets are nothing but cares you forgot you once cared about, and are best left out of most headlines and memoirs.

Nothing wrong with a mid-day adjustment, never did any harm, with the exception of the reservoirs that may live one day to see the real fall of Atlantis, the fall of this whole entire planet that exists somewhere outside of the smooth walls you wait behind, with a smile so phony that I would put money on it being manufactured by Verizon and shipped overnight to you just so you would never have to actually have a plan. Or a meaning, or purpose, or any sort of importance really. Except for me to change your mind, make you see what I see. I’m telling you that there’s a whole lot of good in tiny tunnels we’d call veins out there, it’s just been muffled and suppressed and intrinsicated. It was mangled in the jaws of a miserable coyote, who was dying for prey and was met with papery disappointment instead.

Incurable disappointment of such gravitational force make it feel like Mt. Rushmore will collapse on top of every major city and squeeze out whatever life remains with the soapy bubbles from the car washing rag. Watching someone slowly propel just a single fingertip over the slipper silver iciness that exists as some crazy chemical symbol, but could just be referred to as chrome. The word sounds in my ears with the faint tink sound that a fingernail on a chrome piece typically performs like an act. I never thought I could learn real muscle from candidates of this kind, but it is natural for me to cross streets without looking and other ridiculous, unnecessary springs that love to pop up when I have finally decided to get some real rest. The grass will be in full bloom by the time I get these gates closed and locked up for sure. It’s the drag of slow feet across a slow patter of linoleum, that may or may not be exactly stain-resistant. The glory of seeing just a single light flicker on, even if it is just a for a second? Reading the dictionary definition as a prologue would have sufficed just fine. Makes life a little easier, easier to stretch from your shoulders to the hanging potted plants, easier to live through the storm that isn’t clearing up, easier to say “Hey fuck it man, you’re just being a huge pussy,” even if it does need to be said in the mirror.

Change is one of those things that comes balled up like hemp, and as it unravels, it seems to coincidentally entertwine everything at their seams. Their seams? What happened to our seams? I almost mastered the stitch, but you told me only spinsters could be seamstresses, which is about as great as walking around with a hula hoop in your skirt. Hopefully, the wind stays steady at my back, hopefully my eyes stay relatively open, and hopefully the sand will never wash out of my toes or my arches or my heels or my ankles. Hopefully, I’ll expect the waves when they crash around me, like I always do.

-LBR