Post-Acid Sunday, Page 2

  sort of day that really could go

  either way. We would wriggle back into

  our skin and search for wayward bits

  of psyche that had sloughed off during

  the protracted darkness. The romance of the

  thing should have killed us; for some

  of us, it still tries. I am

  back at ground zero, doggedly

  scouring the ruins for catharsis.

  I trust that it, too,

  will sear my flesh, but

  will it cauterize the wound?

  He(lium)

  For one whose pockets are

  bulging with random chunks of

  wisdom, he is oddly and

  consistently aghast. Repeating everything he

  says no less than three

  times, he tells me that the best

  defense is an early start; that the

  decision inherent in the act of squatting

  is whether to stand again; that ideas

  are like avocados (only a few are

  truly viable); that it’s better to be

  a mandolin than a guitar (for reasons

  of mobility); that it’s better

  yet to be a balloon,

  whose heaviest thoughts are lighter

  than gravity; that what can

  be listed can be tamed.

  Leave-Taking

  She sports an unlikely pair

  of culottes and, less surprisingly,

  a beret. He opens the

  hatch of her Subaru in

  mid-sentence, and the wind

  teases her cropped hair as she loads

  a sticker-bedecked guitar case. Still holding

  his coffee, he then delivers a one-

  armed hug of nevertheless epic proportions. I

  am not envious of him, exactly, or

  even of her, but of the private

  sheet of music crushed between them. All

  around us, the world howls

  for prestissimo, but in the

  stillness of our orbit of

  three, we are breathing in

  whole notes; aspiring to largo.

  “So, You Haven’t Forgotten Me.”

  When I was a boy,

  I detested working on the

  car with my dad, because

  I couldn’t stomach the grease.

  As a teen, I did

  what I had to do to remain

  mobile, with little appreciation. Now a three-

  time father with hopelessly grimy hands, I

  would give anything for a sunny day,

  a broken Chevy and a few hours

  with my stubborn old man. When he

  was born, everything was steel: the autos;

  the men; even the pennies.

  Tonight, driving the only car

  he can hot-wire, he

  delivers his message: “Just speak

  of me in amazement sometimes.”

  Metaphorically Freaking

  I have abused our friendship

  until he is hollow-eyed

  with strain. I arrive for

  visits uninvited and make him

  carry my luggage, though he

  nurses a limp. I yammer at his

  back as we trudge through town, brandishing

  my smudged agenda. He becomes rabid with

  frustration each time we miss the train,

  though I have no real intentions of

  catching it. I seem incapable of giving

  him the rest he deserves, and I

  begin to dread the day

  when he will throw down

  my bags in disgust and

  stalk off without me, leaving

  me utterly and immutably wordless.

  Fan Fare

  No matter how accustomed you

  become to fame, it must

  be surreal to pull into

  town and see your name

  and likeness broadcast on a

  larger-than-life marquee nestled beside the

  highway; to know that countless thousands consider

  your face each day as they drive

  to work, a sterile place where t-shirts

  to commemorate their agenda are neither printed

  nor sold, and no one screams, or

  applauds, or even really notices. Within this

  commuter’s provincial grasp, though, is

  a workaday solitude you could

  never hope to achieve: a

  quiet anonymity for which you

  would gratefully trade your soul.

  Stapler Fodder

  I am wide-ruled paper

  in the hands of a

  suburban third-grader. I begin

  life nestled with my peers

  in a cheerfully-colored, graffiti-

  free notebook. Tuesday finds me partially removed

  at the perforation: torn, to be sure,

  but tidily. On Wednesday we run afoul

  of a marker and flee, only to

  become hopelessly lost in a remote and

  inhospitable corner of a backpack. By Friday,

  my edges grow raw and shamefully uneven

  as I am unceremoniously ripped

  from the spiral. I shed

  tiny fragments on the floor

  and puzzle over the staggering

  difference three letters can make.

  The Unmistakable Prelude

  Nothing can transport me like

  the rasp of a needle

  lowered onto vinyl—the initial

  hiss and subsequent pops as

  it skips onto the first

  track—as if all sounds I’ve ever

  heard are culled from the lead-in

  groove of a circa 1977 LP. In

  this way, the notes of memory are

  seldom sweet and clear, encumbered as they

  are with crackle and a bit of

  pre-echo. This is not a tragedy

  but a mnemonic device; not

  a reflection on the song

  but on the habitually distracted

  nature of the artist, perfectly

  reflected by an imperfect technology.

  Capitol Hill

  By nature and by necessity,

  I am seldom fully present

  in the moment, preoccupied as

  I am with categorizing and

  documenting it, holding fast to

  the creed that as long as the

  words flow, all else is salvageable. This

  afternoon, however, the masking effects of an

  early fall and the mesmer of its

  adornment have snagged my attention and rekindled

  my love for the city, like a

  surprise visit from a favorite grandchild who

  has become a woman overnight,

  unabashedly clad in garments her

  mother once wore. Like water,

  she doesn’t ask, flowing where

  she will, heedless of protests.

  Creatures of Habit

  He scrambles to the same

  window each morning, smudging the

  glass with his snout as

  he watches me leave, but

  I am perplexed by the

  trajectory of his gaze: he always looks

  to the rear of my vehicle. For

  his part, when a thing is behind

  him, it is no longer worthy of

  his attention, but I am not so

  inclined. Does he see something that I

  do not? Do my inhibitions chase me

  for fear of being abandoned?

  Does apprehension cling in earnest

  to the roof rack? My

  mirror is empty, but evasive

  maneuvers may be in order.

  DIY Gone Awry

  He is neither here nor

  there, but so
mewhere between, habitually

  and with dubious results attempting

  to marry the two using

  adhesives of his own formulation.

  With the slightly unfocused eye of a

  craftsman, he adds colors to his glue,

  many of which do not technically exist.

  Encouraged by the effect, and being at

  heart a man-child hopelessly captivated by

  anything that sparkles, he stirs in glitter

  with abandon. To his dismay, the theory

  does not translate well, and

  the sight of a legion

  of metallic renegades marching haphazardly

  across his studio floor makes

  him want to run. Away.

  Road Trip

  What I seek are not

  words that can be found

  nestled on a shelf alongside

  shot-glasses and magnets at

  a midwestern truck stop, but

  they are souvenirs nevertheless, single-mindedly collected

  on family trips no differently than a

  disaster victim might salvage a small piece

  of wreckage. I squint at the road

  through pitted headlamps, and I know in

  my frame that we are all battered

  relics headed west; that our thoughts and

  ambitions are just dog-eared

  maps in the glove compartment

  of a once-red 1969

  Charger, leaking memories like oil

  on the rapidly receding asphalt.

  A Spin on Isaac's Wheel

  I was born wide-eyed

  and clueless into a world

  liberally dyed in patterns any

  child could appreciate. With little

  transition, a chromatic shift induced

  a rapid decline into biodegradable Amway products

  and butterscotch upholstery; Avon catalogs and avocado

  appliances. Before the tropical neons that followed

  could reach the gaudy pinnacle of their

  reign, the chemically-enhanced red of the

  maraschino cherries in my mother's refrigerator lost

  their savor, and I learned my first

  real lesson in dying: that

  color can be extinguished before

  it has a chance to

  fade, and sometimes the only

  thing left is the leaving.

  The Day I Discovered The Cure

  How could I have lived

  through that period of time

  and never become acquainted with

  the shinier side of their

  art? In truth, I know

  full well the consumptive darkness I nurtured

  with wanton recklessness, but in the light

  of the day the music comes to

  me unadorned, not unlike a boy in

  love, swinging his arms and ambling down

  a carnival boardwalk with a tune on

  his lips and barely a dollar in

  his pocket. I am content

  to watch him from the

  crowd, drowning willingly in the

  sea of good-natured winks

  and knowing smiles around me.

  The Dark Side of Bric-a-Brac

  Darth Vader recently developed the

  unsettling habit of discoursing from

  the floor of the back

  seat with each hard left.

  A ceramic lamp that never

  quite made it to the thrift store,

  he would deliver unsolicited observations in a

  disturbingly un-Vader-like soprano. Unable to

  bear him any longer, I moved him

  to the garage, but his disapproving silence

  over its condition could not be tolerated.

  The last time I saw him, he

  was in the hands of

  a random neighbor boy who,

  now that I think about

  it, has recently had a

  rather pensive air about him.

  The Poetry Nazi

  She is impatiently skimming a

  literary journal on her laptop,

  eyes crossed and ankles slightly

  unfocused, ruthlessly disregarding the essays

  and fiction pieces in her

  search for the few token poems concealed

  amongst the rabble, as if anything with

  uniform margins or more than a few

  words between line breaks is unworthy of

  her attention, and yet when she arrives

  like a weary bookkeeper on holiday at

  a modest island of verse, she presses

  her lips together, shakes her

  head and moves on after

  only a brief perusal, a

  cynical pilgrim who disdains the

  company of her fellow travelers.

  Bringing the Boys Home

  Having completely forgotten the first

  two occasions, I complete a

  third circumnavigation of the lake

  and, unshouldering the disproportionate weight

  of my gear, find myself

  at last in a modest clearing. I

  had intended to fill the space with

  a regiment of well-trained phrases and

  perhaps a few less disciplined stragglers, but

  the frogs and cows have already claimed

  most of the camp. There is little

  choice remaining but to squat by the

  lake, catch bits of their

  ancestral lore as they drift

  over the rise, and calm

  my troops as we await

  our turn at the fire.

  As the Streetlights Wake

  Projected on a flickering sensory

  backdrop redolent of playground noise,

  fickle weather, and urine, an

  almost palpable afterimage narrates the

  sweaty tale of teenagers without

  number that have crept with furtive backward

  glances into this tiny cinderblock restroom, a

  gritty summer sanctuary so laden with memory

  it practically repels further occupation. Desperate for

  privacy at any cost and ignoring the

  unkind rasp of the wall against their

  backs, they would tangle in a brief

  and frenzied mash of lips

  and skin, mentally rehearsing their

  alibis, sampling the dusk with

  their pores as only the

  young and newly awakened can.

  Overheard in the Orchard

  "... which relates back to the

  first imperfection!” Her nine-year-

  old logic is inscrutable, exuberantly

  delivered in the lilting, arm-

  swinging tones of youth, confident

  in the veneration of her captive audience.

  She has already bounced out of sight,

  but I am still reeling as I

  regard the overripe fruit she has so

  casually plunked in my basket (though she

  didn’t know that she was giving, and

  I didn’t know that I was asking).

  Had I realized that personality

  defects bore an anticipated chronology,

  I might have attempted to

  manifest them in the proper

  sequence. Or, more likely, not.

  Sign of the Times

  Rousted by the cops from

  a culvert that morning with

  $4 to his name, he

  still owned his preferences free

  and clear, requesting his burrito

  “minus the beans”. He spoke of how

  his wife gave up on him; how

  his cancer came back; how he lost

  his backpack in a flash flood. I

  don�
�t know if he’s “gone” or just

  gone, but he’s no longer among the

  wayward throng who cycle through his corner

  like a cheap studio apartment

  in a college town, where

  the students come and go,

  but the trees just nod

  their heads and grow taller.

  Machinations of Flight

  He lives for the oddly

  satisfying chunk emitted by the

  library’s self-check device (and

  the silence that follows). Ever

  the industrious type, he is

  borrowing voluminous tomes on the topic of

  butterflies, a matter of great interest to

  him since they took up permanent residence

  in his chest cavity, apparently not as

  short-lived as their free-range cousins.

  He is to be regarded with the

  same cautious ministrations employed by the conscientious

  lepidopterist, who draws on photographs—

  not corpses—to illustrate his

  subjects, allowing them to resume

  their unsteady migration, eyespots winking

  conspiratorially with each breathless wingbeat.

  August 43rd

  Some might say it is

  bad form to admit to

  another that you had a

  grand adventure together in your

  dreams; that you journeyed without

  passports well beyond the borders of logic

  and propriety. I say, decorum be damned!

  Tonight, we will venture out hand-in-

  hand; speak lightly of weighty matters; ignore

  the deaths of our fathers in order

  to hug them again; place inadvertent low-

  stakes bets in games we don’t fully

  understand; wear purple pants (like

  The Hulk); drink with strangers;

  sing Otis Redding with perfect

  pitch; and breathe through flotation

  noodles until our heartbeats slow.

  # # #

  About the Author

  Born in Kansas City and currently enjoying Colorado's magnificent Front Range, Brett Clay Miller is a locksmith by trade, the father of three, and a lover of words and motorcycles.