give those boys back their wings

A childhood memory is buried in the dark space when my eyes are closed. Its not all black. There are a million specs of white. Superimposed, is an image of me and my brother when we were young and happy. The air is cool. It's day, but the air is filled with moisture and in the background green covered mountains loom high above a tattered apartment complex.

I can smell the wet air and I can feel in on my face. I can remember his laughter. That genuine childhood laughter always breaks my heart.

We are in a field and we're funning around, just chasing each other from spot to spot in this field of joyous imagination. What were we thinking, our cold bare feet in the wet grass? We are in love with life. Soon we would learn to behave differently. Soon life would gain weight and our wings would be clipped. If I could go back in time, the only thing I would change, I would give those boys back their wings.

My brother's face is clear, framed in straight dark hair, lively dark brown eyes, a big smile, a few teeth missing, happier than I will ever see him again. Can he say the same about me? I want to run with him like that again, but I am 42 years old. In my head I hear him laugh and taunt me to come after him.
"Come on, catch me," the little boy giggles. "Come on who cares, you're old!"
And then I see my own face. And I'm missing teeth. My dark skin framed in sun streaked brown, with light brown eyes and a big grin. And I'm free again. I hadn't loss anything, I hadn't left anyone behind, I hadn't anything to regret, I'd hadn't fallen in love. I was just in love. I was just born that way.

sunrise

The sunrise washes clean the night before. It'll take a dream and polish it to a gleam or a nightmare and wring out meaning. If you haven't slept, then the spark of light from the horizon at sea or over a hill in the countryside or upper edge of a building downtown; it shines. And in that shine lay salvation.
This morning I am alone, not physically just cosmically. Like we all are, I am alone in my thoughts and my actions because I am not being watched. On a good day this will continue for an hour or two into the day's activities where in full view I am living. Eventually the tensions of restraint will take over my spine and I will fall into line. Society knows I will. Society knows. They tell me that I am not insane. I know that I am, especially at sunrise.
Once in line, then I begin to mimic the group. I am no longer my own and why would I be I ask myself. You are a good person is a good answer. It's an answer that works. I'll walk like that man, I'll pick up my tempo like that woman, I'll laugh like that little girl and I'll behave. I am good.
When the group begins, I begin. When the group laughs, I'll laugh. When the group stops, I'll stop. When the group drinks, I drink. I must move with the group, I must sleep with the group. I must feel the group with all my senses all the time.
"close your eyes. What do you hear besides my voice. Close your eyes. Listen."
"Im cold."
"Close your eyes. What do you hear?"
"I hear a train. In the distance, I hear a garbage truck. I hear a baby crying."
"Good. What do you taste? What do you smell? What do you feel?"
"My mouth, my tongue. Smoke. Bacon. Pancakes. I'm scared."
"Now move."
The group knows nothing. It moves about senselessly because it has no feeling. But we give it our senses and it is all of us together as one. A singular breath.
"Next stop Burnside and 8th."
My spine begins to twist. Its time to join the ranks.

Hietsuki Bushi (Full Version)

The Producer's House

I'd really rather not suck your dick.I was thinking, well what I thought, what I told myself on the way up here was that you'd be sucking my dick. You know? and I could just close my eyes and pretend it was someone else. somebody with out a dick was sucking my dick which I can't pretend anymore with your dick in my mouth. Yeah I still want the part. No, it's the first time I've found myself in this situation.

Churches

     "Where you going?", the words expelled from the dark in a plume. Perched on the couch he was unseen until he struck a lighter and set his face aglow. The bong gurgled gently under my brother's nose. It was six am.

    I moved from the stair well drawn into the living room and sat next to him on the couch thinking I shouldn't be doing this. He blew circles of smoke like a striped candy colored cat chillin' on a shroom.

    He coughed, "So, where you going?" I was up against a wall, on my way to see a another girl I'd just met in The Quad. Just two days later and I was following her to church. " Why are you creeping out? Where are you going?" He packed a bowl into a home made contraption he crafted out of a Pert bottle."What are you doing up?" he handed me the bong. I held it away from me.

    "huh." I mumbled. "I'm not getting high. gotta go."

    "where? its Sunday."

    "you don't want to know."

    "Church?" he asked. "you going to church with that girl you brought home the other day from the school. The one with the fucking bible in her hands, nice hair, no make up, little skirt. Are you going to church?"

    "Yea," I confessed. "I'm going to church."

    "Is there something wrong with you? She's Christian. What's wrong with you? Here, smoke this. "

    "I don't want to be late."
    Two brothers in a dimly lit living room accompanied by the bubbling bong. It was a moment of zen. It was a moment of grace. He understood. I was drawn in. I was going on Mecca. But instead of Israel, I was getting really high and joining some cow pokes in a Four Square church in hopes of doggie poking one of their own. It was a mission for Christ's sake.

    I drove on the country road that shadowed the Santiam River, a chilly, windy water way lined with evergreens flecked with birds of prey. The sky was an old gray sponge that couldn't hold anymore water; not quite rainy, it was just drippy. And I was the only car on the road driving from a small town in the Willamette Valley into the huge expanse known as Butt Fuck Egypt. An eagle dropped from the top of a Douglas Fir and dived towards the water.
     There she was. A white box with a steeple in the middle of no where on a gravel lot next to the river. Just like she said, "It's a Four Square Church by the river. 8:00am. Don't be late."
     I pulled in and it was raining. There were cars parked in a line out front: Four wheel drives lifted, American sedans and a lot of Chevy's. There were a fucking lot of Chevy's. I watched the rain hit the wind shield of my Honda Accord. I peaked into the rear view and decided I should make my self presentable. I pulled the tie from my pony tail, put on a fuzzy Russian leather hat and checked out my reflection again in the rear view. With brown eyes, brown skin, long brown hair; I looked Sherpa Sheik.

    Inside the church, beyond the patter of the rain and behind the double doors, I could hear a faint music. It was some kind of Cowboy Gospel. It sounded like shit and I suddenly felt really out of place. But I was way too stoned to care. Five bong hits will absolutely change a man at a molecular level. I opened the car door and stepped out into the rain. The ground was soaked, the air was cool and refreshing. I looked up at the sky and let the water hit my face. It felt friendly. Then I started to think about the first time I went to church for impure reasons. The last girl who beckoned me to follow her to the house of the Lord.
    She taunted me to come. Her name was Traci. And at her request, I sat in the back row and listened to the preacher talk of God and Souls. He was a huge man, kinda like a cross between Tony Soprano and Mr. Clean. But he was all the way dirty. It was in the whine of his voice and the clammy look of his flesh. He looked like he would bleed gravy. Like his sweat was sour. And the congregation, misfits from a little logging town, seemed to eat him up. That day the body of Christ was chicken fried steak.

    "If you want to realize the ever lasting," said the Fat Man in Cloth, "then god damn it you better give your self over to him." The Him was Jesus, I think. And I may have misquoted the Fat Fucker Just now. Suddenly a red curtain that hung mysteriously behind him slowly squeaked open by the hand of a hidden Production Assistant.  On a light blue wall there was a pane glass window revealed as the crimson curtain moved to the side. Behind the glass was a giant bowl of water. The bowl resembled an over sized champagne glass and there was a white slide descending in to it. It wasn't extravagant by any means, the whole window was eight by four at most and the bowl sat on a painted ply wood table, but it made a statement. A creepy, haunting statement that had a grip on my heart and mind.
    Then the body of Christ shape shifted into a web cam girl. Church Girl Dot Cum. Traci came sliding into the bowl in a polka dot two piece bikini. And she let out a squeel, "Oh, God.". Her long legs fell in about her like a five year old in a kitchen sink.

    The fat man turned from the display and pulled out a tobacco stained hanker chief to wipe his brow. "Our child Traci. A child of god. She has joined us today, come unto us, come unto me for a personal introduction to the Lord," There was some splashing and giggling as Traci struggled for balance in the glass bowl. She was slender but she was just too much leg for that bowl.
    "Oh My God," I said. "Wow."
    "Its a glorious day, are you here for her?" said the red neck man next to me, his cute wife and kid in a row next to him.
    "Excuse me?" I asked
    "She told us you were a friend of hers." he added.
    " Yes. This is a great day for God and our Country. I might go next," I smiled.
    The fat man preached on. His jowls jiggled as Traci jiggled, "God praise our Child!" He wiped his brow and the Crowd went wild. Soon the curtains closed, people started to come to their feet.
    The gaze in their stares were dormant like children with an XBox haze. They filed out of the double doors onto the grass outside.  I followed the crowd out to a field whereTraci joined me in a white linen dress. We sat shouder to shoulder with the rest of the congregation at a long picnic table. We ate chicken fried steak.

    That day was a year prior to this one. I stayed away from church after that. For awhile. Now here I was again.

    "Only one way to do this. God if you're up there," I said to the rain. "Protect me from the evil in this church."

I headed for the stairs of the church, marched up towards the pearly doors, which were brown by the way, and I pushed those fuckers open.

An over weight woman puts her dog on a diet

I've tried all the different smart ways of losing weight: excercise, fasting, atkins, the zone, veges, juicing, watermelons, Jenny, Richard, Oprah, My Preacher, God In Heaven, support groups, a journal, the Food Pyramid, 6 meals a day, celebrity diets, mediteranean diets, hobo diets. God damnit; I tried everything.

But my dog, I love my dog. And he's really fat. See, I can't have that. He can't go away. I need my dog. I need my baby. Oh god, please, I need my best friend. Like I said, I can go away; but I gotta save my dog, so he's going on a diet. Not the shams I 've tried. Not the diets that won't work, can't work, fucking dreamy, fucking dillusional, fucking pillow talk-get in my wallet won't work. No, not those fucking diets! I mean a real diet. I'm putting my dog on a real fucking diet, starting today, " Come. Come here, boy."

Diets don't work. That's why I need something better. But what? What are the alternatives? FDA approved? The fucking pyramid, it doesn't work. I wanna try lipo. I wanna try all these alternatives. I 've seen em in the paper. I've heard about em on the radio. Hell, the radio gal, she did it. I saw the weather lady, the one with the great tits. She had the lipo and the breast augment. I want that. I want what she's got. So I want to try lipo. I wanna do it in this order. When one doesn't work, I'll move onto the next and the next. I won't stop. I can't. I can't give up, not on myself, for Christ's sake. I can't. I won't. I gotta try. First, I gotta try lipo. I gotta save up twelve hundred dollars. Then I'll have fat sucked from here and then here. Suck here. Then I'll have my guts tied, so that food won't fit.

"Wait. Ok, Honey. I know you're hungry, but you're fat. And Mamma's gotta talk. Mamma's gotta think. You sit. You sit your fat ass!"

Tie my guts first, then I'll try hypnosis. And I'll quit smoking then too. No more cigarettes. Lipo, gut strap, hypno, yoga. Nah. No yoga. Those Skinny Bitches are pretentious. But maybe weights and power walking. I wanna walk. I gotta think about it. So I'll get this low cal dog chow. I'll tell my doggie it's chow time. I'll slap my thighs. My fucking fat thighs. I'll slap em like this.

"Come here, Boy. Chow time. It's chow time." But only once a day. And only after he runs. Not sits. Runs. He's gotta get up off of the couch, run and excercise or no chow. No chow without the walk. That is it.

He'll cry. He will cry. He'll look at me. He'll look up at me with those eyes, but I won't budge. Still: No walk, No Chow. And I'll be strong. I'll be determined. Because He's my dog and I love him. I love my dog. He's fat. So he's gotta go on a diet.