Category: Daily Fifty-Two

The knob resists before giving way with a twist. The tank spits a soft hiss. The burner catches with a fist-sized fireball that rolls out and up and puffs to smoke. The second burner lights in sequence like dominoes falling. Bone-in thighs shishhh. A few flames kiss. Now, we’re cookin’ with gas.

All Along the Watchtower, White Men in Black Suits awaited the Season of the Witch. This wasn’t far from The Garden on Baker Street beneath The Shadow of Seattle. Nearby, a Sour Girl Fell on Black Days. In her Times of Trouble, she sang an Uptown Anthem – her private Symphony of Destruction.  

In the spring rain puddles of April, worms parade like drunken mummers down the avenue. There’s little order to their belly crawl antics and even less hustle. Heavy boots, I try to avoid stepping on their trombone-slide bodies. I worry my eyes are slower than my feet. I’m tempted to tip-toe home.

The rain, barely visible, reminds me of pixels falling down the screen on an old 8 bit computer. In the blue screens of my youth, we wrote commands in whitish-yellow text. 10 Print “Commodore 64”; 20 GOTO 10; RUN. The program repeats and the rain cascades. I’m looking for the RUN/STOP key.

The morning light? I don’t want to talk about it. The robin singing? Don’t want to talk about that either. The slurping sound of the dog licking his paws… not up for discussion. The drooping plant from an ex? Completely off the table. In fact, let’s forget this whole thing ever happened.

The smell of wood-smoke in the frosty dawn draws my eyes to rooftop chimneys. It’s as if seeing where the smoke originates might help me breath it in more deeply. This satisfying familiarity predates my memory, feels like a calling back. Fire burning wakes the primeval, speaks to a time before time.

The third-floor mezzanine at the airport lounge had been turned into a concourse for the infirm and early retirees. People would be plucked out of the ground and their roots given a shake before being placed there like tiny rabbits behind white picket fences. This only happened on cloudless days, dreamless nights.

I bet the dog dreams he’s famous… and not neutered. In his doggie dreams he has doggie starlets and doggie groupies following him around. When he’s twitching and running, I bet he’s got doggie paparazzi on his tail… or is it puparazzi? And that snarl and jerk? Maybe he’s slapping Chris Rock.  

Like drunken raccoons and alley cats, gusty winds tipped the trash can in the night. The day is bright. The clouds have been ushered out of the theater. In the dream about my former boss, everyone was microdosing. Up early, today will be that kind of day: tipsy, disjointed, tired, and stumbling.

The rain is steady and soaking. The streets are the color of sharks flashing through ocean deep. A squirrel crouches under a tree with her bushy tail fanned out above her head like an newspaper. Branches bob in the wind. A mourning dove coos a lonely song soft like the morning light.

I stare, trying to grasp phrases as they fly by like the hawk that’s landed on top of a telephone pole. A few minutes ago, it was the elegantly curved of arm of a watering can – outstretched like a Greek statuette. The hawk has flown away. I guess I’ll water the plants.

Empty shoes line up where the day ends – by the sofa near a lamp and a stack of books. This is where, sometimes, a second life begins. An evening life. A life without shoes or sidewalks or gas pedals and gravel roads.  A life where there’s nowhere left to go, until tomorrow.