January 15th 2010

4:30p - Traffic at the counter is starting to pick up. The first few of the after-work rush are arriving for the cup of coffee that will get them through conversation over dinner and evening news. Of course, the regulars are already here and they’ll probably be here long after I’m gone. This place is still pretty new so the smell of fresh carpentry and paint mix with that of the coffee. I’m told it’s Peruvian.

Have Couch, Will Travel Pt. 1

“…bacon and eggs” the voice faded in.

“Wha-?’ I replied. My eyes weren’t open yet but the morning sun through my eyelids was blinding and warm on my face. The birds were chirping and there was a faint whisper of a just-right breeze coming through the open window near the head of my bed. I could feel the blue of the sky and the wisps of white that striped it. I was lying on my stomach, left cheek smooshed into the pillow while my right arm came from underneath my tangled sheet and dangled over the side of the bed.

“…bacon and eggs for breakfast” the voice said again. I was only slightly more coherent but willing to overcome that for bacon and eggs. At that unreasonable hour I didn’t have much of a grasp on reality but I fully understood hunger.

“You’re going to make that now?” I asked deliriously, eyes still closed, face full of clean cotton sheets. I don’t know how she understood me; the pressure of the pillow had distorted my mouth so that only my lips and tongue were still able to form anything that resembled language.

“…after church.” The words came through the shapeless void like the beam of a lighthouse passing over me. And, like a lighthouse, I knew exactly the doom they told of.

Somehow, I managed to swing my legs over the side and carefully, I used their weight to rotate myself to a sitting position. With my feet on the bed rail I fought the lightheadedness I’ve been feeling every morning for the past few years and rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

Easter Sunday. One of two days when even the most wayward of Catholics absolutely must attend church. With everything closed, I don’t think they can come up with a good excuse to not. For three and a half months I’d been able to avoid the early morning wake-up that preceded the walk around the corner to Holy Rosary. Not today.

I had lived on my own for the better part six years, blissfully unsupervised and secular. I rarely came back to my parent’s house during that time. If I did, it was only for a night or two. Rarer still, was my presence on a Sunday morning and for good reason: my parents liked the early mass. Throughout my adolescence this usually meant perfectly good Saturday nights lost to reasonable bed times. It was a cruelty akin to having a test the day after your 21st birthday or getting the early shift on New Year’s Day or having a weigh in the day after Thanksgiving. Routinely, I was roused at 8:00am, I dressed, and then stumbled out the door whether I was awake or not.

Come on, it’s just one mass. Looking up over the tips of my fingers I surveyed my room and sighed. The sun streaked in through the dusty window panes and illuminated everything with the suggestion that summer wasn’t too far off. Boxes were still piled up, full of books and other belongings, hastily stacked into towers. Feet on the rug, I shuffled over to my closet and braced for the icy cold of the hardwood floor on my bare soles. What to wear? I picked my dark grey suit, white shirt, red tie. Sure, it’s not bright and cheery, but neither am I.

“C’mon! We’ll leave without you!” my mother called up the stairs. They always promised but never delivered.

I dressed as quickly as I could in pants with two buttons, a slide clasp, a zipper, and a belt. Once my unmentionables were on lockdown I slipped on my shoes and walked downstairs wrapping a Windsor around my neck. If there was one thing I took away from twelve years of Catholic school it was the ability to tie a tie running at full sprint, blindfolded, and in less than 7 seconds, and have it look good too. “Well you certainly look nice” she said when I entered the kitchen. I poured myself some lucidity from the pot, two scoops, a little milk.

“Mrrf...” I grumbled into my coffee

Bones - 1st draft

[This is an essay I used for an assignment where our prompt was a picture that we had. It's the first draft and has since been edited and revised. Maybe someday I will post it]

At the time it was still a door that meant something, though its message had changed. When I was a kid the building was the home of Singer Steel, the name by which most residents of the neighborhood still call it. Only the recent trendy residents call it “that warehouse.” The heavy industrial business was an imposing landmark on the northwest side of the heavily ethnic community that marked the outskirts of our culture. The men who worked there were dirty and sweaty and smoked. They stood on the abnormally wide, green-painted sidewalk outside the building on their breaks and though I was only seven or eight years old I distinctly remember these sweaty smoking men being heavy set and drinking from gold-colored cans that where dazzling under the sun during my summer vacation. It was their version of the three martini lunch. Not as glamorous, but to them it wasn’t any less earned.

As small children we were of course susceptible to any manner of no-good that our parents didn’t know we were already willing participants in and the warehouse was one of those things. It was on the same side of Random Road (no that isn’t a cop out, it’s the real name) as the playground which was just a little north down the street and around the bend but the stretch where Singer Steel sat was mostly forbidden to us on our sixteen inch bikes. Our parents always said it was because of the trucks that pulled in and out of the three garage doors like clownfish in an anemone. The three trucks owned by the company were all red flat beds. Two were International 4000’s, shiny, new, one longer than the other, and one was an older International S-1900 in a little rougher shape but the same length as the longer of the newer trucks. The shortest often used the third garage door that was separated from the main two by about 80 feet. I always imagined it as the little brother. They never seemed to go anywhere but were constantly shuffling things inside and rolling in or out as needed.

We're not there yet.

Procrastination is: finding a reason to clean your ashtray at midnight when you still have pages to go.

I am well aware that this is not a good poem.

I've never been one for verse.
I can read the words
And feel its breath on my lips
But simple appreciation is my curse.
My pulpy anvil and inky hammer exist
Today for utility
To wright thoughts and ideas
And words unfit to be kissed.
No art will trail from these midnight lines.
No singularity, concise and tact
Will be birthed on this page.
Instead it might only rhyme.

Perhaps, I'll learn in time.

Is bibliographic a word?

It's probably what I'm most excited for concerning my impending move. My parents call it the Library. It's our upstairs living room and my father has been working building those shelves for most of my life while they've both been filling them for much longer. Dad put up the ladders last summer. The crown molding was just finished last week. It's really nice despite the ancient couch and vestigial OSU themed linoleum left over from when it used to be a kitchen for a duplex. There's an Art History section, language section, fiction as well as non-fiction sections, and the baseball section. Maybe I'll finally have time to catalog it all in MS Access.

There is another half of the wall on the left side of the picture that you can't see plus another half of the wall next to the doorway I was standing in. Pardon my clunky image stitching. Until someone realizes that people on PC's need good photo editing it'll have to do.

Sitting on a Bench Outside

My coffee had grown cool. The night was still and for the moment I felt like the only person left in the world. Across the street a little light blinked slowly in the window of a car. the little sedan is snoring I thought bemusedly to myself.

There was a silent snap as my previous cigarette burned itself out in the ashtray and a crack, sizzle, fshh.. as I lit the next and inhaled deeply.

It doesn't make any sense, I thought, my mind back to the matter at hand. I took another swig of coffee. it was cold enough to be enjoyable again. Was it the second night or the twenty-second? I couldn't tell anymore. The clock stopped saying the time long ago. the crickets still chirped but really i wasn't sure if I believed in them anymore.

Putting my feet back on the cold concrete, I stood up from my chair. I grabbed the box of Camels, my lighter, and my mug with the stars on it. I opened the door and silently stepped inside. Gracie hopped down from the window where she had been watching me and climbed the sofa next to the door.

"Mrow?" she said.

"Hi there." I replied and I snuffed my cigarette in the ashtray next to the lamp. I climbed the stairs to my room and quietly undressed and slipped under the down quilt. I reached over and set the alarm for 8... again. "It doesn't hurt to hope, right Gracie?" I asked. She sat silent and knowing. I knew, too, when I woke it would still be dark. Still be 3 A.M. There would be ten smokes in the box again and this page would still be blank.