Artemis Drifting

Just because she tippietoes, doesn't mean she's a creepin'.

Part 1, Fivestone

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You begin this story on the last night of normalcy in Drew Jett’s life. That is not to say that he did not, prior to this evening, have quirky happenstances and tragedies. However, the scope of what was to come would change his life more than a death that occurred no less than a year ago. As in keeping with this last night of normalcy, he was in the same bar that he came too every night after he left work. Tommy’s Lounge was a surprisingly upbeat hole in the wall for the company it kept. Drew was very little different from any other man in this bar. In one way or another, they had all lost something dear to them and sought solace in the continual battering of their livers. There were no depression-era croonings coming from the juke box, but popular studio bands and actors that gave a shot at singing careers. It was as if the men there did not want real ballads, because that might destroy their sense of surreality that fogged them within the lounge. ‘It’ll be alright’ was practically the motto of this bar, and for the time that patrons remained, they could partake in the cheery music and atmosphere as if they actually felt such joy.

 

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Sonuva..

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Unhappy icon for unhappy face.

 

No bashing, please, but in my study to figure out how to pace my new story – I picked up a couple of Koontz novels today. I know a lot of folk don’t like his subject matter for writing, or hell, they may not even like that genre of writing style – but I really like the way he delivers plot, characterization and drama without immersing the reader in unnecessary descriptives.

 

For instance: I really hate the new trend in recent novels to tell me every damned thing about every damned thing. What I mean by this is that a lovely protagonist will walk into a room, and the next 40 pages are dedicated to describing that dusty old chair (which isn’t even his favorite) and what it means, and then what it meant to the last 3 owners, the middle names of those owners and ON AND ON IN ENDLESS BULLSHIT. 

 

Is anyone else particularly annoyed by the tone of recent authors? The self-biography that describes everyone else BUT the damn person the book is actually about? Don’t go off and tell me ‘well, that’s the art of it.’ No, it’s not. I shouldn’t have to hunt through a book like Nicolas Cage in National Treasure to figure out who the main character is.

 

Here’s what gets me about the books that have been published in the last five years. The only way you can possibly enjoy some of these stories is if you are into intellectual masturbation. I feel like Dennis Miller (pre republican switch and monday night football) is consulting on half of these shitty novels. It is physically painful to get through some of these, no matter how well written, because you know the only way you can actually enjoy them in the end is if you are a pretentious bastard. You may pat yourself on the back after you’ve done something worthwhile, like donating food to a shelter – not after reading a book. Chortling to yourself because you actually enjoy reading books about quirky characters with even quirkier families written in a style where the author is playing down the quirkiness as if you, yourself, should think a family who paints with peanut butter and pigeon feathers is absolutely normal just makes me want to kick you in the teeth.

 

THOSE PEOPLE ARE JUST WEIRD, NOT INTERESTING, JUST WEIRD. ADMIT IT. MOVE ON. IT DOES NOT MAKE IT A GOOD BOOK. I am so sorry, but people just have to know this. Please stop trying to tell me that we can be friends just because we both enjoy reading literature. You’re not reading literature, you are reading Reality Television Scripts. And what’s so damn tragic about it, is those Reality Television Scripts are cunningly hidden within genuinely good writing.

 

Beauty Kettledrum

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Skin snaps across my bones

tight as a drum between

yawning knobby hips

 

thunder breaks along

navel to sternum

bouncing sound from rib

to rib

 

the science of beauty

is not the finished product

but the racket it makes

becoming 

  

Other.

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There were two numbers that I always chose for my softball uniform during the many years that I played, 7 and 13.

 

One represents luck, and the other has been often connected to misfortune.

 

I believe, unknowingly, I may have set the guidelines for the wax and wane of fortune in my life. I will possess neither in entirety, but by chance fall to one or the other. Too long in one will only lead to the tumble or rise of the other becoming dominant. In twelve steps I have found a pair of lost glasses in a grassy field, and in two steps have walked headfirst into the back-swing of a baseball bat. 

 

I have learned to manage both gains and losses well, and that attitude has muffled the feeling of exhilaration and tragedy to only a dull buzzing between my ears. For me, I should never have taken my feelings as something to be categorized and treated like a long white box of comics. When the cardboard lid is on, they simply don’t exist, and when opened – the vivid drawings and powerful stories are contained by strips of tape and thin clear sheaths. Effort is required to reveal them to the conscious front of my mind. And even then, when those fragile sheets of ink and color are thumbed through – I rarely smile or express at the sight of them. So, not only do I file my feelings away, I cannot even visibly celebrate or despair at what is contained within.

 

Occasionally I am able to emote, and the fury of being restrained is palatable. I do not take joy in ordering my life, and I hate organizing. I like messes, I like things being lost – I like my life being sprawled out around me in absolute disarray. To have your memories underfoot, spilling from drawers, bowing outward folding closet doors and obscuring carpet ensures that no matter where the ball of my foot rests – sensation occurs. Remembrance plumes upward, chalky and gritty as ball field dirt does when your body hits the earth just before second base and fills your mouth, nostrils, eyes and ears.


Busy morning!

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I have to wait about another twenty minutes until I pick up my grandfather and we set about getting my car sniffed and tags renewed.

 

There’s a girl on a bench near the river that I never listened to enough in the past. I did just enough to make sense of our conversations, and took her advice from afar. Turns out she got her ass up, grabbed my wrist and decided enough was enough. I had always heard her words, but it turns out I had forgotten what it was like sitting at that bench. Now I realize why I never should’ve gotten up in the first place. The view is spectacular.

 

It’s a very cold morning, but I have a solar paneled heart and Lord is it sunny today.

 

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.”

— Immanuel Kant

Happy Endings.

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Neon twists inviting letters

on crumbling brick

you know the place needs

some work, not much

just a little T.L.C

the bell rings over the door

because you finally

made up your fickle mind

and went on in

 

You went looking for

your happy ending

and saw promise 

in the scarred interior

where others only felt

unwelcome

a little sweeping

then wiping rain stained

windows to shine

finally, it would be home

 

the hands held your heart

sometimes, they squeezed

a little too tight

and you bled

but you kept on believing 

with time, callouses would wear

thin, and give way to tender

touches.

 

your wanderlust kept you away

when you had to find

your own shadow

so you left that place

though ghostly fingers

remained looped in your

fluttering aortic valves

and you traveled, head down.

 

then the feet stopped itching

and you walked by just to check

because the ‘You are Here’

on your map

always made a dot right there

but there was no neon

no door and no windows

just faceless brick.

 

sometimes there are

no happy endings.