ROAD TRIP!

This is an old post of mine from the team blog back in sophomore year. Yeah.

*Jendrid, Mastodon, Dracula, and some groupies and roadies just departed on a proper road trip*

"ROAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDD TRRRRRRRRRIIIIPPPPP!"

Everybody in the car screamed it, very loud. It was so loud that Mr. Turner heard it and jumped into the road. The car or tour bus or whatever it was crashed into him and exploded, sending out a giant ball of flame and smoke. The smoke cleared to reveal Mr. Turner, unhurt but gnawing on his own arm, which had been completely cooked by the fire.

"ArghArghArgh! Thanks for givin' me fresh barbecue! What's your name? You! The dumb white one in the front!" Turner pointed at Dracula.

"I be straight up G, yo, I aint no white boy. Can I have some of your arm?"

"Course, I'm not gonna eat all of it." Turner whipped out a switchblade from his pocket. "You need something to cut it with?!"

However, by this time Dracula was already sucking the red juice from Turner's arm.

Turner liked it. "Ahh that feels good. Keep suckin' it, boy!"

Unfortunately, Mastodon felt left out, so he started to chew on Turner's other arm.

However, Turner freaked out so much he went crazy and started to yell about conjugates. "Z with a LINE over it! Z with a LINE over it! Z with a LINE over it!"

It was too much for his little mind, and his brain promptly turned to green mush and oozed out his nose. Dracula started sucking this too, but since it was Turner's brain, it was poisonous, and he collapsed, also dead.

Mastodon and the roadies were the only ones left alive(besides Jendrid, but he was in a coma for a couple weeks). They blasted a stellar hip-hop performance of "Blowin in the Wind" by Bob Dylan.

Some hobo videotaped the performance and marketed it as his own. He sold 40000000000000000000000000000000 copies and became a really really really rich hobo.

However, Mastodon filed suit against the hobo for song rights. Dracula was obviously not dead(since vampires cannot die DUH) and he filed suit for rights too. The triple suit went all the way to the Supreme Court, where the case was known as Dumb Vampire vs. Stupider Mastodon vs. Really Really Really Rich Hobo.

The United States filed suit against the triple suit, because mastodons, vampires, and really really really rich hoboes are all mythical creatures. Dracula filed a counter-suit for discrimination, and while everybody was distracted Jendrid stole all the money and eloped with 5 groupies. They moved to Stanislav, Antarctica where Jendrid had five kids with each of the groupies.

Together, the 25 babies, 5 groupies, and Jendrid established the first Antarctican/Gambian/Parasailing Mafia, which destroyed all of Asia, and Paraguay for good measure. Jendrid lived the good life for a while, but then he was confronted by none other than:

Songs All Over You

It was the coldest winter Russia had ever seen. The wind froze your blood and the frost caked on your nosehairs. Red fingers were a good thing, because that meant they still had blood flowing to them. Red, chapped hands, burning and scabbed, were a luxury.

The world was drowned out in ten feet of snow. It blocked out all sound and suffocated the light.

But the surface was as bright as day. The sun reflected brilliantly off of the blinding snow and the sky was clear.

Out of this frozen mountain emerged a pair of nubby, gnarled hands. They scraped away the snow, slowly at first, gradually working more and more furiously. A small hole appeared that grew wider until finally a large head popped out, gasping for breath. The face was savage, with black glinting eyes that wildly rejoiced in the basking daylight. A mane of wavy black hair leaped out of his head. With every breath he grew stronger and he clawed out of the snow with vigor, soon thrusting out fully.

Here he stood, the man in the tattered green jacket and the numb shaking body. He sat down at the piano, the slick polished mahogany wonder, and started pounding out a driving harmony. A railroad stretched out into the distance, a rodeo wonder that glorified the sunset. The man trudged down the tracks, drinking from a canteen with a flag draped over his shoulders. A harmonica appeared between his fingers and he blew out a soft sad tone, slow and labored, the blood pulsing through his breaths and the tune.

Back in the blustery wasteland, the man swayed with the neon melody, lost in the lights that radiated from the keys. He didn’t notice as the dwarves popped out of the snow like daisies, their long ragged beards mingling with the red overalls. They needed warmth and they built a fire. The kindle crackled with glowing flame and the smoke drifted up past the sky. Huddling in the frost, the earth replied, “Life is a dream. Sit in the wood smoke.”

The night grew dark. The stars in the sky glowed, scattered remains of millions of years past. The centuries grow old but the lights are always the same. A cracked brick plopped down into the sand, crumbled with age. The sand grew weary and specks blew in the wind. They trickled between the cracks as lightning shot across the sky and stayed there permanently. Balls of lightning floated down to the quiet earth and drifted over the fields. Observers came to watch, drove from all around in their Malibu Chevy’s and golden Subaru’s, burning the gas and yelping to the night air. A car is flipped off the rails and tumbled down the grassy knoll into the windy lake. Under the water there was a pyramid but he couldn’t enjoy it. If you throw away your life, you can’t enjoy the rare simple pleasures.

We were singing songs for the restless and having the time of our lives. We were living in chaos and riding the tides. We were ignorant in bliss, naïve in love. We learned more and wanted more, tried more and got more. We flew through the currents with you on our minds, we walked down the streets just biding the time. Every day is a new one, dripping pouring with sweat, if you cage the spirit you’re always second best. The fight is begun and the tears on our cheeks, dirty soaked travelers no one to beat. Flying to the sun at a riptide pace, all I want is you and your wonderful face. Trees up above us the sea is below, in the hot desert sun is what they deserve. They grind on our joy and make all the pain, stir up the violence and give it away. Steady bass lines rumble and shake, I love you to the point I can no longer take. Growing up is for those who have money and time, growing up is for the old who never unwind. We have a future full of times at the creek, rogue passion and wonder not a care in the world. Give me your heart and we’ll cast out our minds, throw me a line and I’ll read you the time. There’s a world outside that nobody knows, there’s an ocean outside where the mangoes grow. Sweet fruit of the vine, a tangy sensation, humming to the core and a liquid vibration. You got a friend and that’s a fact, before you know it the light’s coming back. Everyone has a soul and you got mine, I like your songs on a ladder of chimes. Look at the moon, a blinding star, whistle to the sea and I’ll play your guitar. Whisper to me with the wind at your back, make the words echo for the ones who matter. There’s a compelling desire to see you again, an inner drive for a new chance to begin. When the autumn leaves fall into the roiling sea, open your mind and let yourself free. Justice is met when the last bell has sounded, if we’re gonna get there soon we all gotta pound it. Once, twice, for the innocent and poor, you gave it all but I want more. I dug a hole with a shovel in my hand, it brought tears to my eyes and I stood under the gray sky. To bury a loved one who died in vain, to find a way to kill the pain. We all want a fire but I’ll settle for a spark, it’s often the thing that gives us the stars. Some things are propped up to be more than they are, but all I want is you and a shiny guitar. She’s growing on me, a maniac dove, before I knew it I was falling in love.

The trumpets sounded on a blood red sky. Silver unicorn blood drips from the tiled ceiling into the pools of voices.

We Are the People

This is where the sandy waves break against the ragged wooden fences with savage force, hurricanes of thrust threatening to tear the old structures down as the gray sky with its overcast blanket stretches from the beach over the docks and the boardwalks and the roads and the shops and the bars and the ice cream parlors, keeps on going over the tops of the old hotel buildings and the power lines and the rooftop puddles, until night falls and the lights light up the sky and the cars roll by and the sound vibrates the air that is filled with sea spray and the waves slow down and the water is still and the orbs of light reflect against the deep blue water with a glittering twinkle. This is where the apartment buildings have whitewashed walls and the sinks are full of soapy gray water and sharp knives that are used to cut the plums and mangoes and kiwis and raspberries that compose the everyday diet of these native peoples who are neither white nor black, nor crystal, nor brown, nor red, nor yellow, nor green, but something that transcends the everyday colors and our English that is used to define them, something much richer and deeper and more whole than anything that can be defined by a single word. These are the people, our people, the same people who light a fire in the middle of the desert at night in order to stay warm, the same people who eat caviar and drink two hundred year old champagne, the same people who do base jumps off skyscrapers and the same people who text while they walk down the sidewalk and the same people whose families have worked in the mine for generations and the same people who play guitar because it makes them feel better and the same people who haven’t had food in three days and the same people who work at the counter behind the bank and the same people who have two dogs and a comfy carpet and the same people who only feel at home when they’re in the third pew with the incense and the holy water still fresh on their foreheads and the same people who read the newspaper with their coffee and the same people who are still fighting the war forty years later and the same people who sew clothes for their grandchildren and water their gardens and the same people who love their mothers and the same people who hear gunshots next door and the same people who are always making a brand new start and the same people who are never able to make a brand new start and the same people who just want the world to let them live. This is what is meant by “we the people” and it is not defined by the boundaries of any country or reduced by any political borders, but transcends all of these transient fabrications and encompasses all of our people, because we are all of these people, we all drank milk as children and we all have warm life-giving blood flowing through our veins. We are the same people, the same person, and God will set the wind at our backs and bring us into the promised land if we work together as one.

Clicks and Clatters

But the clatters became the clicks and the keyboard began to groan with the slowly building pressure of writer’s block. The inspiration of past writing loses the touch of magic and the crystal veins of the story grow stale. It is chained by something, fear or normality or something unidentifiable, and is often released only by the unboundless power of deep night, enthralled alone on the couch in the light of the computer that ripples and bends you into its will and brings your will right along until the clicks become the clatters and the Berlin Wall of writer’s block is crumbled and then torn down with the force that it takes to beat self-centered morons who cannot be won over by reason or emotion or education but must be conquered by brute force of will, the kind of will that is not forced or supplied by a reluctant uncertainty but rather a kind of determination that comes naturally when the time is right and the smell of baked wine fills the air and the sweetened Georgia peaches of summer are dragged from their dusty caves to brighten the air with sprayed citrus that glimmers in the sunlight for that split second when it flies in the air before disappearing in the watery ocean. Eating the peaches on the rocky shore with your feet in the water is wonderful but what about something even fresher, eating the round fruit underwater where the hair sways and where every breath is liquid, the breathing more natural than panting with the lungs or slurping with the gills; it is something much more smooth and pure, something that seems to bring us way back before we were born, takes us back through our evolution to when we were fishes and the peaches were little fishes and there was no brain activity or worry or school or deadlines or friends or dates or lies or laws or walls or clocks or sweat or bombs or thieves or guns or AIDS or coal or smog or smoke or failure, just the blessed veins or water and lifeblood and the swimming through the currents. That is where the dead of night can take you, because being alone inspires something greater to come from yourself than just the general routine of day. It is something that you feel when you write, and it is the same thing that you really and truly experience when you are asleep and the world inside your head only makes sense because it is yours. Jesus drank from the Holy Grail and that holy wine was transferred to all of us, and only surely and truly comes out when the mind is absorbed into the fingers and the keyboard, and the clicks become the clatters and the clatters become a rapid fire of brightness that builds and grows and sways and swells and keeps going even as the night sky goes from black to deep blue and the roosters begin crowing, keeps going as long as there is that flaming blackness of night still in the air and still fresh in the palms of the writer.

Barefoot Cobblestones

Everybody dances to the music of the traveling muses, the sways and barays of the homeless foes, belting through great fires, oil canvas, and nougat fireworks, stepping on barefoot cobblestones, leaping, hearing the church bells and drinking the sweet wine of Jesus Christ, reveling the glory of the smoky summer night, kicking cans like champions, wagering and losing, playing and winning, shouting across the endless island air, echoing off the stone and the ancient walls with modern soccer, yet practicing the customs that are god-knows-how-old and will always live in the hearts and minds and souls of those who have run in those streets and drunk the fireworks and watched the wine and licked the nougat and sang the lovely songs of the Virgin Mary and Saint Lawrence, placed the cannons in the barrels and dropped them off the side of the churches while the choruses swell and sway to the sounds of the gypsy instruments, the revolutions and explosions that glide across the sea spray of the familial ports and the creation of the whirls bangs buzzes fizzes of the great filibuster fuses that drive this wild-minded, watery celebration filled with toasts and wins and smoky fireworks and a spirit that carries the blood of the night.

The Car of Loneliness

The road is dark, the lights wave and flicker
The air is thick and the silence thicker
I feel like trash and my head’s a mess
My body’s bruised, I need your sweet caress
The car is cold, the window colder
Rain drips down, I need your shoulder
My cheek pressed up against the glass
God knows when the fog will pass

I might be asleep but this ain’t dreaming
My stomach sinks and my nerves are screaming
Roman candles fight my mind
I’m wide awake and I can’t unwind
The sky is cloudy, my heart is lead
This seat is nothing like a bed
Frustration pounds, a biting rage
I’m bleeding, trapped inside this cage

I tell the driver some strange lie
The car slows down, the tension high
Utterly convinced that I deserve more
The car is stopped, I throw open the door
My legs are stiff but I’m soon on hard ground
For one last time I look around

Then I’m sprinting through the night
My shoes pound mud, I’m out of sight
The air is fresh and my mind is clear
I leap through puddles like a deer
This ain’t heaven but it’s something close
I’m alive again, I beat the ghosts
Full of joy that I didn’t stay
I learned to chance at life that day

He couldn't see or hear a thing and the noxious smell of oil fumes and singed curtains and trapped smoke and guilt and dead dreams washed over him and set his nose on fire, terrorized his brain, trapped him in the corner of the shattered home, trampled on his conscience and seared any form of refuge or hideaway he could have formerly run to, reduced him to a burning, yelping animal forced to die with collapsed lungs and a screaming heart. His brain was numb to the physical pain but it was the devastating emotional agony of guilt at the treachery and horror he had committed that was eating at his soul more and more with every shaking breath that rattled through his broken throat. His thoughts were consumed with the images of the falling beams and the torn screams...

And then there was light. The light was brilliant and blinding and broke through his sightlessness to connect with his barely conscious brain. The silver light caught onto the optic nerves of his right and left eyes and traveled down the lines to his brain with more force and electricity than any pair of eyes had ever felt before. The shock jolted him out of his state and sent his mind into a scene from long ago...

He was in a water-soaked garden with the luscious calls of glorious songbirds reverberating throughout. The flowers bloomed with an unprecedented vigor and golden honey flowed from a water fountain in the center.

This was his Garden of Eden, visited many many times in his dreams when the night was right and his deep sleep took him there. But the person standing there on the grass with him was not the same. It was not his beautiful Eve, with her flowing auburn hair and skin that was always just out of reach. No, this was a cranky wizened man with wisps of matted, discolored hair and the skin of a rotted apple core.

The old man produced several hacking coughs between a pair of unwanted lips. He looked at the perfect ground, looked at the cloudless sky, looked at the ivy and the vines on the brick wall, and then turned and gave a piercing look directly into the other man's ruined eyes.

He cracked his lips open again, and offered these words:

"Go back. Go back now."

Vendetta for the Soul

I sat there on that mountain, my feet bare on the solid earth. My pant legs were ripped at the knee, exposing tan, sinewy muscle that only hot sun and endless running can produce. The fresh pine scent of the high-altitude air calmed my nostrils, but it did nothing for my gut. What I mean to say is, there was a sharp nag in the pit of my gut that nothing could ever console. Something was wrong, and I had to get out of there.

But, as they say, actions speak louder than words, and right now the notion of "get out of there" was just words. The mountain brook that gurgled to my left and the dulcet harmonies of the birds that fluttered through the trees were comforting realities that I didn't ever want to leave. This was my home, much more of a home than any place I had ever been. The smoggy urban dockyards of my birthplace and the trapped perfume of my stepmother's cluttered home just did not compare. Like any beaming child caught in the thrill of home, I had never planned to leave. Even if barbaric Hun armies were to transcend millenia and shove up this mountain bent on my sole destruction, I would still be hard-pressed to leave.

But the churning in my stomach troubled me to the core, and natural instinct was practically begging me to flee. My forearms shook restlessly with goosebumps and every raised hair on my body told me that something deadly was coming.

Yet I knew. In that moment, I realized I wasn't going to leave. Whatever demon was coming to rip me apart, I wasn't going to run away from it. I would defend my home, and I would beat this enemy to a pulp.

Suddenly, my head snapped to the right and time slowed to a crawl.

Everything was moving in slow motion, just like every intense action-movie ever made. And a silver bullet was sliding through the air, aimed straight at my right ear. I could see the waves of air rippling around the blunt metal projectile as I leaped to the side. I rolled across the dirt, brought myself to my feet, and glared in the direction of the attacker. It was on.

Poem

I lied to break the curse in two,
but the lie just didn't mask the truth,
I lied to get away from you,
but all I did was
fall
I lied to just make sense of you
Make every breath and shape of you
I lied to get into the zoo
But the lion broke my
jaw

I tried to save the world for you
Do everything I could for you
I tried to be an honest dude
But it still just scraped me
raw

So I fried my hand and foot for you
Through airwaves, trains, and dogs for you
Stole 15 thousand jewels for you
But the beggars took it
all

For you got beat up black and blue
For you split both my lungs in two
Lost all my soul in the black lagoon
Kept running till I tore my shoe in two
Still ran with both feet barefoot too
Saw stars, went dizzy, sang the blues
Fell in to a hole with jagged stew
Truck frieght and gas smell stained glass chew
Tattoo and parlor liquor brew

And this is what I saw:

I saw that what I really need
is just some air and a path to lead

I saw that all I really need
is just a frozen caramel seed

I saw that all I really need:

is you...