Wednesday, March 11, 2015

the war

the war had taken more than his leg. he'd left a heart-sick wife and three tiny children with the promise that he would return to them no matter what. he'd told himself that nothing would touch him because he was so loved and needed, but months later as he lay half a world away in a cold, muddy trench with a quarter of his leg blown off, the only thing that kept him alive was hatred. the pain was absolutely consuming and raw. it was as if someone was holding a whirring, rough grit belt sander against the wound and pressing hard. the nerve endings jumped and sparked with a cruel and piercing electric current as the almost still air passed over them. he wondered why his body did not go into shock and protect him from the agony. he looked down at the sharp, jagged bone fragments and shredded limp white ligaments jutting from the macerated bright red flesh below his knee and watched the 19 year old medic wrap a tourniquet to stop him from bleeding out. as he examined the horror of the wound, his eyes flicked up and clocked the boys hands trembling as he struggled to keep from fainting. he saw the dead faces of his buddies as they searched the mud for his mangled severed foot- and once found, without making eye contact with him, placed it beside him as gently as if it were a new born baby. if he'd had the strength to do so, he would have heaved it with all his might out of the trench onto the exploding no man's land of the battlefield. instead he started to laugh. he heard the men around him agree that he was going into shock, but in actual fact, his pain was getting worse and the laughter was only the inappropriate sound his body was making as the last drops of his belief in the innate goodness of humanity siphoned out of him. it was a long time before they could get him to a field hospital and as he surveyed the muddy, bloody, stinking facts of his current predicament, he thought, 'so i guess this is how i die.'

when he woke up clean and bandaged in the quiet surroundings of a hospital, he was surprised to realize that he was still alive. he flipped the sheet off his injured leg and saw that it had been amputated to his hip. his eyes narrowed. he thought about all the faceless soldiers and (probably) civilians that he had maimed or killed in the name of his own blind nationalism and realized that he and they were the same fodder. he'd been duped into believing there was 'a greater good' to participating in this organized, uniformed slaughter called 'war' and now he knew just how hard he had to be hit to see the truth of the thing. he thought about the preened and pampered politicians and their 'exempted' ivy league offspring. he hated them all. when letters arrived from home, they remained unopened.

his wife had prepared their home to accommodate his healing and change in mobility. in the weeks before his arrival, she had attended classes and counseling and steadied herself for some difficulty while he adjusted to his new circumstance. when he was finally wheeled from the plane, she did not recognize him because his expression was so contemptuous. there was no joy or recognition in his eyes upon seeing her or the children, only a cold awareness of their presence. in the weeks that followed, he shunned her comforts and instead began to wrangle his way onto the lower rungs of 'business'. he became an unlicensed backdoor pawn broker (lots of obviously stolen merchandise with no questions asked) and soon graduated into aggressive, small-time loan-sharking. the money was rolling in and he had no problems with however it came to be in his hands. he stopped using his wheel chair and refused to wear a prosthetic because it made him feel 'handicapped'. he spider-crawled on his three remaining limbs and soon developed the agility of a monkey. he was low to the ground and as dangerous as an abused dog. no one ever tried a second time to take advantage. he threw money on the table for his wife every week before he melted out of the house. he did not make eye contact with her or share her bed. the children knew to be silent when he was home.

his wife eventually understood that everything was too broken to continue in the marriage. the awareness came in the form of hookers, drugs and criminals seeping unabated into her daily life. she quietly divorced him at which point he untethered completely from all social convention and fell gladly into total nihilism. his life continued in a steady circle around the drain while he satisfied his increasingly specific carnal desires and acquired more money than he could ever actually use. his children never gave up hope that he would one day love them again.

it was a mistaken belief.



Friday, March 6, 2015

sophia



picasso was growing weary of brigitte bardot. the actress was beautiful but did not inspire him. her allure was so legendary that he had expected she would enter his studio ghosted by his new muse. sadly, the girl was alone. he did his best to be a good host, but really, there was nothing there for him. as the days passed picasso grew worried that he would never be visited by the ethereal again. all of his painting came directly from his brain and soon the tip of his brush wondered why the work was so hard.

he asked aloud to no one in particular why he had driven sophia away.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

gentrification


i'd come back from the future and was glad about it. this life was simple and clear and everything took a distant second place to growing season- which we were in the midst of now. i was muddy up to my elbows and over the tops of my wellies from plugging tomato seedlings into the wet, loamy soil near the shoreline. there would be no watering throughout the season because of the fresh water wicking through the thirsty tomato roots on its gravitational slip to the sea. i stood up after i had planted many rows, the falling sun behind me illuminated the tender leaves of my seedlings and highlighted the preciseness of my rows. i listened to the water birds conversing in the near distance and let a peaceful satisfaction wash over me. i headed toward the labyrinth of connected buildings that comprised our village and slipped out of my boots for the last few steps to the hose-bib. i laughed when i looked down at my feet- they were so muddy i realized i should have worked barefoot. i turned on the spigot and pulled the soft, clear tube of water from the end of the hose up my arms and over my knees and feet. i felt a thousand childhood summers pass through my memory and smiled. as i filled my boots for a final rinse, i looked up and saw a stranger walking toward me. as he moved toward me i could see from his gait that he was not from this time and my heart skipped a terrible beat. had i not gone back far enough? had he followed me? worse, had i left the portal open too long after my final departure allowing someone to slip in? 'hiiiiiiii!' he sang to me as he waved his arm above his head. he wore pastel 'preppy' clothes from the 1980's with the requisite coordinating tennis sweater tied over his shoulders. he held half-dead seedlings in his other arm and grinned as he said too loudly, 'i brought these for you!'. i did not respond with words but instead looked at him as though i could blink him away. as he spoke, i understood that i had not gone back far enough and he was the first wave of those who would bring 'gentrification' to this perfect place.

i thought of murder.