most things haven't worked out

children

at the drive-in theatre

we saw bloodlust and sickness

unremitting horror backstabbings 

melodramatic revenge fantasies

utt/////errrr destruction of illusions

made Real

behind the house

coal cars and leathered lined faces

leered godlike on a trestle above town

carrying black lung gloom 

to illuminate their domesticated violence

for a pretty decent wage.

 

We wove silently around these perfectly flat, evenly covered fields of some indistinct crop still early goings and bright green low to the ground. at speed they blurred together and appeared smooth and i would pretend they were lakes and we were on another planet where water was emerald. I didn't realize it until i was older that i was probably using some meditative trick to….focus by not focusing…on the oddness of the color in comparison to "real" water on earth and using that to trick myself into thinking i was in like X-Ray Zone or on Venus or wherever i wanted to go at the time that had green water. 

dear old dad built bridges out of concrete because he

couldn't figure out how to create them out of words

nevermind love

denied emotion

but not math

he preferred correct answers 

to what was right

a destination

to a journey

everything was always fine

why can't you be?\/\/\/\//\/\/\/\///\/\//\\/\/\//\/\/\\///\\\//\/\////\///\/////\\\/\/

i watched the older kids jump off the bridge into the deep water the younger ones weren't allowed in while sitting on an algae-covered underwater rock hunting crayfish with a jar and a stick. my memories resemble 8mm film, scratchy…grainy. no sound. i remember the clouds crossing the sun/a knife-edged wind/whipped through the shallow valley the creek ran through/brought some vague contentment as it chilled my skin-unexplainable. only crossed the creek once:something about the other side seemed off. 

sinister somehow

    My mother groaned, my father wept,

 into the dangerous world I leapt.

no air conditioning, farmhouse. 

hot…box fans jammed in open windows. 

chased her through labyrinthine hallways

ending/puzzled/in empty rooms

the staircase shouldn't have been there

the door shouldn't have opened

the basement, long disused. dust covered and cluttered

piled high: a century of gathered uselessness

it was always bone cold in the basement. 

i heard her laugh above me: at the top of the stairs she smiled and turned to run

can never reach her, and the smell of her hair trails onward through another waking.

i think if i ever caught her i wouldn't know what to do. 

The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. -Psalms 34:18

(((((tell me which way that river run)))))