The Dawning Of The North-Eastern Cowboy

Part II: An Adventurer�s Sword, Hidden In A Field.

Book II: An adventurer’s sword, hidden in a field.
                                       
         











Chapter I
*****************************************************
"I did not make it. I think a god owned it." ~ Angel
“Free-reign never lasts. Someone will take it all.” ~ Bob
“Go to hell, Bob, you think your so damn philosophical.” ~ Angel
*******************************************************
June 9th, 1986, Bear Lake, Maine
         “ I am fucking Tom Sawyer. I am a hell of a man. A strong man. We are all a bunch of Toms, Hucks, and black guys. Hell yes.” Angel said.
         A silence.
         The four of them, Angel, Fili, Blake, and Charlie, stood tall in the evening light; it was fading quietly, a still breeze in the pale luminescence of polished pearl glass, covered by faded seams of clams.
         Angel spoke again: “My feet dangle in the water like blunt icicles that don’t feel cold.”
         “Awwww.... Angel. It’s not cold at all. Its beautiful. Its gorgeous. Pass the smoke. Hell yes.” Blake replied, his voice booming out over the lake.
         They stood on, melted into, sat on, and otherwise leached about, and relaxed into, the dock, on to the dock. Blake stood there, his arms crossed, as he pulled on the smoking white circle, tube, of paper. He breathed in his mouth, and kicked out his lungs, through his nose. He became silent. Fili was sitting on the short side of the bench, facing the end of the dock, the bourgeois face out into the lake. He stood there, a crumbled figure. His back was bent over and his head thrown even farther forward, and down. His black hair was very shiny, short, and tangled in its own way; it stuck out at random.
         Angel sat on the end of the pier, and let his feet perturb the surface of the water. His bare feet. He had leaned back, and put his arms behind his stretched out back, and leaned on them. He let his head fall back, so that he could stare at the light blue, enlightened burnt blue of the heavens, which were almost flecked with blue starry eyes, and electric plane lights, but wouldn’t actually be so painted for several more hours. Angel’s hair was a deep brown color, and also radiated grease and grim, was much tangled and curled and thrown about. It was sweetly heroic, and long; it looked as if he had been through a lot of shit times (good, or rough.)
         Charles stood behind his holder, Angel. He stood out in the wind, and made bold faces at the far side of the lake. The breeze blew his shoulder length hair out behind him a little, and he beamed. He had a stick of his own to smoke, he grew dreamy eyed and handsome as he smoked the weed. Then he spoke:
         “We are on the wrong side of the lake. Damn it. We should be over there. Damn it. Want to swim over there? It’s only about a mile across. Hell yes. Hey. ‘And I will splinter thee and cast then upon the rocks.’ That sounds proverbial. I should become Jesus. Hell yes. At least a disciple, anyway. Hell, may as well go to the top.”
         “On top? Mmmmmm….”
         “Awww.... hell. Charlie. Shut up. Hey. Jack. How old are you again?” Angel replied, trying to move the conversation, and get others talking.
         “How old am I? Shit. I don’t want to remember ages. Ever. I am fucking high. I think. I thought we were gonna live this summer. Not talk about actual shit. Fuck.” Fili screamed.
         “Awwww... hell. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Fuck. I’m not sorry. We gotta have some contrasts, so we can enjoy the rest. Fuck. Pass the good shit, hell yes.” Angel returned, trying to justify himself.
         The Air and Water were beautiful in their materialness. There they were, the Air and the Water, and they were pure nature, yet they were material. Something to be had. The four of them, Angel, Charlie, Blake, and Fili, owned the Air and the Water, and made them theirs. The Air became an open field to fly across, and the Water became a purple sword as the sun set, creating a cascade of purple, blue, beige, and maroon that seemed to form lines, synchronized, and circles, parallel also, and synchronized. The lines bent, ricocheted, and became clouds of luminescence and fields of enclosed space that seemed to laugh with them as they enjoyed the sun set, smoking weed, and jokes about Fili.
         Yes, the clouds laughed with them.
         The world at large loved them.
         They all joined Angel, on the end, towards the end. They all sat down, and let their digits drift in the top few inches of the water, like drift wood, slowly heading towards the shore.
Blake made a joke about every Asians testicle area. Then, said something about fish dying, as he completely changed subjects. Fili asked him how he knew about both the things: the Asians, and the dead fish fetish.
         The sky fields laughed, surpassing them in its merriment and enjoyment.
         Suddenly,  the setting bright sun reminded Angel of Ima, and their last beach walk; the last time he had seen her, before the ‘Band of Brothers’ trip down to Wisconsin. Angel thought:
         God. The immature bitch. Fuck; what the hell does she know. Not shit. Jack shit. Fuck shit.
         He became instantly de-stoned, if that’s possible. Ima had that effect on him. His thoughts continued :
         Immature whore. Fuck. She needs to grow up. Well, she doesn’t have to. She is happy the way she is, hell yes. I don’t need to ruin her life. God, I’d like to her change. Maybe not. Maybe I would hate her then. Hard to say. I don’t want to leave her, and ruin her childhood. She really is a good kid, maybe I should stick around, she will mature eventually. If only she as my age, and graduating, then maybe she could see all the shit I know, and have to deal with. I should almost just leave her, and create a reason to break up. Maybe that would be best. Don’t tell her the truth. Shit. To much thinking.
         Always. Always take the dark and sad path, the delusional path. Tears are best. Sadness; perfect harmony with death. Great sadness can bring the highest pleasure ever, later. Its true, I was happier after Ima and I got back together, then ever before. Fuck, I swear it’s true. Every fucking word, hell yes. Why wouldn’t it be true? Fucken hell.
         Screw her. No, not me. Hell no. Fuck no. She has higher priorities then me. In that case, hell yes. She could be down here, with us guys. She is to much into her sports, the material world. Hell yes. She could be down here with us guys, partying, smoking, spending quality time together. Her and I. But fuck no. Hell no. She has to go to her fucken softball tournament. Hell. Could be in Wisconsin chilling, on a hot June day, with her so proclaimed ‘lover’, or so I used to be.
         But fuck no. Damn softball, to hell. I’m gonna burn all the soft balls in the world! Forget her, she is too immature anyway. It is over. Fuck. Hell yes.
         “Okay guys. Hell. Forget Ima. Let’s go party. Hell yes. Pass that over here, Fili.” Angel spoke as if from a reverie, and came out of it, and entered another, a stoned one.
         “That’s the smartest thing I’ve heard you say yet, this evening.” Blake said, “Lets go now. Hell yes.”

Charlie interrupted:
“Woah, woah, woah, there guys. Here is my opinion for the night. Hell yes. Ahem... ahem... ahem... listen in folks, Angel. Nagasaki! Fucking pointless as the old man next door, the drunkard, I mean. The flightless seagull, humanized, dependent, seagull. There ain’t no such thing as a seagull, every bastard knows that. Several kinds of gulls, but none of them are seagulls. The pointless drunk neighbor, the seagull, the Nagasaki bomb, they all have the same effect on some scale. The hell scale. It’s simple really. Shit. Come on Angel, bless me, and my prophecies, oh great high Angel, Jesus. I am you, Jesus. Bless myself.
“The Nagasaki bomb was just to scare the ruskies. Fuck, I know all shit, no one believes me. The nation is brainwashed by victors, the winners, the gods, the men that write history, after the fact. Hell, the Nagasaki blurb, the lie, that’s what the president of the time lived for. Power. Bless the Nagasaki bomb, it kept the ruskies alive, the socialists alive. They are still alive! Damn it all, the damn government. They live in a glass shoe, the crazy gits!” Charlie yelled, as they went out to the people, and the parties. Hell yes, they thought. Everyone was silent. Only Angel had heard him, of course.
         Ladies, people, masses, here I come, the blessed one. We all come. We are here for the good times, right now. The good times. Angel thought, as he lit another puffer, as they walked back to their van, the road, and the peace.
         The water was as serene in its piety and purity, yet as they turned away, the scum, algae, dead fish, and all manner of evil things rose to the surface of the lake, and took over, and were victorious in their blood lust, and their inhumane fury.
         The lake became deadened with Angel’s and Charlie’s dark thought, who thought they were Jesuses.
         Hell yes, they thought.
         Hell yes, the four thought.
         The world at large was dismayed at, but also respectful of, the Boulder In The Valley, and the Stone On The Hill.          



Chapter II
************************************************
"I called out to the darkness. I called out to the darkness. And I called out to the darkness. And it answered. Why do you cry out? And I could not answer. Silence. There was silence. And I died and passed on to hell." ~ Angel
“I haven’t been here in ages. My stomach flu is all gone. Not sick anymore. Working like a dog out here. Hard shit.” ~ Fili
**************************************************
         June 9th, 1986, Bear Lake, Maine
They wandered straight out to the van. They walked as if their path was unintended, but it was straight and true. Them, in their out-of-style boot cut jeans, floppy shirts and faded caps, walked slowly and sagely across the yard. A couple of them, Blake and Charles, had stains on their shirts, from a grease burger, or some such. They had given up on burgers long since though, they now carried a bag of charcoal, and an open grill and a tripod, so they could fire up some steaks, straight way, any time. They, Angel the most, loved to grill out, and carried with them a half dozen, carefully tried and chosen spices. They stopped at rest stops, grocery store parking lots, empty grain fields, and anywhere else that was open, and didn’t stink too badly.
         As they finally reached the deep blue van, first Angel, then the rest, seemed to quiver and shake off a silent feeling. They whooped, and cheered, and were ready to party. Blake puffed out his chest, and yanked out his collar, and unbuttoned another circle on his shirt. Charlie slicked his long black hair, and was quite, as he stared into the car, looking back at himself, and re-checking his hair. Fili coughed a few times, smoothed his shirt, and made witty comments(in asian) about everyone else. No one thought they were funny. Angel just whooped really loudly, and seemed to bite back a memory, or a cry, or a sleepless night, and put on a crazy man face, with wild eyes, and he grinned to the fading day.
                                                           *******
         “ID please? …Yes.... Yes....” the mad man said. “Enter... enter, if you will. Cups to the right... cups on the right. End of the hall. Move along now, move along.” The man continued. He was large, barquoe and horrible in his insanity. He smiled, flexed and laughed his smile away.
         Smoke. Cigarettes. Beer. Sweat. Sour beer. Fresh cases. Running taps.
         The four poured in, slipping easily along the corridors, turning, opening, laughing. They passed a crazy man, with long brown curly hair, dressed in only a pair of jeans. He was black eyed, and laughing hysterically. His eyes fluctuated like silver demons rattling at the pointed gates of hell. And he was happy, excessive. Jumping over piles of green leaves, and bed springs, he seemed to bounce to the very roof, and back. A circle stood around him, some melancholy, some strange and irrelevant, and some cheering the wild man on.
         They also passed many ladies, laying over doorframes, looking out, showing out, and laughing hard about it. They cleaned up that night. They cleaned up real good. The women that is, with money.
         A silver haired broad caught Angel’s attention, all of their attention. This was only different because it was the first time that Angel’s attention had been caught. She was sinewy and long, but still full figured enough to hang on a shelf. Wearing a blue bathrobe, with a great star of what seemed to be blushed flesh, on the back, and the tips of the star wrapped around to the front, over the shoulders and around  the hips.
         Andria, as he later found out she was called, was one of the few not drunk; she didn’t sway like the others (at least she didn’t sway like Angel), or slap things on the back. She kept her cool, letting many rolls of bills pass by, sported by many sleek men.
         When the four Brothers walked by, all their eyes focused on her, and hers seemed to lock onto all of theirs. The walls shuddered and righted themselves, as they kept on walking towards the door at the end of the hall.  Suddenly, the halls were filled with violent black laughter, high and insane. Bats flew like leaches around the darkened light fixtures.
         They seemed to pass her twenty times along the hall way. She was everywhere. In every face. They visited almost everyone, until they finally shuddered into sleep, one by one. Hell yes, they thought. Hell Yes. Hell of a time.
*****
         Andria’s room was the place that he took off the back of, and crashed, at. It was 3 p.m., on a Sunday. Angel starred groggily at the clock. He dove into it with his eyes, being barely able to stay on his feet, let alone lie down, he threw himself into the clock, and derived the time. Strained, he fell back down for another day of rest. A hour later though, he again thought and opened his eyes. Mostly awake, within a few moments, he pulled himself up onto the bed. Turning, he let his feet dangle over the edge, caressing the floor. He noticed Andria’s head was a couple feet away from him, as church bells rang in the air outside. He blinked, and heard voices. Singing voices.
         Damn Baptists and Lutherans. So fucking loud.
         He bent over and kissed Andria on the forehead. It was a soft-sad kiss. She didn’t stir. A goodbye. He threw some blankets over her body as he stood up, and began searching for his clothes. Within a few moments he found them, as they were generally in a pile in the far corner of the room. He threw open the window. It had rained last night, and he let the fresh scent wash over him. He felt reenvigored, and he pranced out of the room, grabbing a small pile of cash on the bedside table, on his way out.
         Hell, he thought, might as well make the best of it. Screw being the nice guy. Screw the harlot. I need the cash, anyway. Where is the drug store? I need a coke.
         He practically skipped down the hall, and out of the past, the doors. He reached the sun, and listened intently to it’s rays. He sat down on the lucid-brown picnic table, and put his feet on the bench seat. He pulled out a cigarette and smoked it. He then took another, and smoked that more slowly.
It was odd. Within twenty minutes, his Brothers seemed to answer the smoke signals, and came out. One, by one. First Fili, then Charlie, who seemed still half drunk, and then finally Blake, who had a grand saunter to his gait, and seemed to beam intently. No one spoke till they were all together; they merely nodded.
         “Hell of a time” Blake said, when he arrived, sitting down next to Fili.
         “Hell yes,” Said Fili, “hell yes.”
         “Hmmmmm yes. Shit. Let’s get out of here. I gotta keep moving when it rains. The freshened, thick, earth-water air calls me to the road.” Angel said.
         They continued on, down the south.



Chapter III
********************************************
“Be strong in your insolence. Fuck.”  ~ Angel
“My knee is cracked. Get off me, and bend it. Put the bone back in, bitch.” ~ Fili
“Contrasts are philosophical, beautiful, full of words, extremes. To some, life is about extremes, nothing else. One after another. Each in their own fashion. Simple-ness must be loved, preserved.” ~ Angel
********************************************
         June 12th, 1986, South Maine
         They cruised along the downtown. Turning right, they careened into the gas station.  Angel filled it up, while the rest went in to find some drinks. Soda. Something light. Carbonated, orange. They found Moxie. Buying six cases of it, along with a 15/16ths tank of gas, they walked out of the caroaded, silent gas-station. The almost blasted out speakers mimed silence through empty lyrics. Nothing was on. They piled the cases in the back, and got into the van. Fili hoped back out, and ran back inside the station. Asking for directions to the closest rural area, he got answers. It was Fili’s turn to think of something fun to do. They took turns doing it: the college dorm, a couple nights back, had been Blake’s idea. Charlie never seemed to get a turn. Angel was secretly thrilled about it; Charlie knew, and was pissed.
         “Fuck off Angel. You don’t know shit. Your ideas suck.” Charles said.
         Angel simply ignored him.
         Left out of the gas station, straight for 18 miles, left, two blocks, then right. Suddenly, they were in the middle of a massive suburb. Fili laughed, almost hysterically.
         “Here we go boys.”
         “What the hell? This is a high-class bastard area. Wanna egg some houses? Hell yes.” Blake said, laughingly, seriously.
         “Shit yeah. Rock on. Let’s egg the rich bastards.” Charlie said.
         “Ho hum... I think Fili has got more planned here then that.” Angel said.
         Fili nodded, and smiled, but didn’t say anything. It was all an impressive show of iced tongues. Fili knew all, and became God, for the first time in his breath-releasing career.
         They cruised along for some more time, looking over window ledges, and through glass at huge mansions and beautiful lawns. They were completely awed. After a time, it all seemed to sink in. Then it happened. And it was all over.
         “That one. That one there, on the right.” Fili snickered.
         “The blue one? That one is ugly as shit, man.” Blake said.
         “Hell no. Hell no. Damn it, that one.”
         “Ahhhh... very nice. Very nice. The spiked one.”
         “Yes. The fucking spiked one. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
         Black pearls of clouds intertwined around villous, gothic towers of stone. Fields of broken earth, and oil, ran up and down on the sides of the castle; the obvious bastion of darkness in the neighborhood. Simple shadow shapes of bats seemed to flick out of raised towers, of Great Briton. Like pre-King Arthur castles, brutality’s castles of barbaric magnitude, it stood tall and complicating, like great, stupendous bars of steel pushed into the ground.
         They walked up the great gray doors of barriers,  baroque, in-spontaneous, and old as death.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Fili hit the door.

         Tap. Tap. Tap. Fili hit on the door.
“Harder damn it. Harder! No one will ever hear you that way. Fucking weak Filipinos” Blake said, then laughed.
         Knock. Knock. Knock. Fili beat the door.
         “Damn it all!”
         KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK. Fili pounded the door.
         Silence. Silence. Silence. They all looked quizzically at each other, concerned. Suddenly, caught up in a whirl wind of blows, they all threw them selves upon the doors, beating with fists, like little babies, who are trying to fight away their anger, without gentleness. Even Charlie lent himself to the fray, forgetting that he didn’t really exist.
         “Cough. Cough.” A voice spoke behind them.
         The boys jumped in unison, and cried out in their hearts. Angel let lose a simple scared cry, then quickly, retained himself. They spun on half turns, and flipped around like bicycles without wheels, drawn to huge magnets. They looked far and distant, eye level, and saw nothing. Suddenly, their eyes were cast forward and down, as movement caught their eyes. Something short and stout, loomed up like dead bodies, crawling, and like satanic dwarfs, walking towards them.
         The dwarf before them, was without a beard, yet had black, stringy, long and drawn out hair, flowing around it’s ears like death tangles of startled wolves, and midnight cats. Eyes flashed, like eloquent peddles of red flowers, sparkling, as if luminescent in the moonlight, that would have been there, if the sun was not violating its space. Night. This was Night’s home, not Sunlight’s. Dead things like to crawl here. There. Everywhere.
         A old female form appeared, out of the dwarf. The dwarf, melted, and died off. An old witch, cobbled together from old woman parts, appeared. Dumpy. Fat. Sagging breasts. Disheveled face. It was all there. The whole damn witch.
         “Hello, little boys. What in the name of HELL, are you doing in my yard?” Said the Witch. As she spoke, the sky darkened, and the sun left, and was gone from the universe entirely, it seemed. “Never mind that, now, come inside, I can show you many things.”

         They hesitated, confused, scared as hell.
         “Get inside now!!! Damn it all, little boys!”
         Forgetting their mischief, they lost their minds, and became totally submissive, like scared animals, and like young, beaten children. They had meant to cause the most trouble ever seen in the neighborhood. They had meant to destroy the house, and any hope of resurrecting it. They had meant to strike terror into the owners hearts. Yet,  they were simply herded inside.
         The doors seemed to open before them,  and the witch behind them, they fled into the scary house, the black encrusted, lines, spikes and other recesses in the dark interiors of the house. The door slammed shut behind them, and they were silenced by the deep shadows that surrounded them. They were broken apart like crystal shards, hit by a sledge hammer of huge magnitude, far outweighing the size of the crystal. Crystal. Crystal. A decently sized crystal ball, loomed up in front of them, and spoke ages to them.
         It was set onto of a pure black night, simple shade of a pedestal. It would have been intricately carved, if light could have gotten onto its surface. But the lack of light disallowed details, and the intricacies were lost in the depth of colorlessness black.
         Fili glanced behind, and noticed the witch was gone.          
Everything flew about inside the glass ball, then disappeared. Finally, one face appeared. The face of the witch. And she laughed. Her face tightened and bent, under the pressures of laughing at the moon, the stars, and everything else that was maddening, or simple. Death was simply everything that ever existed, smiled from behind her, and was ignored.
         She smiled her nasty teeth at them.
She smiled her nasty teeth at them again.
         She told them to be silent.
         She told them to clear their minds.
         She told them to be silent again.
She smiled her nasty teeth at them.
She started to speak in a harsh, deep voice, that was full of evil blankness, and left them feeling irrepressibly dead, and ghoulish. 

A word from the Book,
There is a stimulation of haze
and red lights, I am surrounded by
fishes who act out two-step plays.
I walk to the window to sigh
At the burnt-tomato sun which peaks
Out from its locker of an abode,
Acting, proving my doings are equal to heaps
Of dying water guts and melting sea salt, another full load.
The flames die, slumping over into the horizon,
Failing in her own understanding of me,
She leaves me a note, but blank from A to Z.
Insane is the groaning sun, a sick water bison,

A dark mahogany of unspoken siloquoy.
Broken eyed, I walk out of the stilted
House, I ask to become the real McKoy.
I am rejected. I am again jilted

By this love of mine: I call it, simply, life. Asked
It to stay, I have many time, on wild cruises,
But it seems angry, and solidly determined to outlast
Me in this dream, It seems. I will be the one who loses.

I stand the watery brink. Crying, I glance
At my wrists, the soft red luminescence seems
to grow hard, and run over, down my pants
No more delusions of grander. No more dreams.
Just the Devil and I. As I bring my eyes up,
The unformed glass and water, slide away,
And boil. Confronted with a fiery, a molten cup,
I reach for it. It contains my wrists. At bay,

A lone demon, laughs at my discomfort.
My life was plain. My death is baroque
In every way. I am no longer in-ert.
Moving farther now, in Hell, my stubs droop

And fall away. Smoke endures while,
Pains rides me, after the dead sun, a lung,
Chasing it. I grow old, and molt into bile,
But I can never die, my song will be sung.

Suicides burn.

         Quiet. Quiet. Quiet in the bottomless house. Quiet. Quiet in the bottomless pit. Suddenly though, Blake laughed. He laughed loud and hard. Then he spoke:
         “What the hell is this SHIT, old woman?!  Your a damn fucked up lady, that is for sure. Get out in the real world. Leave your wolves bane, your bats wing, and your snake fangs along! Forget them! Just become normal, and die, already, old woman.”
         And with that, the crystal shattered, and so did the whole spirit of the thing. Suddenly they were in a normal house, and they laughed at their own fears, and sucked again at their rolled papers. They smiled at each other, and surrounded the old maid, that was before them.
         She was crying, disheveled, and otherwise impure in her misery. Her black and white clothing seemed to become dirty, and forlorn, surrounding her in writhing circles and squares of black abilities.
         They simply egged the place, and turned it completely topsy-turvy. Random chairs flew through the air, smashing, goring, and impaling themselves on spikes, and tall gothic structures








Chapter IV
********************************************
“I can see the thin form of the casting of the house, through the trees. I lay back, standing on my feet and back, in the air, trees. I am a long way from the fields, and so, I am encased, restrained, formed, but not captured, locked, defeated. Just restrained, that’s all.” ~ Angel
“Bull shit, another word, and I freeze you with this sphere of ice, this thing in a cone, moon, sun of ice, in your face. I’ll take and leave it. Hope your happy.” ~ Charles
********************************************
         July 5th, 1986, New York City, New York
“You cheap bastards. You god-damn cheap bastards.” Angel said.
         He had just started playing, and already, he was a god. He burned and turned. Mostly he just turned into a poker face with eyes, and a sense of weird luck. He spun around, looking, calling bluffs and making money. He laughed in-between hands, and smiled savagely, with a sense of insecurity, and self hatred. He hated himself for laughing at others discomfort. Then he realized he wasn’t laughing at that, but instead at his own fortune; he didn’t care anymore. Instead, he roared with laughter. Yet, he somehow pulled himself together, and won the next hand, revealing three Ace’s, beating Toby’s two pair, jacks and kings, which Angel had snorted at.
         Toby said:“What the fuck? You god-damn-bastard fucker. You damn hippie, with fucking long ass hair. Man your getting that fucken cut off. I don’t give a shit about this game anymore, it was just a few bucks.”
         When Toby said the last bit, Angel laughed out loudly.
         “Fifty-five dollars is just a few bucks? Beautiful! We have GOT to play more often. Next time, you bring the drinks, porch monkey. Hahahaha hahaha haha...” Angel laughed insanely at his last comment. “Fucken porch monkey.”
         Angel had forgotten where he was. He was in the middle of a rocker-fest of them, only they were young spry ‘porch monkeys.’ He was playing against four black men, and two white bastards, who couldn’t tell an animals ass from its face, they were so intoxicated; they just didn’t care about poker anymore. Or about helping out their poor white ‘brother.’
         Oh my fucking shit. What have I done? Suddenly the laughing inside him stopped, and he became totally aware of himself, and his thoughts. Oh my fucking shit. Listen to me. You gotta do this shit. He quickly looked at his white brothers and said... “shit” ... out loud. The two whites were pretty much passed out, with no chips left. Shit. Hey, those are my chips, those that the blacks have. How best to get them? Those damn chips are mine! I need those few hundred dollars.
         Ahhhhhh! I have it. A new way to make money.
         Angel reached out and grabbed for the pot of money, yelling:
         “Its mine, you low-down son-of-a-bitch empty-beer-bottle-holding trash cans! Fuckers! You black crackheads know its all mine! The money is mine. You bastards are going to steal it. Your going to fucking steal it. That is what blacks do! Fucken black people. GOD DAMN ALLYOU BLACK PEOPLE.”
         **********
         When Angel awoke, bound and gagged, he blinked a thousand-eighty-two times, and then settled his eyes on the pot in the center of the table.  He smiled toothily, from behind black cheeks, and bright red lips. He didn’t know it of course, until he saw his reflection in the glass, on his right; the beer glass was tall and reflective, with a bit rectangular handle jutting out.  Angel saw his reflection, and felt windswept, and disappoint rushed through him. He smiled a simple smile, and cried.
         His face was bloody, where the red stuff had flowed of his black ashed face. Scarlet lipstick followed his lips. They had dumped hot bacon grease, and car oil in  his hair. He felt like shit. His back was whipped, and his clothing was torn. The only reason they had left him alive, was the fact that he had called them out so bad. They couldn’t become the animals that he had called them, and killed him. They couldn’t become the black trash idiots that he had called them, by stealing his money.
         Angel was smart that way. Real smart. He knew what the hell was going on. He knew a hell of a lot of shit, and thought it out beforehand. He was a giant field of information. Yes, that’s right, a giant field.
         Giant field of information, in-fucking-deed. How the hell do I untie these ropes? Damn it all. God, that was a good game though. When I pulled those two ace’s! God. Fucken full house ace’s over twos. That was crazy shit, no doubt about it. That black man was good at cards. Way to fucking good.  Yeah, I had to do what I done.  That’s all there is to it. He would’ve bounced back in the end. He was just playing with me. I had to fucking end it, man. That’s right. Fucken god-shit was bringing me down. Stupid karma. But I topped it off, man. I pulled off the damn cherry move. God damn these ropes...
         Angel whittled himself out, and broke the back of the chair off, by falling over backwards. He rode out the coils of rope supremely, and winked at the flailing and churning edges. Massaging his wrists, bubbling, and rubbing them like packs of frozen foods, taking off the top layer of ice, he reassessed control of his body. On the walls were written:
         White cracker trash ass-bag hippies get slit, if they stay around. Slit. Fucken die, white boy.
         Angel laughed at his shitty self, and recoiled, when he thought of what he had done; what he had gotten himself into. It went to his deep buried conscious, what he had done. How the hell he had fucked up the Lord Baby Jesus’s will. He had screwed with America’s Ideals. He had brought down the great damn basketball game of ’65. The white boys sat, hell yes, they sat, tied, gagged, and bleeding, while the black boys played their game, their nasty as hell, rough game. That was how he reasoned it, anyway.
         God damn bitches. They never listen! Charlie, Blake, and Fili.  They never fucking listen. I bet they are out pounding some ass in the low down part of town. Fucken idiots. I hope to hell they are just chilling in the hotel room. I TOLD them I’d get some cash. They are just off spending it. Idiots. Honest to god, I bet they are getting diseases from scary shit. Idiots. Never pay a damn dame. Never do it, it just ain’t smart.
         Fuck ‘um.
         This is god-damn New York. Live it up a little bit. Live it up, man. Living it up ain’t about fucking ladies, man. Its about enjoying yourself, and checking out new places. Hitting up what you know will feel good. Going to the nice parts of time, and fitting in for a change. Spending some cash on some so called ‘bling.’ It’s about eating at the nicest places in the state. It’s about looking over forty stories space, and sipping on some fine shit. Anyways. I am out of here.
         Shakeing off the last of the ropes, Angel reached over and snagged the pile of cash, wiping off the note saying: die, bitch, we ain’t stealin shit. Bastards, he thought. He quickly added it up, $650. Not a bad take in, he thought. I’m happy as hell with it.
         I’ve always been as happy as hell with it. I’m an ‘average’ player. I am an ‘average’ player. I’ve only lost two games, for cash, in my whole fucking life. Fucking glorious.
         Alright, man, alright. Chill. Let’s get the hell out of here. Charlie?
         Charlie slide out the air next to him, and laughed when he saw the money; didn’t say anything, just laughed, and smiled. He dusted Angel off a bit, wiped off some blood, then started whistling. He whistled a merry toon, something of a show tune from the 70’s. It was on reruns all the time, but Angel couldn’t place it for the life of himself. He died, seemingly, after he thought to hard.
         Shit, he thought, as he was going down, Charlie is gonna take my money. Bas... tard...
         He collapsed in a pile, bleeding. The earth spun in opposite directions, and confused his mind. Blood flowed like rampant bulls, and eagles, finding small places and seeking out prey, open ground, fields. Clothes seemed to leave him, and become unimportant. They were never important, he told himself. He lost control of his senses, and he peed. He was so close to death, he didn’t even realize, and he was about to go spend six hundred and fifty dollars in a restaurant. Charlie just laughed at him. What a fucken idiot. Give me that money. Awwwww... hell. He is my creator. I gotta help him stay alive. Fucken babies dying. Fucken gods dying. Fucken creators dying.
         Gods?
         Creators?
         Oh my fucking god. I’ve lost my religion. He has finally got to me! That troll creating idiot fucking made me evil. Damn it all. I’m gonna burn in hell? Yes. I am. Shit. I’d say I hope he is going down with  me, but shit, I know he is. I won’t let him change now. No, I won’t let him change now.
         All of my quiet moments. All of my silent prayers. All of my dead wishes. Wait... no. All of my pious acts, and humble offerings? Wait... no. All of my work? Nothing? I am still corrupted. Yes. I Am. Damn him. Damn me.  People wouldn’t understand. I can’t go back; the devil laughs to much with me. I love him, I realize now, all of a sudden. He is truly beautiful. His thoughts are poetry, and his doings, evil, and gods, he has gods working for him. He is a fucking god, damn it. Satan, ruler of the world! Ruler of the world. Fucken kill Ghandi for me, please, my lord? Damn him; Ghandi. 
         Charlie picked up as much of Angel as he could manage, and hauled him over to the stair well,  dropped him to the ground, and pushed him down the steps. After a few more pushes, towards the top, Angel fell the quickly, landing funny on his left arm and both ankles, bending them and, hearing a few snapping sounds. Charlie raised his eyebrows. Bastard, he thought. Guess I better keep him alive though...
         We’ll all get shot. What he did, will make us all get shot. We gotta get out of fucken town. What if Angel dies? What happens to me? Shit.
         As Charlie hauled Angel out into the streets, the people seem to fade and pass away towards another symbol. Deserted and weakened, and they felt the need for a reawakening; another sense of life. A total reconciliation of past lives. Fucken French people. Century-and-a-year old faces peeked out from solid walls, doors, panels, showing a shade of luminance, as ghosts, as specters, as benefactors. Repulsing Charlie, they spoke words:
         Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
         Over, over, over again, were the words repeated. Charlie was driven from water as death from a swimming bowl. Tooth over took the betrayed tongue. Blood rushed from foreheads like sore needles, wheedling away at a dead-ish Angel. Insane words, chanted like foreign monks at prayer, german, old english, drove even more at an baroquely imaginative personality; a fellow who crawled about like screaming, dying witches in true, real man’s mind.
Black stables of horses wound about the man’s noose, tightening the knot, and breathing mule’s sweat, and sick-stale-oat-breath,  into a very dry, but tightly fit rope, wrapped around a young man’s throat. A soul-less man, dependent on the semi-god-fearing man’s soul. A rebuke of ages; a rebuttal of the oldest wise words spoken. A cry; a tear. A broken man’s heart, word; basically,  the review of the ancient’s laws, not the unbinding but the research of the claw that holds men’s’ hearts and minds and morals together.
         A tower so tall that the French could have built it. In fact, they may have. Charlie wasn’t sure. When the fanfare started, it was so loud, that it left him in such a deep confusion that he lost his mind again. His subconscious took over, and he fled, taking Angel with him.
         Subjoined. Self-defeated, like the 1979 trick. Damn Lake Mendota dwellers. No-body fell for that shit. Expect idiots, distracted dragons of the northern forests, and psychotic nymphs of the business world. They did it to mock the planet of the apes, but they basically ended up only causing quite a few laughs, and making several people scared shitless.
         Angel’s younger teen idol, John, got scared shitless over it. That was crazy shit. Him, getting scared. Made Angel even more crazy.... wild eyed, you might even say. Green tongues of green fans, and mildew of horrendous colors seemed to beam out from the subjugated eyes of Angel, at the time. Black sterilized feelings of remorse, or past tense of remorse, now current anxiety ran through Angel’s sub-delusional mind. The thought, Charlie’s thought, of the 1979, February, brought him back, and he sputtered. Instantly, the insane Charlie popped back solely into Angel’s head, and was not heard from for quite some time.
         Angel reached into his pockets, and found him self in a small room, with a table and chair. Both simple; he was sitting in the chair. Out of his deepness he pulled scratch paper, and his grandiose pen, wooden, brown, ballpoint.  Simple, simple, simple strokes he played out on the paper, reaching out and flattening the paper like sick, twisted swords, who needed to be blessed by an arch-rival white-supremacist monk-god; old Anglo Saxon. He penned out:
         Greek fire. All around me I feel revirbirations of my past. I am weakened by a soulless master. I laugh at him, and turn. I have no god. In this choice, I may very well have chosen a god. I don’t know. Maybe I am already doomed. That is a good question, I must say. The sardonic voice of the outside world asks me to leave this place. I politely refuse. I am no undergraduate, who cannot attain a license of a king. I am the king, the undergraduate of all. To the future I say! The kingship matters not. I would burn it in an instance. I would also burn the graduate, and the lower.  I would burn most things. And perhaps I can.
         The real goal I think, the only melodramatic horse worth catching, the only time worth living in, the only place to get your hat from, is to awaken people. Yes. I am but sixteen years old.  Swords revoke visions of old times like fires of Babylon.  Brimstone is weakness. Fire is the destroyed force in the world. I’ll kill both God, and the Devil. And I’ll not create anything in the place of the lost bowls; in the place of the angered systems of lighting, of picture frames, metal books, wooden shelves, hollow tomes of cut out empty pages.
         If there is something out there, may it contain my soul and not give me sign. Give me no effort. I want my choice to be my own. For, if there is a sign, am I not to follow the sign, as sign is proof of existence. So I do not want a miracle or burnt sign, I just want to make my own decision. Maybe that is why there are no more signs currently; the apple’s bosom knows no flowers, nor bee stings. It knows a little of life, and whole lot of the blank, crisp insides of a bitten fruit. Not bidden, or forbidden.  Simply fruit; no sign of a order of dark spiders, or of translucent light; heart felt.  Angered beavers seemed to think I am weak. I fail miserably in my understanding of life. But that is me. I may just be losing in that. I believe myself to be full of contempt for forgetton races. Am I not to become one of them? No. I am to be remembered, damn it all.
Field mice ask me for a five dollar note, I refuse, and then hand it over. The next time I just simply refuse again, only, as I hand it over. I am quite serious. My mind doesn’t know what my body does. I seek revenge, then, ask forgiveness. I am weakened by mortal beings, such as elves, then I attack swordfish like dwarfs, and am not heard from again.
         Someday though, you will hear me, and people will hear me. One by one, two by two, or a million at a time; I do not know. I know nothing of condescending shrouds of light. Times are killing me. You will be awoken by a sword thrust through your heart, mind, and spinal cord. And new vision, a wheeled one, will become apparent. A life’s awakening; a world’s awakening; a simple mistake of mine, yet to be made. Corresponding deaths may be irrelevant; I have no answer. I seek none. I simply have it, but cannot understand it yet. Interpreter, I seek myself.
         Angel looked up from the broken paper, retrieved paper, and left the pen there, planning to return. As he stood to relieve his bowels, emotion, blood overtook his brain, and collapsing, he dreamt an incredible dream:
         “I am intensely silent.” His body said.
         Angel watched his body, whilst it talked to a great gatsby of an entertainer: Leon Wilkeson, Bass guitarist extrodinare, since age fourteen. 
         Silent, humid, fast conversation overtook the two; a worldly debate over came them. Angel heard nothing of the conversation; his hearing weakened, his ears hurting.  The whole skyline was gray, and all the simple objects at hand appeared black. Bodies, faces, became white as stone, and un-answerable as dead fish. Fish. Dead. Dead fish rotted everywhere, behind the eye. The smell was atrocious. The desert skyline used to contain water, oceans, but not longer does.
         He soon became fatigued by his body, and traveled on his own, replenishing himself in the great salt-water body, Columbus’s sea, the Nordic sea. It would have seemed far, but distances suddenly became unimportant.
         Then, thinking of early America, switching bodies of water simultaneously, with his thoughts, he instantly bathed himself in the most superior lake of all. Revived, smileing, he envied  himself, in Lake Superior. Cold seemed a far distant thing, like small needles through thick rubber; something beyond this world. He swam, dove and reached the bottom. He sang songs with the turns, flows, ebbs of the water.
         The dead fish smell left; fresh tomahawk wood-breezes came by. Soon pink fish lapped at his toes, and made him tickle himself. They watched him. He watched them. It was all a beautiful circle; coherent thoughts adjusted rules and balances placed by a god.  Suddenly, unable to feel the water, he felt nothing.
         Leon Wilkeson must have put a real axe in his real back; his other back; his spare back. He couldn’t move, then. He slowly dropped below the dying surface, dying into himself. Self-incriminating, suffocating without a sign of life. Fish, large teddy bears, made of wood and wool, played with him. Suddenly the water played with him, around him. Bubbling, becoming red, it surrounded him with imps.
         He cried in his mind. He wept. His view sank, and he appeared at the cracked bottom of the world, melting into hell, feeling coming back, and he hurt as he burned.
         Awoken by the pain, he came to the ground, in the small room, face down. He felt sad, embittered, but stronger. He brought himself to the toilet and relieved himself, pain, then un-restraint. Happy, he returned to his letters, words, books, notes of forgotten futures.
         I feel an obligation to the dead fields of my father. Though I am weak, I still feel it. The weak still feel things. They are often underestimated; a wrong turn down a spurred avalanche of sinister feelings, and other things leading to death. Estimations. I should go and find my brethren. I should patch myself up. It is all like poker; tally up the totals. Find the percents, options, possibilities. That type of game is to easy though. I play with my instincts, with my looks at other people. I read people, not numbers off of a card.
         Hmmm… my gut says I should listen to myself.  What a distraction! I ignore it, and follow my thoughts. Why am I writing this down? So I can prove I am completely sane later, of course. Don’t ask me again.
         Six hundred and sixty-six dollars. I think it is the Devil’s Game. Hmmm… maybe I dreamed it all up. Damn bastards. I am not weak. Do not underestimate me. No… no… the money is all here. Say, I wonder where the porch monkey’s went to. Ahhh… doesn’t matter; not my problem. Ha. Ha. I am so racist.  No, I am just relentless. I know where different truths lie. There is always another concern to bask myself in. No. I hate concerns. There is always another reason to be relaxed, that is it. I only pass on concerns, not burden myself with them. Fools. They take what they are given; which ends up being all they can take, because they are so limited. Fools. Do not bask yourself in concerns.
There is yet another answer to the brink of destruction. Throw in the skates, and pick  up the cards. That’ll put you over. It did to me. I’m living in hell. Actually, I’m only passing through. I’ll get out soon, move along. Move along. Lives are only temporary.
Don’t patronize me, Fili!
         Damn him. He thinks he can just pop in whenever he feels like. Ho hummmm… Maybe I’ve settled a riddle, just now. Go, find out, and ask. Then tell him he is wrong, of course.
Maybe, now, I won’t have to kill you. ~ Charlie said.
Kill me? You don’t want to do that.
Yes, I do.
Bastard.
…
Why can’t you leave me out of this?
I can’t. I tried once. Ages ago; damn-old-fool took a ride on a train, and left me stranded in the 5th grade forever.
Naaa… only for a few days. Then you graduated three years early. One year to late though. Maybe you will die because of it. What a damn tragedy.
I’ll tell you what the real damn tragedy is here. It’s your family. Not you, and I. But your, so called, ‘blood family.’
Awwww… hell. It wasn’t that bad. They weren’t that bad. Damn, past tense again. They aren’t that bad? Don’t they still exist?
Yes, they do. Just because they aren’t in your life right now, doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
         Shit. Shit. Shit.
         You’re a damn old fool. Of course they exist.
         ….
         Yes. You’re a damn old fool.
         My family consists of a man, a matador, who is his own bull. He is red, and lives in a house of mirrors. He can’t defeat himself, nor his surroundings. But he still tries. Yes he tries. Hmmm…and my mother?
         Yes, your mother. She is a good person. A terribly invoked saint. Paralysis awaits. True god, god fearing, fearing of life, life after death, death conquered, conquered by no other, other is not an option. She has patience, but not enough. She has tears, but not enough.
         That’s her. Sounds like you know her to well, you bastard.
         Fuck you. It wasn’t like that. I have just paid more attention to the better side of your family. You are my only body. I have none other. Your mind is my means of connecting to the world.
         Better side? You ass. You only see one side of the better. Though, maybe you are right.
         Hmmm… enough, I guess, for your mother. You rich half-German, half-Finnish, kid are lucky, as far as your non-existent brother is concerned.
         Ahhh… if he did exist, he would be a fucken crazy man. A hell of a better man then me. As long as he didn’t grow up with me as a mentor. I would have made a bad one. I know I have become wild as the gooses, but I still feel the urge to die as a honorable centurion back in the day. I need to live forever. I just changed my mind. I do need to live forever. I can do that through my writings. Fuck dying. I need to live forever. Don’t you understand?
         No. You are ironic. A fool. An ironic fool. Steel toe boots could never match you. You are supreme in your adolescence. Apparently I can never die, until you grow old, and cast me out, somehow. When you grow old, you will be able to. When you become an adult, don’t cast me out. Try not to change, and become lie the rest of the mother fucking bastards who can’t understand life. Don’t become desensitized to life.
         Go. Go. Go.
You are still weak. You father-hating fool. You are a fool. A true fool. You do not understand anything. You cannot. You have no real world experience. You are a kid. A damn young-person.
Don’t be an ass. You don’t believe any of that shit. A load of shit. You know how you hate people change as they get older, don’t you see? Yes, they just change.
But there is more reason. Their new selves just forget what it is truly like to be truly young. They cannot respect the youth of the next generation. Maybe they are just jealous, and sub-consciously become asses.
Awww. Shut up. I am done writing; no more conversations on paper. I’ll talk to you some other time.
Angel stood up, and stuck the pencil roughly into his pocket, seaminly to tear his pants. He roared with laughter at his own genius, as he spit on the paper. Petting his pocketed tarantula, he whispered to himself:
My old man will become senile. I know it. At least half the time, he will be senile. I know it. He will become old, and like a t-rex, turn into a ferocious bastard. A fool of a Took. A hell of a barbarian. A crazy bastard of an Orc. A band of rusted pennies, Abraham Lincolns that want to take over the world, one cent at a time.
Now, you don’t answer Twin-Face! Ha.
Angel arose and continued his prose, as he walked on down the hallway, leaving the small room, which turned out to be a closet, and a chest inside the closet, through a larger room, a bedroom perhaps. The hall was long, still, and perturbed by second voices, and stricken dumb men, who seek to understand the world, since they cannot fight it.
You cannot truly fight something if you truly understand it. That is true if both sides are intellectual, and understand this. War is a terrible genius that seeks to live eternally. Never can it let one of its minions win. Never, not fully. Simple; isn’t it? Not that a reader can understand the baroque feelings of a writer unless he lets himself enter the masters writings.
I am surrounded by broken swords. At some point, I will understand Twin-Face, and he will understand me. Then we will no longer be able to fight. If that comes before he passes on, then him and I, the two most powerful men in history, will take over the world, one way or another. Words can become volumes, while swords can only stock pile, and lead to more minions dying. Once in a while, some side will get lucky, and the leader will be slaughtered like a emptied Sea-Gull, torn apart by blades spinning circles of manifest destiny.
Beavers know nothing of dead people. They know only of their own made fields, tree bark, and witches fire. Isn’t it true?
…
Damn, Twin-Face, answer me! I command you, such as you are, such as I am, to answer me!
You really are truly a fool of a broken man.
I am not broken, thought I am no god. You used to be aged.
         Yes, you are. You are as broken as a set of wind chimes in the forest, and fired task of a nature-made lumberjack.
Hell yes. I fucking make fields. I make huge fields. I am the damn field-making man! Don’t even question me.
         No damn way that I wouldn’t. I was made to question you, wasn’t I? Isn’t that why you made me?
         NO! I didn’t make you. You just came. And you came as a partner. A friend. Now look at you!
         Ahhh. So I see. So I see. I can see it all now! WE ARE PARTNERS! FRIENDS! WE are one. We see eye-to-eye don’t we? Yes, we do. We just said we are friends. Even you said it, you deranged plowman. No. You are the forester; I am the plowman. I work the empty fields. Ha.
         You fucking Twin-Face. Don’t ever use reverse psychology on me again. I’ll never fail for it again. Fall. Fail, fall, what is the difference really? Damn. Anyway, Mr. Manure Man, I said we were supposed to be friends, I didn’t say we were. You are the god-damn troll, after all. We have never gotten along. Bastard.
         So we are supposed to be friends? You said we are supposed to be. Then why aren’t we? Let us not argue anymore, we are Supposed to be friends, obviously. You are the only one who can talk to me. I am the soul of a dead man, two thousand years old. Maybe 16,000 years old. I don’t even know, really.
         What the hell? Monsoons die. Tear-stricken, eye-lash catching, despondent death-weights fall from tall buildings. It is all tragedy again. My family sees the edge, and jumps back. They jump back over the empty space behind them, and fall through a second empty space. They die in eternity.
         Shut the hell up
         Continue.
Where was I? Oh, yes. There I was.
Well?
Ha. Fool. Listen.
I’m listening.
Quit cutting me off!
Fine. Fine. Fine enough. I’m fine enough. Your fine enough, almost. Lets get cracking. I’ll be quiet. Now where were you?
Yes. Damn fucking right. Where the hell was I? Where the hell am I, is more like it. I am in the middle of a fucking damn shit hole whorehouse, talking to a loony bastard. Anyways. The point. Ahem.
I am the soul of a dead man, basically. I get passed down, through books, trains of thoughts, old skulls. Sometimes even a bit of clothing, or a sunset. I am both the trigger, and the triggered. Maybe I am Plato. Maybe I am older. I like to think I am before Aristotle. Anyway, I believe part of his thoughts are in me. I have all the generations after, whenever there was someone who fit the bill. Most times it skips a generation, sometimes a dozen.
Basically, I can hand you those feelings, those out castings of life. Me just being here should give you an inkling of them. My just being here has driven you half insane. Don’t you realize that you are destined to pass on my spirit to the next kid, the next future of America, of Germany, of Russia, of the whole damn world. Until either the last one standing, is the one who understands it all, or we are all a bunch of fucking hippies jumping around a pole. The pole will be what’s left of the earth, basically a huge pile of decaying horse shit; our shit.
         Right now, I can tell you the best way to live your life. And if I hadn’t told you, it would be the best way. Can’t get around that, I’m not that good yet. Maybe in another sixteen thousand years it’ll happen. Awww hell, who knows. I don’t know yet. You though, are supposed to add to me. Don’t you see? Or maybe you are just crazed out right now.
         God. I don’t know whither to believe you or not. Wait… aren’t you me? No you are a thousand dead men. Right. Don’t you see? I can’t, not yet, I guess. Damn fields are filling up. Green stalks of beans grow like ferns in the wild yonder. I cannot speak my mind to the forest, woods, while I have tree sap gum in my mouth. Isn’t there a reason for life? Most people sure don’t have it. Maybe you do. Maybe I do. Maybe we are, or aren’t, the same. Anyway it is, anyway I face it, I could be insane. But then again, how do we ever know anything is real in the first place? Pain, love, hate, everything… could be in our so called ‘minds’, in this ‘reality’. God. I sound like a hippie. Mother, turn me out. I took after you, smoking crazy shit when I’m giving birth to something. Only mine is in my head, not my womb. God.
         I must be crazy. Nah, what the hell does crazy mean anyway? It is just a word.













Chapter V
********************************************
“Irrevrence in a field, without a sword, is suicidal. It could also be known as romantic-heroism. It just depends on your point of view. If its yours, mine, or his. Nothing is purely good, nor purely evil. Am I not right?” Charlie
“It is about time you started sleeping with the world, not against it” Angel
********************************************
New York City, just after a phone call with Ima, through Angel. July 7th.
         Until death do us part. I will not pass. Life is an interesting pastime, it seems. I cannot help but let it grow on me. Cancer suddenly becomes almost humorous, but still falls very short. Cells degenerating? Yes, they say, it happens. They fight bravely, but they say: yes, it happens. They admit life when health should be had.
         Now that I think about it, she was reserved. Trying to protect her future, her feelings, with her voice disinterested and silent. Almost groggy, it peaked through shattered tree leaves and came in jets of patches. She laughed at my question like a silent joke, somehow implied, though unintended. I did not intend it. Other things to do, nothing left to fight heart-for-heart for, she seemingly died to me. I don’t believe it. She can’t be dead to me.
         I am silent to the earth. Bounce back to the world; save it! You know the feeling will get you high. Love has that effect. It is impartial, though not unattainable to the single minded. Irrevocable. Ain’t you feeling it too? The washboard hates me. It leaves me dirty, and unclean. Love’s bumps throw me off like a bit of water. I am nothing. I seek refuse, but I attain only the best. I have attained only the best. The bad, it seems have come from the best. Ironic in life, I wonder what love is like after this? Maybe it will be like a chariot ride down the mountain, either a big rush, or un happy endings. Perhaps both can overtake me. Irony is best served after dinner, when we are relaxed, and can appreciate it best.
         Bothered by her life, I ask nothing in return. I only wish to make her life perfect by being apart of it. Does that make sense? Only the mad can tell. Oh, say, can you see? No. Only the horrific feelings of dead people can sustain the vision to see my love. I haven’t died yet, but my spirit has died hundreds of times, in the past centuries. That would explain my views of life. Perhaps my soul is to old to compare myself to the younger, the former. No, because shouldn’t maturity and vision come with age, death, unsustainable life? Yes, it should. So I should be able to find a good answer to this problem. Though, never underestimate the youth. They are often times more right then us.
         I talk like I am already 80. Damn.
         Perhaps instead of maturity and visions, only corruption and falseness come with age.
         Yes, yes, could be true.
         Defy me, oh lord. Wait. I do not seek a master. I only have myself, and my Twin-Face. That should be enough, shouldn’t it? Yes. A rock bottom base to fill mountains with.
         Insane blue monkeys laugh at me. Not through me, but at me. It is horrible. I cannot take them, but can’t seem to make them leave. I draw a door, and close it. They throw the door open, and follow me. I attempt to vanish, and am only half successful. My middle half is gone, and they jump through me, taking bits out of my top and bottom. Soon I am all around the room. My left middle toe watches my eyeballs, at two separate locations. I seem to hear my ears float against a hairy ape hand. My own hair in blemished by blue.
         Suddenly though, the monkeys begin to crap and puke on me, and soon they are throwing up my body parts. I become sick at this, and let myself die. I awaken, and miss Ima. Death seems to start over from there.
         Apparently I seek no life. But in life, I seek myself.
                                                 ********
         Angel’s thoughts seemed to congeal, and harden. He focused on his last laugh, his burial shroud. Condemned to walk the earth, like a soulless soul, he brought himself to rebuke his past actions, but since it was to late, didn’t really honestly care. Troubled, he laughed. It was a quiet laugh. Then suddenly, changing temperament totally, he laughed crazily, like a man who is about to do something totally predictable of a lost man’s mind, something so incoherent to everyday life that it is beyond simple comprehension of the sane, the incomplete.
         He missed her like hell. He wanted to die, and be reborn back into her life. He felt distained by his actions, and wanted to commit suicide. Feeling a bond like no other, he wept his heart out. Wishing to receive himself back, he wanted tears like butter, and felt a shudder of unending pain down where the tree hearts grow, and the deepest bit of love blood is kempt, he wished to receive a plaque, awarding him Ima’s undying love, matching his own.
         I need to end this trip. I need to go back and find her. I need to bring her back to me. What the hell was I thinking? Damn it all, that’s what I need to do! I need her like I’ve always needed her, only I was only too souped up to notice. I only knew false endings, and sad remorse from the grave. I will apologize and the world will be righted. I must confess upon the dying cross, and let her know what I have done, what I feel. I can’t go back down this path. Treating her like shit, so that I become more insane is not worth it. I need her; I would rather be sane and have her, then let myself drift, however much I want to.  The deepest sword of life is like an angel, if they exist, and if it stands for all purity and justice and love, which it does. 
         In the end, life is simply a lot of humdella, and backwash. But what we make out the nothingness can be great. It is great, if I can do it. It will be, for I love Ima like the backside of my mind, and I could not dismiss her, at any price, or raise. Life must be indiscrete, don’t you see, Twin-face? Yes, you must. You are my tooth puller. Once before you tore Ima from me you, you, you bastard. I will not let it happen again. Great caverns of impotent life resemble non-descript peaks.          
         I hate what my life has become. It is isomatic in comparison to the world at large. I am simply an image of a faraway place, another time, or something of that nature. Life isn’t what it was, and it wasn’t what it was for very long. Everything slips, but Ima should not. I must retain that bit, that whole, my whole. I cannot retain feelings of other things it seems; poker has come and gone. Maybe though, that will reawaken, when the time comes. Ima. Ima. Ima. Can’t you see me? I can’t believe the tone of your voice. Betrayal is not a key answer, nor is it any answer at all. I am re-awoken by dead things, but Ima is what pulls me up from the haze.
After, I seek my other self, Twin-Face, and kill him.  I try. There cannot be two most powerful men in the world. Screw the fact that we could become one. That is what I must do. That is what I will do. My most potent career is nothing in the face of Ima. She is my other, better future. I hope she sees that. Alas, I am not sure Twin-Face will understand. He will fight me, I am sure. I am the stronger though, as reinforced by my Love.
Crypts. Crypts of my old love are dug up. Tomes of my secrets, tombs of dead people, are simply thrown up in the air. I am weakened at first by it, then strike my self up, and become incredibly powerful, and am happy. Totally, almost insanely, but still quite sane, happy. Brought upon by feelings of reform, I become un-stricken by hate, self-possession, and self-interest.  Lack-of-ties is replaced by many ties; stronger ones, anyway; better ones.
                                       ********
One more phone call later:
Disentangled by foreign weeds, I could roll over and die. But I won’t. No I will not. I will strike out and cascade a river beyond imagining. I will find another member, and seek her out. Reach upon the cross and bring up a torrent of fossil fuels and triumphant feelings. I invoke powers beyond imagining. I am the true power on Earth it seems. Or, at least, I will become it. I am extreme. She can throw me down, but shit, I’ll come back around. I throw all the shit in her face. I laugh insanely!
Don’t you see? Life will always fail you at some point, so you have to keep trying. Fucking go forever; live as best you can, all the time. Because you always can, you have to try. That’s pretty much the good key here.
I gotta find myself another lady, to piss Ima off. Screw that shit. Forget that shit. I’m going to fucking bring a girl, one of her friends, to her damn softball tournament. HELL YES. That is the most devilish idea I’ve heard yet. That should get me back on the rebound. Oh yes, hell yes.
         Don’t you understand? Life is craziness. It is about superior feelings getting in the way of killing insubordinate people. I hate the way life works out sometimes, but that is the way it is. Life is about ebbs and flows. Ups and downs. Rises and falls. Circles, you gotta have lows, in order to have highs. Comings and goings. That’s the answer! This is the low. Ima was the low. The next will be the highest of high. Hell yes.  It is a wonderful life. Ima was good in her time, I thoroughly enjoyed her company, her laughs, her smiles, her time, her kisses, her life. But that is that, apparently. So is life.
         Ancient Egyptians could not strike a path as straight, nor walk across as much dangerous ground as you. They could not wander the circles you wander in, for forty years, a hundred years. I must find out an answer struck through by the heart of a sword. I could never look at you now, but in a few minutes I can. I know I will, and when I do, I will look with such conviction, that you will die a despairing death, and I will laugh, and you will cry, and I will smile while you die.
         Horses. Horses pounding the earth like dead dust under the tread of a cowboy, grinding down on top of a pile of more dust underneath. Crowded like dead people at mass, and living people in graveyards, after war, and like simple strokes of a paintbrush on canvas, so is the feeling of death surrounding my health, my heart. Not so much death, as darkness. A subtle difference.
         Black bows.
         Infinite sirens.
         Grander tears of a bad nature rise up, and fall.
         Rebuke from an old monk.
         No-where that I turn, can I find an answer. Maybe there isn’t one. Wait, it is inside myself, I had forgotten. Yes, there it is. It is mine. I know the answer. Circles in life; Ups and downs. Simple. Cycles.
















Chapter VI
**************************************
“I close my eyes, and I see a sun that emits radiation, and a block of wood that half covers it, and the rest is a black orange mahogany that covers the night of my eyes in blackness. And then it all fades, to swirls, lashings, springs.” Angel
    **************************************          
         The wholesome tragedy is in the death of innocence. If Ima had stayed with me, she might have had a wholesome life.  I am a decent guy. I would have treated her well in the long run; I always come out alright. I am no casual fucker.  Now, she is exposed to the world, and I… I’ll be cast out. And then I’ll plunge in with all might, and win at life. Me, I do not care for me. I will be fine.
         But her. She will be shattered, her life broken, not what it could have been. A silver circle of icicles and unbound rings, frozen to a life of betrayel, and let down. Some guy will come along, and completely use her. And she will regret her choice. Maybe… maybe not, if she can’t remember what a decent guy is.
         The pure tragedy of this situation is the sacrifice, lose, of innocence. How can she ever be pure again? I pray to my non-excistent master, that she fairs well.  But maybe… maybe I am just a part of her cycle, her ups and downs. Life is like that. But her life will never be, what her and I could have been. It can never be.
         But for me, my life wont either. I’ll find someone worthy of my future. Yes, I will. Never stop trying. Never stop trying. Always wash it down; there is always an answer there, in repast and relaxation. There are always other options, another path to take. There is always another path to take. This is called life. No matter how much I think, I cannot but help believe I am making the mistake of my life by not changing her mind. She is making the decision of my life. I believe it. This is the defining point in my life, and we will see what happens with it. It may pass, un-chosen, or it may pass just so. Which ever way, a defining point, a simple epiphany, will take charge and bury me at Wounded Knee. Indians cast from their lives, and made to live a subordinate, sub-classical, low, sad, defined, melancholy life. It is horrible. There are so many horrible events in life, that could go other ways. But they just don’t seem to. And we don’t ever notice the ones that do go right. They are very hard to spot, like a spot of wood on an old soccer field, covered in powder snow.
         The Native American Indians should never have to have been left to leave their homes. Can’t you see? It should bring your heart down like a heavy weighted newspaper, full of bad news, young peoples death, and un-retained, but missed, love.  I hope it does, and maybe it will let you see how rough life is for some. So many lives torn apart by us making them move, that I cannot even imagine, with my dark powers, and my sad heart. You know the full extent of my words, and my wishes. I struggle, at this point, to express these feelings. Things seem to be over, and I fail, in eternity, it seems, but it is really only an instant. Life is infinitely full of instants, and brief moments.
         Life is less full of long things, things that take time. Less time for them. So be careful what you commit the large amount of your time to, you might regret it someday. But if it seems best, then do it. You won’t regret too much, what you enjoyed most at the time, or what seemed the best choice. Things change, but hearts, and minds should not. Mountains can change over time, but you and I will not know that. We are only told that, and are made to believe it. Maybe, possibly, the world is only in existence long enough for you, and me, to be alive; then the world will die, perhaps.
         I can’t see any proof that this world is real, after all. I wish to scare people with this idea. I may have touched a few drugs, but I am mostly sane. My brother, Twin-Face, has not, and he agrees with me. What if this world is nothing? A dream? (In this world’s terms, of course).  But it may be everything, so we may as well try, at least for a while. We can always try. But I see no existence in failing. No, I do not. Only, I do see life, in parks and open roads, there is a chance. Pascal’s Wager, perchance?
Yes, surgical life is possible, with out the scalpel. Medicalists can’t explain it, and we are told technology is good. It is so engrained in our heads that we cannot even fight it. We are forced to believe something, and it becomes true by us believing it. I am told that modern marriage is a sham; so I start to become skeptical of my future marriage. Then I realize this, and toss it out. I am told that women should be shorter then their men, so I accept this. I start to believe that my lovers should be shorter. Tall women scare me; it is over, almost. I am so controlled by society, that I think our future may already be decided. It is almost unstoppable, unless something incredible happens. Sure, you, and I, can make decisions, but… so few make it hard to change things. We must spread the word that we are being controlled by ourselves. People must be ‘woken up’. Don’t you see? How can you not see?
I am told that female breasts are sexual, and erotic. I start looking at them. I start to like them. I go through puberty; it is engrained in my mind. Our society, our people, are so focused on the boob, that we don’t realize it isn’t sexual. I look at the breast. And then I look at the African people, natives, primitives, of foreign lands. They do not cover their breasts. The people, the males, of the Pacific, of the Trukk Lagoon, specifically, find the hottest part of a woman to be the stretch between the middle of the knee, to the waist. A girl in an American thong, would be stared at beyond believe. It wouldn’t matter if she had a shirt on or not. Many men in America wouldn’t blink an eye at something just above the knee. Would you? No, you would be staring at the shirt that didn’t exist.
We are too conformed by society! By our selves! We make our selves become anti-conformists. We create something bad while still running from it, while we hold the hammer, unknowingly. I realize, and do not want to become just another non-conformist. But I believe I actually have a point! If things go the way they are, either we will have a dead society, because our fate is already decided, and it is not good, or we will have a non-conformist society, formed by people who merely don’t like to fit in. The bastards.
Hopefully I will be able to change that. I am strong. I can do such things. Positive thinking is key. Don’t answer me back like that. You must listen, and pass on my words.  We must make our own decisions, and not listen so much to other people!
We may be to ingrained by society. It may be to late to change things. It would take a number, of courage, of determination, and of mental power, any of these three, to be able to change things. By the time you realize that death is not baroque, but quite simple. It is simple beyond your recognition. Isn’t it? No. Death is baroque now, I realize it. Death is what you make it to be. This world is what you make it to be. You are what this world makes you to be. Have faith in that, and courage, and change the world that is changing you. That way you can actually change yourself. I am a freak of nature; nature, the world, has created me. I am surprised at this, it is its own undoing. Perhaps though, it was bored with its creation, its self, and needed a challenge.
I like to believe though, that Twin-Face is real. All the philosophical men in history, of what we believe history to be, are passed down to me. I will pass it on the person who will finally change the world.  I guess Twin-Face and I are on the same side. Him, and I, must join, and pass on life. That makes sense doesn’t it? All of this happened, simply that I could understand this. That is why I took this road trip. That is why I laughed like a loon on top of that mountain in Mexico. That is why Ima and I have been doing so shitty. It all helped me become who I am, and I am a hell of a man. A fucking tom sawyer. Don’t you see?  I am actually supposed to do something in this world.
All of my thoughts, someone must understand. Some would call me loony. Some would call me crazy. Some would say I am insane, to say the least. But no, I just happen to see the world in another light, and am thus rejected. But someone will understand, and it will pass on.
I believe I must finish this trip, then I must find a way to spread my word. I must travel to Mexico, so that I can actually laugh on top of that mountain, so I can become a visionary. It will all come true. Here we are; I must keep traveling. Where the hell are the rest of the guys? At least my cuts stopped bleeding. Lets go. Listen. Listen you all, listen to me.
I am fucking Tom Sawyer. I am a hell of a man.
Read my mind, my feelings, and become enchanted with life.
I have said the words, you, keep on reading, and figure out this crazy life. This insane life. This insanity of a society.
I am fucking Tom Sawyer. I am a hell of a man. This is a hell of s society. What are you?