Acid Tongued

Scholastic Songs of Discovery



Songs that filled her with life,
Music beyond the furious strife,
To set the motions free,
To heal with the wounded knife,
So we may finally see,
The mountains through the mist,
Of histories finest forsaken myth,
That the churning of the soul is real,
To cut forth dimensions in time to kneel,
Kindling the hope of lesser riffs,
Through the lonely world of music,
You’ve cast aside like a gem,
Held tight in a ring
You’ve never given him.


Heart felt music was new to him, the playing of cast iron songs felt over a sea of pure reckoning, of furious balancing—a place to hear the beauty of destruction. The howling of wolves; the playing of space and time, beyond what we know as a reality so caught up in dancing to the tunes of romance—here he sits, remembering eons ago, lonely with a pipe and feeling the creeping lunacy of it all spin its fine web around his head. He can’t sit still. The watermelon has been smashed in front of him; the cars were caught in a catapult of rotten eggs, flower, water and sour kraut. They’d throw with spoons at moving trucks, the owners got out and spread their words of illusion, all coming back to him now, hearing that golden riff playing backwards inside his cortex, like Mozart to his wine, this was the euphoric play with anti-matter’s absent headache. He felt good, once and for all, the bic lighter was his best friend, a cheap set of headphones were his girlfriend now. She was gone, in the distance of making out on a worn-out couch, or in a car, shirt off, in the shallow waters of teenage lust, and ptomaine tastes of flesh and spit and conflagrations of warm deceit. The era was here; he knew he could trust his friends. They would camp in the mountains, where they would be free—he could remember some T.S. Eliot then, and remember that for all time, he was sailing now, listening and listening to the rhymes of nature emitted from a sallow set of earphones; he was hallow and anesthetized. He was hollow; cadences of crickets would bother him until the day he fell from the floor decayed like rotten potatoes, walking around sifting through the rough roads of memory, all the while in love with the thought of amphetamine flowing casually through his thickened blood—that was heard from the gallows of pain and delusion to strike him like a bolt of lightning straight from the skies of hell. Satan smoked his weed with him, hearing his own sounds emitted from the player to play the saddest simple solos cast in a degree of solitude, for he, and he alone was the only fan of all this racket, the sounds of his heart ticking in beat with God’s penurious rays of heat, and ill-reputed rebellion struck him; was he good or bad? Was this right or wrong? The feelings breaking through the doors, while change through the hall, dropped by swans in love with the economical chances of spring—spinning their wings with the roulette table of death, we now hear them sing. So he would camp soon, high in the woods of a hero’s Mind; the place of redemption from schools ugly impression, getting picked on by rich kids and throw to the wolves by the bullies. There he was free; and he was popular, even to Mary, who would wait until he came, and then they would talk and talk, of suicide, of life, of all the states of being in between love and hate. It was a Romantic time in his life, he knew this, and wanted all to fade away for once. Forever. Girlfriend, lost again, another one spiraling into the fading sunset of her little room in her little town with her little family above, singing about beer and cocktail parties they’d been to. She could leave now if she wanted, but did he really want this? Or was he playing a game with himself now? A ‘catch me if you can cataclysm’ that no one could ever untie. Running now, not jogging to the medicine he’d take for life’s rich time.

And Sandra would sit, hands held over a folded book, some Stephen King novel she’d read many times before—just waiting for him to come back to her. She wasn’t sad. Not really. Just mixed up; confused with life. At fourteen the road was simple; now all complex and riveted with tightened romance and bereted incontinence. She felt torn apart, but not really. She felt held together in the arms of another boy. But was that possible? Her seeing herself with someone else, this was so new to her. Her skin and her sexual drives to conquer marriage and have kids and grow old with him, sitting on rocking chairs, feeling the strife of death nearer now. Nearer now than ever before, she saw one day when he was going crazy, driving at speeds he should have been thinking of only in dreams. But, he was speeding towards a tree, at least in her imagination—reality spun a different web, of course. But the End was there, being thrown off the edge of Niagara Falls, being pushed of a cliff—to sink into the ground like those characters of that haunting yet comforting book. Now the sounds would repeat and repeat: “He’ s with another, so why shouldn’t I?” These were not voices, not talking of someone else in her sturdy head. These were simply tones of being, drilling comforting thoughts in her elated head—thinking now of school and Tony, not the same old Gerald, he was camping somewhere now, with his friends now. Yes, he was smoking pot and doing whatever else they did there. “Way ‘up’ in the mountains” he would say, where Joy and Mary used to sing along with the guitar of Brandon, while Gerald and Stan would hide in the trees, spying on the elders smoking their marijuana, which some fat guy called a “weed salad,” cause it had all different types of dope in it: home grown, kind bud, brick, etc. He’d tell her all about that, and the time that Adam’s heart stopped. Playing of course, but real as hell at the time, while he and Brandon and Adam walked through a fern field that looked like an Elf lawn, leading up to a cottage where the “magic points” were. He said they’d sit by the fire and the time would “switch,” for him at least. He would see them all fade away, then come back again, as Doug Stingland walked down to the creek with them and smoked a glass bubbler Kurt had brought along, that had stickers of swastikas, and then they’d listen to Lords of Acid singing Macho Man. Yeah, that all came back to her, as she opened the book again and began reading all about the time that “Captain Trips” gushed around the land—literally gushed, like water from a pump: the “Super Flue” it was called, killing almost all of humanity, aside from some main characters, including Judy and Randal. Judy had a baby on the way. She was Judy, and Gerald was Randal now, only she was sick on being alone, and his brain was sick on drugs.
Sandra decided to pick up the phone and call someone who cared. She decided to call Tony her “best friend,” that is until the last Fair, when she and Gerald got together. Tony and she would do all the things that a couple would do, aside from the physical distractions—that is, go to the movies, and talk and talk and talk, often from the side of the pool he had in his backyard, which was only three houses down from her. He had his friends, too. Just as Gerald did, only younger and more in tune with having fun in reality. Diversion with a twist, that is, for Gerald who was so used to getting into trouble or doing drugs or this year, both. Tony was tall and strong. Probably he could have kicked the crap out of Gerald, and Gerald knew this; he knew this with a passion. He wished he were strong; physically fit—but smoking grass and passing out in an apartment’s bathroom after drinking too much Milwaukee’s Best, didn’t promote a healthy muscle tone. Tony was big too. She didn’t know, but she suspected in all the right places. She could tell this when they would sit on the side of his pool and speak of the time that they went to the movies and held hands. That was great, she thought, as she opened her cell. The number was on her phone still, she had never forgotten it either. Why would she? Gerald and her had only been together for…whoa..six months now, seems like an eternity for a young girl. Seemed like forever for Gerald. Gerald seemed to peer down from the mountain top assuring her that he was being faithful; telling her in a soft tone that he was being good to her. He would never again pick up the couch she was sitting on, with strange strength, and throw it against the wall. She put down the phone, believing this now to be the truth. Her astute sense of credence was in full gear now; she could see him there, Gerald, doing whatever he was doing, just having a good time, maybe with that Adam kid. Boy he was cute.
Adam was cute, in fact, he was so cute that Kurt even thought he was attractive. Damn fine, Kurt would think, as he looked into Adam’s eyes as they walked down to the creek, with the flashlight in his hands. No, no, he was not homo. No way. That was a strange feeling that came over him, especially that night, when the moon was low, and the sounds of the river finding him was placing him in the fearlessness of persuasion—to ask and receive, to bend the rules and descend on the time of primitive faith: the time to cut away the modern beliefs of reason, and an era to sing along to the harmonies of nature’s everlasting systems of belief that held no signs of progress, just continuous sounds of cicadas buzzing away, as he stared again into the eyes of his friend. But now he saw the bond between; so strong, they would be best of friends one day, playing video games at eighteen and singing along to Metalica in his basement Kurt would wreck the place in thought and complaint about some guy he worked with at Denny’s, some guy named Mark Shooter. Kurt was sure that Mark was giving him the “look.” That look that he wanted to bear his child. That homosexual look. Ah! He would scream as he busted another beer can against the washing machine. That is why I took that turkey and rubbed it against the floor drain before putting it in that omelet. That is why I spit on his toast. That is why…
Calm down, Adam would say, sensing something deep within Kurt’s soul, something mean and dangerous, yet calm and pacifying as well. This feeling of belonging, to someone, to something was so gratifying to Adam, who was lost, yes, hidden though prominent in the group already as the New Found Savior, of what? Of shit? Of lies? Of painkillers up his nose, one day, somehow eating all the shrimp he could feast upon with dextromethorphan in his mouth, mixing around like a new testament leper coughing cherry blood from his decaying mouth. Adam really did love them all. He cared more than all they knew, but Kurt was special to him, hiding in their own world of mushrooms and lysergic acid, and speaking to the dead as though the Dark Side of the Moon was their anthem, sung before the cosmic ball game would be played, mixing all of them together, side by side, all these tender fools, holding on to something in between the laughter of hedonism and the coughing of suffering. Adam would watch this all take place, all these shadows upon the beer splattered wall in which Kurt was engaging his act of homo-phobia—tossing and turning inwardly. The money was calling as well. He could feel the coins drop into his hands, someday, all the while Mary was waiting for the magnetic force of her pen to drive the songs she would sell and exchange for happy looks from strangers.
As odd as she was, her shoulders hunching like Richard Nixon, her eyes set on something outside the car, hearing the smoke, actually “hearing it.” This was synesthesia at its finest; she could tell that the misty smoke to play ten years ahead of her, her songs of this lust, of not feelings for anyone aside from the poetry anymore. “The words, the fucking words,” she would mutter underneath her breath as she took the cracker and did some more nitrous. But these chemicals were so simple to her now. She was three years older than these old chaps, almost finding solace within her new group of “friends.” Those she found in Town, where she worked at the Uni-Mart. These simple mind-altering substances were nothing but a sham to her now. She could hear the birds outside. She could taste them now. Delicious. Her delicate palate soaked up their flight patterns when as she sat in the backseat casting her spells on them all, feeling the frightening sense of dying from no air to breathe. But that was all the fun. That clinging to the limb with two fingers, waiting for the subtle wind to deceive her—asking her to carry her upwards, instead of down to the rockets screaming across the barren skies of the moon. The darkened moon, silent moon, goodnight lunacy, only for now, only for now; she thinks as she offers them a suggestion.
“Let’s go outside and listen to Brandon play,” she said, as they all nodded their heads and opened the car doors. They saw not one, but two of him now. Brandon strummed on his guitar, always on the outside, but inside he could feel the gripping sounds of silence, and this always pissed him off. He hated quiet. He wanted it all, to be singing in a four star hotel lobby, to sing on stage in some worn out bar someday. He was a double high fidelity and needed a leer jet to shuffle him off to different directions, both of him, business man and party dog, he knew he had it coming. All of the distress of being known to the world, the world in which Gerald saw his future, as he called out for him to play some Nirvana. Brandon agreed wholeheartedly, since that band had it all one day. Those of the next generation never knew that. Generation X these kids were, high on themselves and change, the Clinton attitude of hearing Brandon play ‘All Apologies’ in perfect tune with Cobain, and then he broke off into Kurt’s favorite REM tune at the time, “Half a World a Way.” He thought that Stipe really bared his soul, that is, if that rich fuck had one in the first place because he was in that gentle place where the highest force would take away Brandon’s soul, leaving him without the only thing he ever wanted: acceptance. But, he played on. Remembering the times when they would all play baseball thinking that they were stars. Now he had that chance. He was good. His father was a great guitarist as well. He even had a studio set up in his room, with a synthesizer and all. A perfect place for a kid to grow up in, alone, in a room of music, scratching his head as to why those fools never let him in. The ordinary place where they all had driven themselves downward into a hole, a place with no cocaine to buy them women, with nothing but downward spirals into normalcy. But Brandon also had another side, a side hidden away from them all, even that of Adam, who knew Brandon since his toddler days when they would pretend that they were circus clowns. Brandon was still a clown. He was still the guy that called out to Jim Thorp when he was on Dextro. Those first days of the drug. Those times when they would all say ‘we all cool’ and stare at Gerald’s patterned shirt. It was all without a say one of the greatest times in their lives. Driving away the demons they’d all carry with them forever, until the love of their soul-mates would carry them into another eon away—a calm day when their babies were first blooming inside of their love’s wombs. They would all throw away the torches they’d set so carefully; back in the time where everyone wants to be. Young and alone and filled with the music of Brandon’s urgency.
The speeding feeling of doing something about this hole in her gut was pulling her to that phone. Just one phone call. He was having some kind of life up there, while I sit here with my friends on facebook—simply dreaming of the times when Gerald and her would spend, the happy days. Those that they were bombarded by that cow when they were staying at their trailer at the Fair. They were inside, thank goodness, but that bovine creature was outside breaking free through the feelings they felt for one another. That memory of Tony fades away into the night of holding Gerald so close that their heads seem to become attached, like conjoined twins, so near, but so far away. Like the Pacific to the Atlantic, both oceans, but the distance between is vast. Sandra would recall the times when they had his birthday party. On New Year’s day. A beautiful time to be alive. Fourteen, he sixteen, not seeing the need of prescience stalking her now. She wanted to know what would ever happen of him; what would ever become of her, that is, if things remained the same—but they never do, the same sad echo always played along with the music, but the song was never the same. It was like a CD played backwards then forwards again, playing the currents of an ocean machine set on high, for her to drift off into sleep. She could hear the waves crashing, but into which irritating beach this time, which confused jetty? She was mixed-up, in a blender of feeling him next to her holding hands at the prom, or maybe she would be off with Tony, spending time in the woods behind their house, kissing, as if for the first time.
It was these days when the first time was always now. Gerald was not playing the same songs over and over as he would in the future of his long life of illness. He was discovering them for the first time. He was seeing through their eyes—and the petrifying power of it all made him stand up next to the smashed watermelon and breathe, just breathe in the thought of freedom to exist underneath in the fallout shelter of a charmed life.