Sings its Song.

    The alarm clock sings its song. Doesn’t matter if it’s the beeping, a Sinatra tune, perhaps even a rooster, it’s all the same song. This time it’s the step father pitching my name through the cracks in the door. I push a little and sit up on the edge of the bed. The sun’s peering in from the shades as I absolve the sleep from my eyes.  This sun is not my friend, this sun is mocking me. Burden swirls in the air suggesting spark into what would otherwise be a simple hangover. I gasp one last heroic breath, ascend, and head for the door.



“Can you come downstairs for a minute; I need to speak with you?”



“Can I get at a piss first?”



“Yeah, whenever you’re ready.”

         

    What does this man want from me, and why the transferring of dialogue to different rooms? So many rooms dividing us, I could be in one room considering aerodynamics, while you’re in the next, jerking off to old black and whites of Amelia Earhart. I do the thing with the piss, throw on a few garments, and gather myself in the mirror. To my astonishment, the battle of the bulge had not been abandoned, I was in the trenches, surrounded, getting molested by a master strategist, but I was still alive, planning the next offense.



    The step-father convenes at the kitchen table with the feign importance of a man crammed with office talk and newspaper headline. He reeks of coffee, cigarettes, and a buffet of beauty supplies . . . his confidence for the day.



“Have a seat.” gesturing with his hands.



“Is this some kind of shoddy new dating technique? Why all the mystique?”

         

    He slide’s a 22 caliber something, something across the table and I send out a perplexed grin.



“I would like for you to have this in case there is an emergency here at the house.”



“What are you talking about, nothing ever happens here? I don’t need this, your being paranoid.”



“It’s just in case. You have to be able to protect yourself under any circumstance. You know these fucking niggers have been taking over the neighborhood.”



"What's a nigger?"



    I lifted the gun awkwardly like a parent with a firstborn.



“So how do I use this contraption?”



    He demonstrated all the basics that went into mass murders, suicides, feign sportsmanship, black on black Nike theft . . . and the rest. It was all so simple, point and click, like the remote control. I could not help but stare into his scantily conceived moustache and ponder how this man came to be. It was a gloomy reminder that art was fading . . . broken clocks still tick.

         

    The gun and I went back to my room together, hand in hand. I had a headache from the diminutive exchange. Who has the audacity to think they identify someone enough to assign them a gun?  So here I stand, gun in hand, inquiring into its way.



    The Totality of ones life can be seen reflecting at the surface of a gun. I could sense the crisis within me plummeting down through the handle . . . the trifling randomness at the trigger. My Cephalic voice whispers “the pills in the gun, have one on us.”  The smell of cheap sleep and indolent dreams emanate from the barrel. Everything whirls in circles, the ex-girlfriends are here . . . the bemused hope . . . weekday booze . . . forged family gatherings . . . the broken step . . . Jesus and his twigs . . . the insistent linger . . .  they are all here, underneath the gun, lifting, and thrusting the gun into my mouth . . . the anemic regret . . . sports statistics . . . sexual mishap . . .  the why . . . the who . . .  I . . .



. .



    I throw the gun to the floor and lean on wall connected to the bed.



. . .



    I take a heroic breath.



. . .



. . .



    And another.



. . .



    I wait for the walls to show me the way . . .



         The fight is fixed from the start. I keep punching, because I can, because what else is there to do in a fight. I don’t know about you, but I’m going into the next round with a few low blows, a well placed shot to the nuts and I’m going to make this fucker bleed a little. Then maybe, just maybe, the sun will set with a little dignity, and me with all my bruises, will finally find my place of healing.