Following the Trail of Trash

Through the Cross heirs of a doomed portrayal of Genuine Imagination,
my God is reflected by a single cross reflected off of my sunshine watermarks, my tan lines of spiritual observation. Under this cross, he marks me, under this sun, I am branded an animal. I am spoken for.
Tomorrow I will awake with no recollection of the beautiful despair that the present situation of hope caused me to bleed. I will not awaken with the solitary confinement of a shallow grave, I will rise to the dusty ashes of tomorrows daylight that is resentful to break the cracks in my doors, that is pushed in between the lashes of my eyes and the wrinkles of my disbelief. I wrestle with God in the sunlight like crispy leaves on an autumn day. The carrier of the great escape lies in the beautiful loss that no one else can imagine, other than those that know what it feels like to cry under the glim twilight of spiritual self mutilation. In the end, We're all animals.
I wish there was a pleasant story to share, I wish there was a blessed feast to imagine. But there isn't. I am a beast of many dangers, of many opinions, of many layers, of many disasters. But a beast that of which is only available if I close my eyes and pretend to pray.

I am sitting on my nerves, my passion is desperation, it is the art of procrastination, the tears of joy and the laugh of insignificance. I am the inner turmoil that shades the smiling devious face. I am the hell that is created in simple poetry, I am the need for prayer and all things to cry about. I am the need for the wrinkled white flag with cindered edges. I am the inner grace that dances like a joy filled corpse across the broken jawed preconceptions that attempt to emulate the beautiful side of sin.
To write, to believe to fathom such a joy of chaos is unheard of, to celebrate the unknown and to give name to that which will never be is a joyous fire to dance in and out of. To piss on the god of the trendy, to surpass the belief that has us all fenced in, to find such a heaven and a mental glory that hasn't been touched by the jealous confusions of man who has been trained to think and taught to forget about childhood art, like force fed blood to the pavement of catastrophe, such bruised imagination from wicked and relentless actions. The closest pathway to beauty, one might find is through alienation, subordination, and the gut wrenching moment of realization that you do not only not think like the rest of the masses, but you also do not look like any of them either. It's a beautiful thought, you know, to feel like you're the only one in the world. You're the song they hate, you're the cockroach they cant catch, you're also the snowflake they read about to their children mid sleep. You're the FUCK YOU in a devious grin when you know need to say nothing. You're the beautiful stain that everyone cant stop staring at. At the same time, lets face it, whether you speak or preach or not, I think the devil has more followers than God, because he encourages you to be yourself more than his nemesis- than to follow rules and become a part of the flock. To jump into the current of the mainstream just seems to polluted for this wretch.
I remember one Richmond evening, My oldest friend Will and I were underage and pimping hobos to buy us beer. We tapped one fellow on the shoulder,
"Can you get us a case of natty light and you can keep the change?"
The hobo obliged.
After a few minutes of me smoking camel cigarettes and him nestled close to me, wondering if we were going to jail or going to get drunk, his over imaginative mind kept pulling at my jacket sleeve.
"Do you think he stole our money? Man, what the fuck, what the fuck, man..."
"Dude, it's Saturday night-- they're busy, Dude'll be out in a second..."
The seconds and minutes passed as we dawdled in front of a 7-11, toes pointed inward, like Beavis and Butthead on muscle relaxers, we just stood and twitched. We were unsure but hopeful.
Finally, the hobo rang through the swaying doors just like an Olympiad strolling through that gold tape, our fidgety behavior cloaked itself with adrenaline.
"Hey, thanks, man, we app.....reciate that..."
Our eyes and hearts dropped as we noticed we had recruited the dumbest brute on the block.
"Uh, Dude, that's not a case. Thats a 12-pack."
"And it's not even Natty Lite."
"Shit, Boys, Hell," The bum replied, "That's the best I could do. I cant give it to you in plain sight, lets just walk together, eh?"
I said with sad fragrances of embarrassed humiliation, "This way, we'll go- I live, this way.. . Come on. "
I followed the dirty ruffian carrying my twelve pack of Budweiser and nothing else, trying to figure out a way to explain it to the five other guys that were waiting on the beer I was sent to get and how it was supposed to at least get us all at least, buzzed.
Will Stuck to my steps on the crooked sidewalks out of fear and anger, his toes clung to my heels. We were baffled, but the drunkard that we'd hired, the stooge that we'd raised, could we raise a question? Could we inspire a WHAT THE FUCK?
We toddled on, behind the bearded Gonzo that left his scent in the wind, and us, stung with anger and impoliteness and general disdain. We continued to follow the man with out words, only footsteps to the far, dark end of the block.
"Well, boys, here ya go, heres yer beer, thanks for the change, I thank you. Mind if I have one before we go?"
"Shit," Will said, ripping open the box, "If you have one, we might as well all have one," Giving me a wink at the same time as tossing me an unopened can of Bud.
I grinned and popped my top and began to guzzle, with an eye on my beer and an eye on the bum.
"The name's Buddy," the old man said through a spittle rusted beard and a mouthful of lifeless teeth. "Its a pleasure to spend time with you boys."
"Likewise, Buddy, My name's Will. That there fella is Joey-Thanks for the beers, we appreciate it, and we're happy to drink it with ya."
"Aiiighht." Buddy said with a wink and the popped tab up to his drooling beard, sizing us up.
Buddy and I stood in the shadows not even a block from where I used to live, Will out on the ultra-violet concrete, smiling, sipping away at the observation and the dwindling beer.
Eventually, we forgot about the blokes sitting on their thumbs back in the apartment, not 50 feet from where we stood, as they were, impatiently chatting away about their conquests, rivals and dirty premonitions about the years to come, we continued to blaspheme and sink into reality through chaos, we began to crack beer after beer and cautiously stride into single file line as each new pair of headlights encroached around the bend. The beer began to disappear, the joy overflowed, from friend to friend, from stranger to stranger. Beer cans became the deposit under a large shadow covered bush- and when that wasnt enough, each stranger, Will, Buddy and myself found it as a haven to relieve ourselves, not missing a cackle, not skipping a beat when it came to the osmosis between three souls and blind communication. We laughed, we confessed, we nudged elbows. We were temporarily indestructible. We were three men from a long, long time ago.
Close to the end of the beer, Buddy confessed to Will and me, "I gotta tell ya, boys, I appreciate the time we've had, I do feel a lot better. I've been on the bum for quite some time and this by Golly, is what I do think I have needed and not had, Lemme tell ya."
We all stood silent under the smiling glow of a mindless streetlight.
"I just got out of jail not two months ago, out there, fuckin' California, I just got out of jail, just now have made my way here, just now. Thank you boys."
Will's eyes darted towards mine, the beer in all three of our hands, it sent the message clear- We were ok, he was just a man, hard times, hard luck. The beer charged, our worries faded, but our poetry grew. The three of us stood in a single celled circle chatting and bullshitting and contriving about our aptitude of a three man unity, the beauty of chaos. The humbled discontent of collared Gods, the stars were aligning for once and their only time.
On the end of the brews, the coughing, the swearing, the smoking, the beauty of sin, I warmed up to buddy, "Goddamn," I exclaimed, "What, may I ask, were you in for??"
"I killed a man." Was Buddy's reply.
I glared at will, and Will glared at me. All three of us broke out in hysterical laughter. The sinning was not shallow but the fear was, We cared not. The three of us, we made a sidewalk tribe, a beautiful menagerie of death, life and failure, we completed the trip of the unsane. We were beautiful. We were free, We were gleefully endangered. We were alive.
Shortly before the beer was finished, thanks and handshakes and poems were recited, we were alive and untouchable, dead and feared, beautiful and unimaginable, we wrote our names with urine in the streets and clinked cans with a murderer. We were saviors of the just, warriors of the drink and re locators of hate. Wed bitten off a piece of Buddy and he'd taken a chunk out of us. Dead cigarettes and crumpled cigarettes later, I ambled toward him, resting my arm upon his shoulder, I asked him,
"What'd it feel like?"
"What?" Was Buddy's response.
"You know, to kill a man." I said with a smile on my face and my hand still clutching his opposite shoulder.
Buddy then broke away from me, his feet equally apart from his shoulders and his eyes invading mine-
"Daaaammnn GOOD! IT FELT DAMN GOOD! HAHAHAH" Buddy grizzled out from his scraggly beard and his black eyes, "DAMN GOOD!"

Eventually we puttered off, Will and me up the steps to the broken home I had staked claim, and Buddy off to the dark carnivorous night, to wander the streets and smoke my cigarettes underneath a shadow casting bush that repelled shame and worry and animosity and fear. Just like the one that overlooked us as we drank and pissed our way out of boundaries and into reality. The joyous reunion of a tribe containing beasts that could've been but never were. A band of miscreants that deserved each other for very little time. Love and disinterest, we swallowed the God and stepped up to man.
He's not that bad.

Hours after Will and I returned home, we had found that the rest of the brothers waiting on the beer had called all of the police stations in town, giving them our names and asking if we'd been picked up. Driving around aimlessly in search of the backs of our Nikes, the glare of our smile.
Assholes we'd been called.
Funny as it may seem, we did apologize, but at the same time, we were also very grateful that they'd failed to look 50 feet down the sidewalk from my home to see me laughing and drinking and re energizing another soul that needs poetry, banter and a pale street light to receive life, a broken sidewalk to find and look up from ones shoes to find a face and a smile and someone else thats interested in knowing your name. A maze in misunderstanding compassion. It's not just a myth. It's not just a fable.
That night it was story born on the steps of a 7-11 under the clutches of a murderer named Buddy.


bud·dy /ˈbʌdi/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[buhd-ee] Pronunciation Key - \noun, plural -dies, verb, -died, -dy·ing. Informal. –noun
1. comrade or chum (often used as a term of address).
2. bud2.
–verb (used without object)
3. to be a companion; or on intimate terms.

That night, though we neglected our mainlined friends, we formed a beauty of a memory that objectified the reasons why we disbanded our tribe for a simple Buddy. That was what kind of tribe we were. We were hazed, punched, criticized and ignored for our actions, but drinking all of our friends beer was justified because we made a Buddy.
Strangely enough our Friends understood.
They went to bed stoned and curious.
We went to bed drunk and giddy.

The next night we spoke of Salvador Dali.
We had a good time.