#americannarrative

The trash cans have spilled their guts in the alleyway. There are no more lies from lovers and the pursuit is for levitation, cash, and adrenaline. In my bedroom, at night, hunkered into a lightbox, I expect to see a gruesome face peering through the window. Sometimes the moon disappears. No zombies ever knock. But the upstairs neighbors are loud and I can hear them fucking.

The other day, after coffee and dope and eggs, the dog and I walked to the park. A naked man meditated beneath the trees. People balanced on slack ropes. The sunshine was brilliant, full force, smitten, and the dog wandered up to a yogi. She petted him. He shook his ass.

   Someone shouted, “Hey, is that your dog?”

   I turned to a man walking his Border Collie, pointing. The dog ran up to the Collie, and the Collie bore fangs and lunged at him.

   “Hey, come here!” I sprinted up to the dog, ready to grab him. “Sorry about that,” I said, panting as I got up to him.

The man was older and frail. “Ah, she’s just a little protective. I just wanted to let you know I saw a bear up the street since your dog is runnin’ around. He pointed up the road. A black bear sauntered out an alleyway and casually strolled up the hill.

   “It’s just a youth, doesn’t have a momma though. I’ve been seeing him around lately.”

   “Thank you. I leashed the dog and watched the monster fur ball meander between two trucks.

   “Other day, when we were on the trails, I saw a momma and her baby,” he said. “I asked if she would let us by and she moved on up the trail with her cubs to let us cross. She was fine with us.” He reached down and scratched the Border Collie's head. Her hair was standing. She didn’t like the Dutch Shepherd next to me.

   “Thanks for the warning,” I said.

   “Oh yeah, no problem. You have a good day.” The man continued his walk and took his dog with him. Why she was so angry had me. I didn’t understand how some animals could get so mean with all the right care.

   The yogi strutted up to me. Her nipple rings poked through her shirt. I lingered on my simpleton nature and looked up to be more appropriate, confused to what she wanted. “Is that your dog?” She asked.

   “Yeah, something like that. He lives with me.” I patted him on the back. I didn’t say it, but I never like calling the dog mine. I feed him, water him, have lost in several foot races to him, give him hamburger now and then, and once we got arrested in Texas, but I don't own him. He is his own and I'm grateful for his companionship.

   “I work at a dog shelter back in Salt Lake City.” She bent down, petting his face. The dog let his tongue fall. “He’s a sweet boy.”

   “Thanks. He’s my buddy. Did you see that bear?” I asked.

   "What bear?”

   “A bear popped out in that alley a few seconds ago and walked up the street. Some old guy warned me because he saw Gonzo running around”

   “No way?” She put her hands on her hips and looked up the hill.

   "Yeah, I’m surprised you missed it.”

   “Me too. So, why are you here?”

   “I’m new, moved here a few months ago.”

   “For what?” She adjusted her stance.

   “A change of pace, I guess. I’d kept waking up with this sensation of millipedes on my spine, and I developed this notion fleeing the South like a midnight bandit was the righteous thing to do. I think I’m right, but I don’t know… I’ll settle on walking the dog for now,” I said.” It felt like an overshare. One of her friends fell off his slack line. The clouds buffered forwards, descending the mountain tops. Our conversation fizzled and she smushed the dog’s face once more before skipping back to her friends. It was a harmless interaction I didn’t really believe in anymore. I collard the dog and we walked back up the street, opposite way of the strolling bear, past the chicken coops and yard dragon back to our home.

Jay called me in the afternoon on my break from Tokyo Joe’s and told me it wasn’t working out at the farm stand, I was showing up too tired, and my peach bagging pace wasn’t an acceptable stamina. I couldn’t debate her. It was true. I was grinding four jobs, losing sleep, and the smallest job I had took the brunt. She said maybe I’m not a morning person. She liked me, but I had to part. I said I’d figure something out, and I immediately forgot about freestones and alarming Saturday mornings of peeled skin and ear wigs. I have spunk despite a few unknown diseases. The blooming around my home held enough fruit. The squirrels chattered down the bark, taunting the dog’s blood lust, and I was whimsical and okay watching. I exhaled and hauled to Tokyo Joe’s for the night rush to hustle over dead birds, cry over onions, and squeegee the water away at close.

After work, I headed to the Sundown Saloon to drown my worries in Pabst. I walked into the cellar, found the bartender, and he gave me a mug swashing the stuff. I found a seat and crossed my legs among pretty girls, quaff collard men, pool shooters in the echo of arousal. The crowd moved in cliques and split and came back together like magnets. We were all in osmosis. Two men flirted with each other at a table. The blonde one stargazed skywards to his adored iris and flicked the craned, love-locked boy in the dick before they kissed. They knew a love that was better with violence. Girls passed with midriff and lips drenched in wonder, in dreams, in gloss. I could’ve been their stuffed dime sack. I was malleable for the evening. A man sauntered with a bandana hanging out his pocket, a bill low on his nose, dangling a tooth pick from his mouth, stroking women’s wrists, pulling them close. I watched them turn butter. He was the jazz’s devil. The waitress weaseled up. I asked for another beer and contemplated “Hi, my name is blank,” as a recycled introduction. I talked to nobody and ordered three beers. I was in atmospheric gossip with an unidentifiable block. I left.

Outside, a fight simmered over a girl that didn’t want to be owned. Haunched outcasts in the alley sucked cigs squatting in dark corners, chatted about times and Fahrenheit, declared fatigue, and chased easy highs like me. I settled in my suburban and whipped my luminary out to swipe through electric flames and honey. I was disgusted by my lacking reality. Dirty to-go boxes glazed with teriyaki were scattered in my floor boards. Numerous energy drinks were crumpled. I didn’t know the stains in the carpet. I fizzled into drive and found home. The dog was wagging at the door. I rolled smoke and planted on the patio aware of peach pits on cobblestones that were the choke hazards for the dog. I was happy to be outside where freedom always seemed to be found. I gave the dog all my love under the moon for five minutes and he understood. We went inside and he crawled onto the air mattress with me. Is there anyone that’s okay with feeling lost, okay because we’re okay until we die, okay because of the debacle between Whole Foods and King Sooper’s, of barrels and free penetration? I was okay my dick wasn’t flicked and I was no hen’s rooster, okay drunk falling, hoping Mom came my way for Christmas, knowing all generations in the river were incarcerated, hypnotized, suffering of sleep apnea, and fighting the bank. As long as the pulse shoots everything is inevitable and okay.

The morning came in its errands. I needed an outlet past home to not feel like a blanketed parrot. I needed to know humanity’s thumping. I called my grandparents. Grandma said her feet were cinder blocks. Grandpa asked me if I had faith. I answered honestly, feeling the distance with my ears. I drove to Peet’s Coffee and ordered a cold brew. I grabbed my cup and spun, looking for a table that had two eyes and a mouth full of electricity, but there were no outlets. I walked around looking between wood legs and up skirts for a place to plug in. A group of girls chatted in Mandarin. A loner brooded over his brew. A man in spectacles used his red reserves. There was no place for me. I had to return to the roommate with mute mannerisms, to the dog curled like a question mark, to the den beneath elephants barreling cosmically. I contemplated a return to god without an answered prayer. I just wanted a new taste and free power. My slim apple was almost rotten. I was too cheap and caffeinated for another cup at another cafe. I needed to deal with the arachnid in the drain murdered by my slipper and bare nudity, the roommates hair in the sink, the dog’s fur on the tile, the dust on the sills, the olive oil on the hot plates. I needed to pick up where nobody else would. I needed to read more about John McCain’s eulogy and the poetics of burial. I considered my expiration date, the almond milk supply, if a peanut butter sandwich would do me justice, which never felt done. The bathrooms were gender neutral and there were no outlets. Changes were happening for comfortable improvement, but I didn’t understand the lost plugs and I had to work.

I drank from a mohawk orange while watching the cage fighters. Sobriety is like spring water and a drunken stupor is like shapeshifting into a worm. Tj Killashaw, the King Cobra, ducked and struck “No Love” Garbrandt with thunder dome rights and the fight ended by TKO in the first round. It wasn’t a surprise, I felt the heat in the Red Hot Chili Peppers ballad before they stood in the cage like sharpened roosters, like most pivotal moments in history, a good soundtrack is needed— it’s time to admit the national anthem is poor writing and melodramatic— ode to the United States— Trump has presidentially denounced kneecaps, kings, and lemons in sporting, although I’m not sure he’s considered the repercussions of collusion, triggered bluebirds, or the fact we’re in peach season. I rolled a joint and realized I had no papers.

Heaven wasn’t at Seven Eleven. The cashier joked about green papers and I thought of Mexicans. I said, "More like one centimeter wide and two inches long.” He told me the ultra-thin Zig Zags were the best. I said I’d be back if they weren’t, but they caught flame easy, and I think that’s what we need on a whole basis— a nation to catch flame for each other, for us all to become madly in love and stick flamingos in our lawns as winks to those in weekend orgies.

I found a high and started “Swimming” by Mac Miller. When the action requires the continuous flow out of a lion’s mouth you make sure the cord is plugged in and there are no leaks. I’ve good feelings I’m achieving something, or nothing, having moved into a shanty basement with good light and a porch on North Street. Pearl Street and the mountains are walking distance from my pillow. I’ll bring the dog with me. He smiles by the cattails when we hike. I focus on good moments instead of the wolf spiders humping in my hair. My mom is a safety net I’m trying not to use, but who can say that while they dance above a swamp? The plumber said he could drain it, but instead, he’s only showed me his ass crack peeping out denim like the sunrise. I don’t like politics or its paid liars because I fib without a profit. Maybe it’s due to the internet’s confusion— angry avians stacking opinions without proper education— which is what? Black people surviving, big cities that smell like piss and the American Dream (which is piss), Arabic civilians unable to sing to Allah, European descendants pawning jewelry for goodwill and horoscopes, hype beasts overpricing exclusivity— nobody tends to their feathers— they paint them on— rip the lackluster ones out— you may not be a polaroid, but you’ll be ugly.

I’m devising a philosophy on the ruins of journalism, cracking eggshells where the hounds sleep, driving drunk through the evening. Street dwellers are at risk for my satisfaction, which is like piano music streaking oblivious, rhythmic and saccharine. I can’t write a good story because I’m stuck to streams of Shameless. I scan the news of a community I separate myself from with several layers of two-ply around the toilet lid. If I could, I’d make every American lop the head off an eagle. We’d all be better knowing sacrifice. It’s a somber thing, watching your spit vanish from a bouncing pinky on delete. TIME steams forward and the national consciousness becomes hyper-analytical to the point of inducing anxiety.

This week, I wandered into a bar with heads on the wall and thought this is the type of venue I like, where it’s obvious I’m being watched by big game that wasn’t fast enough to outrun a bullet— neither was Tupac, Biggie, Kennedy, or Abe. Rest assured, I have no insights or racial struggles. I just sit in stupors enjoying “The Light” by Jeremih and Ty Dolla $ign. I’ll steal what I value like most vultures claiming appropriation, although they forget the rat tails dangling from their lips and the foundation of pilgrimage. White people are only good for thievery and mountains, good weaponry and monopoly, but when the cash turns liquid and dice roll we opt for casinos and regulation. We’d rather not use our teeth as game pieces. We put our gambles on the Native Americans and watch the liquor erode reservations. We make women carry around our cock(tails) and pretend mafioso’s aren’t watching the cameras. It’s better to be air-conditioned with SECURITY looming by the pillars. We’ll bring a Starbucks to the hinterlands, which are actually inside the gates, and we’ll raise the property values. We’ll do a lot I don’t condone.

I wake up beneath a pale obese beauty peeping through my blinds at night, and that’s the way I like it— like a river— yipping in bubbles at moonrise and shadow boxing through the den. The dog has his hiccup spells, but my diaphragm and anvil shadow have vanished.

At work, Chris told me his heroin history while he spilled cherries from a cut in his knuckle, and when Tokyo Joe’s releases me from the line I cruise down 30th— in the lung of a world breathing easy— to spend the excess on gin and three wishes, smoke, and avocados.

I don’t mind replacing the split skateboard or my car’s antifreeze tears. The mechanic said I could go longer with a broke right sway bar. Freedom is work, lakes, and scenery— a good resume exposes its thyroid— a good haircut is like oil. I spit on tablets, fruit, and into outer space unconsciously sharing predictions like a fool’s Nostradamus, split in blooming weeds, craving expression in licorice and cordite larynxes. Politics have been complicated— let more expensive ARs out-price gun freaks.

I’ve sniffed around, buried my head in the clouds, and let my legs dangle to have my intestines float away like balloons. I tried to wrangle them in and keep it all inside for a moment, but I saw strangers and was paranoid towards mountain lions in the canyon with the dog sniffing alongside me. That’s to say, the danger here is real and different from the hail of 9 mm crescendos in Tallahassee’s harvest. There’s actual hail. That’s to say, despite the fangs, claws, and weaponized flowers I’ve put my tonsils on display in the valleys, and I wandered into Innisfree Poetry Cafe under rumors of soul songs and buggery.

I was low eyed and found my seat in the background while a girl shouted rhythmically wild. The crowd spewed cheers like a volcano. The girl had gone somewhere and returned like we all do. She said she was home. I felt foreign, displaced from the South, thrust into America’s pancreas. There was the rainbow community, scholars, bodybuilders, blazer boys, rag girls, men with blueteeth and typewriters. It was a groovy scene. I saw more black people than I’d seen in a month in Boulder. I thought they’d disappeared and was beginning to worry, but they were where culture melted ultraviolet and it made sense. I was looking for someone with lightning in their throat.

I couldn’t keep from crawling up to ask how I could throw myself to the Jabberwocks. A lady said I just needed to put my name on the list. I scratched it and ran back to my seat like a mongoose. Queen May’s Revenge was up. A trans woman stood ahead of us all. Her first sentence was like green gold, but her narrative was a firecracker. Her tongue boomed. I siphoned my beak, strangled my elitism, sucker punched my gooch. I had no badge in my pocket, no star power. And she relived her pain in an open mike: prison rape, helpless as a bird with broken wings or a straitjacketed woman. All we could do was watch and applaud.

Then it was my turn, in the midst of American wounds healing. I spit a departing poem to an escort and failings as a collegiate drug dealer. I was a shadow slithering by. White men can be anything in this country: poets, doctors, comedians, morticians, wolves on wall street, the president, but they can’t be quiet in remembrance of Columbine, the Crusades, and our wandering eyes. For the first time, I was the outcast with a haircut. The others had bare feet, long hair, unbuttoned shirts, exposed navels. They were smiling. I was concerned. Everyone was supporting humanity, but I was into the art. Why did no one toss their creed into a burn barrel and dance around? They were there for the community, the floor of hands waiting. That was the art.

I bought a poetry magazine and went to their writer's workshop the next day, downtown, attached to a dance studio of girls strutting to Beyoncé. We were assigned to write what we hate— ego noise naturally— Kanye should have his Achilles snipped— and I decided to buy thicker socks. Others wrote about gender politics, identity, failed polygamy, and fists of fury. Their poems were obese and had gravity. They asked my pronoun. I’d never been asked that. I was tempted to say “it,” but thought my comedy rude. We weren’t on the same vein. No, we were in another locale altogether. I held my phone up for a better signal, whether it came from God, herpes, rope burn, or money in the flamingo's mouth, whatever, I wished it’d smite me.

Something with history will flip the opposition, turn us all cohesive: less walls, more footpaths, trees, water stations for Mexicans in the desert, and shattered borders altogether. We’ll be ready for the jam thieves and Conor McGregor and we’ll show them the American way. We are superglue thanks to the bluebirds in the wires that are faster than any pigeon coated in oil. No one cares how bald you are. Consciousness is changing just as California becomes an island and floats away. We stopped writing in the workshop and began talking.

I woke up at 5:30 AM and let the dog out to piss in the wind and sniff grass. I brewed coffee, put on pants and a jacket, and cooed myself slowly down the stairs to my car. The morning was bright and the mountains were clear and green and massive and that should be enough. I drove to the farmers market and drank the java and listened to tunes.

Boulder was thriving by 8:30, all sorts of folk with jam in their eyes floated by, tasting samples, doing ungodly things with their mouths. A man with a cane hurried by and grabbed a handful from the bowl of dried fruit, decimating the contents, and if I wasn’t smiling in a farm stand I may have grabbed his ears and put him in the gutter. Children were the most unsanitary, wandering up with big hollow eyes and agape mouths. “Can I taste that?” Of course, you must grow so that you can fly, although you’re already so quick to grab the jam, you little golems. I saw girls with long-haired pits. A homeless man with a feathered hat parked his wheelchair turned into a plant. Toddlers with red around their lips and mad crazed eyes sniffed fruits. One chickadee ate a cherry and chewed it like a lemur on National Geographic, all gums, a young geriatric.

People revoke their origins while eating their oranges. We’re the same as we were, however now we’re concerned about gluten-free data. We’ve halted our chemical nonsense and are turning to robots instead, too scared to trust ourselves. I consider the midriff of a star-gaze blonde girl perusing, seemingly content with her bread. I tell everybody we’re in another day of paradise when they ask how I’m doing, certainly not that we’re most likely all diseased and a balanced diet can help your lifespan. I suggest the apple butter to anyone interested in preservatives. Allspice and cinnamon are what gives it the flavor, I say. My heart is tart and amused by jars of boiled fruit better than dirt. We’ve have removed rats off the menu, yet still, feed them to our snakes.

After a while, I ventured into the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art Museum to use their restroom. The paintings looked like they were stolen from a kindergarten class, skewed textures with rogue strokes, hangmen on the wall, in vain and as trivial as a walrus in the desert. The bathroom had a full sized mirror behind the toilet and I watched myself piss in real time, concerned with this newly analytical state I found in a building of art. I walked out of the bricks back to a wild crowd watching the sky.