The Slice of Winter

my tepid breath speaks steamy soliloquies to meet the grey skied gloom. a mediocre half-felt solemnity stacked on a previous, better felt one. my car inches down the wet road in tow and lead of angry customers trying to belly up to life's disappointing bar. open all night it's says, but the beer in the kegs is flat and my hat is sitting in some other guy's crumbs. with a bill raised in my hand I flag down the busy keep as she pours me what's left until the spigot spits air. i swallow half-consciously the lame, over sat, brew and bat a bored eye out the window. the traffic is moving now and you might get the reckless feeling like you were on the way but there are more accidents ahead for people to entertain themselves with. a cell-phone ring, a horn honk, a rumbling truck, radio chatter. a young grease monkey rolls a tire through the snow with a smoke hanging from his lower lip back into the garage. a lady in front is putting on lipstick. what am I waiting for? to get to work? so I can get my work done? so I can get home? back into my bed? back into my thoughts...the airport lounge before I take off into my dreams? of sex, drugs, women,violence, hate, anger, loneliness, desperation? we can wake up from this...rather these cycles... of selfish longing, hungry ghosts, pulling me down into ignorance...the father of lies. traffic has stopped. one guy gets out to check. seeing what's ahead might speed things up. c'mon there's money to be made...I want mine before the economy drops off like a nut-filled terd pinched from the creamy, pimpled ass-cheeks of capitalism. for now I just watch. I roll the window down and watch. the clarity of the images, the smell of the slice of ice cold winter air. like a TV. but better. better than Hi-Def, Blue-Ray, Plasma. It's so high definition; I can touch it. I can taste it. I can feel it. totally free. no monthly charges.

The Pecking Ground

Friday afternoon in a government office. It reeks of print toner and cheap carpeting peppered carelessly with lazy excuses and blame. Almost empty, I sit with only but a few scattered consultants at crumb-laden desks painted with coffee ring stains. My mind is numb with document types, words and protocol. While many employees sit away the afternoon in their sun rooms at home, thumbing through Oprah magazines, I hammer out line after line of phrasing trying to prove a statement through cold legal logic. My back is sore from sitting on this old swivel chair and my neck tenses and hopes drain at the thought of a Saturday and Sunday afternoon spent sifting through more reports. I must do this for survival.

Somewhere on a beach in Ecuador, a man waxes down a surfboard in the beating sun, skin and arms bronzed and chiseled. Pausing, he takes a deep drink of cold blackberry juice, held in a metal canister. The electric sun slides fast across the ice blue sea begging him to chase the golden line. The warm wind wisps sand across his back as he pushes the board into the foamy water. Belly down he paddles to meet the laughing waves. The muscle soreness burns slow through his arms and legs. Heart rate rising. Miles of purple, blue and black below and open blue above. The warm water starting to grab and move him. Faster now into the infinite. The scream of desire pulses through the body.....ready to catch the flow...

His bank account book buried deep in some boxes miles back at the beach house. The melancholy illusion of the rat race buried light years away.

Rocketing now through the air as the board bullets across the liquid blue chasing hard the golden ray of the sun.

The shock of joy busts through years of sadness as he falls gently...

into the arms of the ocean.