Floods

"America is a special case. Of course it is not immune from domination by trees 

or the search for roots. This is evident even in the literature, in the quest for
national identity and even for a European ancestry or genealogy (Kerouac
going off in search of his ancestors). Nevertheless, everything important that
has happened or is happening takes the route of the American rhizome: the
beatniks, the underground, bands and gangs. . . (19)" Deleuze & Guatarri

  I leafed through the old tome and I took care not to crumble its withered pages as I turned them.  A dog watched me from behind a fence with a curious gaze. It said "don't leave. You can't leave." I stared back for an instant, and turned back to the tome. The woods had grown quieter and birds flew with quiet beats of their wings overhead; like they were flying away from something. Storm clouds gathered in the sky like an ominous gray council, their forms bloated and huge with their watery payloads. The whole forest, the train track, the river that flowed quietly by, all seemed to exude an aura, a warning. I could sense the coming rain as well as the dog smelled it in the air, I could feel its watery promise. I envisioned the entire valley flooded and my body, the dog's body, all the bodies floating in the deluge. I wanted the flood to wash me dry. Wash away my dreams, wash away my sins, wash away my troubles, wash the whole valley clean. Wash me to my roots. I would save this strange tome, by these Deleuze & Guatarri fellows, I felt it was the key; held the answers. It had the power to wash away the dirt, wash away the grime, wash the roots clean and expose them to light.

99 Miles Of Bad Road

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Death Mask

  The sour stench of death drafts through the humid air and hangs there like a rotten balloon. The source crunches under my feet; a raccoon skull stares its eyeless stare up at me with its death-mask, white teeth jutting from its mouth, its matted fur clinging to the bone like a sickly mold. No salt air or cool sea breeze permeates the dense wood.  The ocean was miles away.  Just stagnant lakes that sat like cesspools dripping with life - snakes, mosquitoes, gators, catfish - an almost prehistoric landscape with scaly and slippery and sucking creatures. It was as if the modern veil was torn away like a scab and all that was left was a lens into an older, more dangerous Earth. But a more exciting Earth nonetheless. An Earth with lands yet unconquered, caves to be explored, woods to raze and settle, seas to sail. A Dirty South Heart of Darkness.  
   There are no seas to sail here, just fetid lakes, brown like tea, full of tangled vine and muddy banks. And the sun, no shortage of it here, the burning orb hanging low over the tree line like the eye of some cruel fire god. Spanish moss hangs in long wisps from the cypress trees like cobwebs from skeletal fingers. The trees leer at you like they're alive, like they could move if they wanted to. Everything is flat, and wet, and hostile. You'd half expect to see Conan trudging through the murk with his axe in hand, searching for some swamp beast to slay for it's hide. He'd rule from his Oaken throne, an alligator-skin cloak draping his shoulders, a moss laurel at his head, piles of bass and bluegill to feed his tribes. A wretched raccoon skull dangles from his neck and speaks for him. It speaks of death, in death's tongue, and all who meet its dead gaze can do nothing but cry "the horror, the horror."

Down

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I dreamed but I didn't know what, or where, or who. I tried to remember but it was like someone was dreaming for me, like I was thrown into someone else's dream. My head was filled with thoughts I wasn’t sure were my own or I wanted to be my own. These aren’t my dreams.

America dreamed for me. The trees dreamed for me. The gators dreamed for me. The neighbors dreamed for me. Someone fifty states away dreamed for me and made them happen for me. I drove down lone roads, like I was the only one in the world, like I was thrown into some post-apocalyptic highway. I passed out in the glow of a neon light and woke up in the shadow of a tree. I slipped into the lake and washed myself clean of dreams that weren’t my own. A dog barked and gnashed its teeth through a fence and for a split second I saw clearly, purely, but then America sucked me back into its dream.

A giant neon arrow, red and yellow with flickering bulbs, jutted out like a knife aimed right at me. It stabbed and stabbed and stabbed like it desperately wanted to split my skull and fill it with its neon dreams and cast my bones in plastic. I didn’t know what to do but run down whatever dusty road that led to whatever dark forest that seemed remote enough to get lost in forever. A pitbull stared curiously through a fence with eyes black like a doll’s and I laughed at its dumb, innocent stare.

I’d been trained just as well as that pitbull but he stayed in his fenced in yard, his fenced in dream. He could jump over and out that fence if he wanted to, if only he knew, if he only tried. I found a train track and followed it. It’s hard to carve a path when you’re shackled to a track.  

Muddy Waters

              Sun’s out. It burns; a kind of soothing burn to those that have lived under its glare long enough.  It’s that familiar warmth that wouldn’t be traded for a winter wind or White Christmas. The lake’s alive with a thousand voices – bees, barks, birdsong, splashes of spawning fish, a group of kids laughing a mile away that sound like they’re in your backyard, a motorboat.  The sound is constant and unrelenting, like a highway drone, but it’s melodic and calming. It’s soothing like the sun, the air seems to vibrate with life and there’s a strange stillness despite the activity. The waters lap at the shore lazily, then a motorboat passes and there’s a minute of violent, crashing waves that disrupt the stillness but they fade back into their calm rhythm.

Wind blows scents and sounds to you and an alligator suns itself nearby. Egrets eat fish. You spit in the water and minnows devour it like they’re starved. Turtle heads dot the water like little buoys.  It smells like mud and something tells you to cover yourself in it, absorb it…be absorbed by it. 

You want to float drunkenly forever in the lazy brown waters and never get burned. You feel like what you have is worthless even though you might have it all.  You want to drink the waters dry and eat all the land but that void can’t be filled; you feel doomed in a land of grace.  The wind blows gently and the air is loud and soundless all at once.  You feel like you could fade into the wind if you tried hard enough.  If a gator, a real gator; a big one, swam up right now you’d jump on its back and hope for the best.  Nothing seems real but you’ve never felt more alive.  You know that if you died right now this world would go on without you.  The birds, the fish, the dogs, the children laughing across the lake, none of them would miss you.  None of them would even know you’re gone.  The days would roll on quietly, the children would still laugh, the birds would still sing; another day of southern discomfort.