Mt Washington Cave People.

We didn't have enough money to live in a cave at the top of the hill. Up high where the waves didn't crash. Where the exhaust foam didn't break upon the sidewalk shore. Where the sand-crab-ass bottle and can hoarders were too tired and hungry to climb for the bounty of a holiday party or a tuesday night's unwarranted yet ever welcomed celebration of our ability to purchase even count boxes of beer. All of which claiming to be unique and offering not just a refreshing, intoxicating wash for a dry throat but a different experience. It's sweet of them to try but it always ends up the same :

Ika drinking beers faster than all of us and berating Mundo for no reason other than its become a hobby of hers.

Mundo Hunched over some sick, sleek, current-gen controller gaming, making my avatar more rich than I ever could, while somehow simultaneously SnapChatting everyone he's ever met.

Amil in a corner chair, face aglow with muddled text locking in the next joyless yet satisfying fuck, laughing at the jokes that matter.

Cade with a calm smile spectating as if he didn't care. Ready for the next B1,000 conversation with myself that would start soaked with intellectual brilliance and end dry and chaffed by the busy shoulders of nearly innumerable and useless musings.

The Chief, constantly in and out, back up to his cave. A jest here, a smoke there, an uncountable number of hellos, goodbyes, whats ups, and laters.

Phoenix with endless Two-dimensional entertainment. With an endless drive to frame the existence of the new 20-sided sub-culture.  He's the king of critical hits.

Froggy, making face. Making pastries far too easy to consume. Making my oldest friend, The Chief, warm at night. Smile in the morning. Cold when my assumtion is a lie and fetal, bent, around something that was before it wasnt.

Thelonius causing trouble with yours truly on equal level. Unable to sit still, matching drink, and harassing with great precision. We two are both equally within the madness.

Big Fish and Little Fish, coming by infrequently but still leaving their mark. And their clothes. Punkrock Duos make the best company, the most noise, and somehow always leave their shit.

I took a drive to the top of the hill to see how the cavemen there lived. Turns out: way better. They had caves made of polished wood. Paths flattened and laid out in an earthbound weave, leaving no question as to the direction of anyone willing to venture to their hidden peak.

But fuck em.

Maybe shit rolls down hill,

But even when were faced,

Were quick enough to throw it back.

More Than a Tractor, Deeper than the Can.

Theres a happy sad,
And some people can sing it.

Some people can paint it,
Sketch it.

Some people live it,
Not because they can,
But because they are cursed.
Because they do.

Some people learn it,
And still,
They never feel it.

Some of us feel it,
Wrecked for years,
Smiling with tears on our cheeks,
And never learn it.

I have felt it.

I've never stopped.

It's when eyes point at smile.
When smile points at eyes.

A confusion of emotion
Our senses cant define,
Our logic cant disintegrate to build anew
In the form of a typical
'Yes'
'No'
Stack of hopeful brick
And comfortable
Mortar.

The root of every well wished mistake,
The branch of every messy memory,
The leaf of every bent back,
Hunched to find a dry and fleeting meaning
In a decision that was never really made.

But there was never any seed to blame.

There was never any sprout to punish.

That happy sad was born as it was dying.

Blessed to wither and rest forever,

Cursed to grow and never know for sure,

'Am I happy?'

'Am I sad?'

Im Gonna Go Until I'm Not

Who the fuck could run a marathon?

What kind of psychopath does it take to remain in physical motion for so long?

My limbs have never been as strong as the rest,

As far as endurance is concerned.

I can lift

Operate

But the idea of a marathon is bullshit to me.

We run because we must.

Limits are fun to break

But some leave no value in the wake of their destruction.

What is left at the end of one of these daunting jogs?

Sweat?

It evaporates.

Fitness?

It fades with age.

And suddenly the clown wearing a mask of my own face laughs on my shoulder.

"The sun rises and your words are as cheap as when it set!" The Jester cackles.

And here I sit.

As futile as the pace keeper I mock.

With no sweat.

With no physical gain.

But with the same nonsense,

That has echoed,

And will repeat itself ever fading,

Into the cavern of my past,

and its bound future.

A Typical Superstitious Bother

For a hunchback loudmouth with a laptop and too much to say,
Superstition is the hat
the idiot I hate
Is alway wearing.

Practical and as dictated as it can be,
Our written language can only guess
At how impractical
The Typist can be.

And how aware
And unyielding
The dumbfuck in the
"Im scared of the nothing something"
Hat
Can begin
Can continue
To lay down the world in bent and agreed upon code,
Only to shrug his practice of creation
To take an extra step
And yield to the apex of every ladder's crest.

It isnt fear,
But a prayer
To the "I hope I'm a nothing something too"
That guides my step
And keeps me believing in these thin
Black
Bent shapes.

NEW CHAP

“Bet you’ve never seen trees like that!” Terry, Art’s father said releasing his pale right hand from the steering wheel and pointing to a distant green fur on the mountain range they had been approaching for the last hour.

“Ya.” Art replied as he re-adjusted himself in the passenger seat.  He was excited but didn’t know how to show it. It wasn’t the sort of thing ten year old Art was used to being excited about. It wasn’t a new Sim. A new Cloud-buster. A new Vis-chip. It was a bunch of trees. Ofcourse he had seen trees, plenty, but never so many backed up against one another. His eyes brushed back and forth over their tips, surveying them for some break in projected graphics. But there were none.

“Those are the real thing kid, hundreds of years old. My father used to take me here every summer. Parks gotten a lot smaller since then but its still the same place.” His father said. There was something in his voice Art had never heard before. Some level of pride book ended by hesitance. Almost worry. “There used to be parks like this all over the country. I really wish I could have seen them all.” He paused and looked out at the forest before them. “ You’ve never seen a real bear have you?” His father suddenly exclaimed, splitting his grey beard with a child’s smile.

“We saw one at the zoo. Remember the big one who was sleeping?” Art didn’t know that bear was almost always sleeping.

“No no its different in nature. These are real bears. Wild. Well find one ill show you.” Art’s father sat up in his seat and ran his hands up and down around the wheel, leaning forward into the road.

Art had been learning about the old national park system in school and found the subject wildly boring. Some Old man called Jim Mirror or something had stopped everyone from building new buildings and roads to preserve a section of wilderness. It didn’t make much sense to him. It seemed like a waste.

As they passed the last ‘Coulier Group Motor Trail’ Sign and came to ‘The Coulier Group Welcome Road Gateway’, Art began to realize why that Mirror guy had tried to save this place. It was beautiful. Art wanted to say so but he was too shy. He wasn’t old enough to say ‘Beautiful’ out loud. He said it to himself.

After paying the $347 dollar camping fee Art and his father found a campsite and unloaded the truck.

‘Theres nothing here’ Art thought tossing tent poles onto the pile of Arachnylon his father said was their tent. ‘Theres no lights?’ He asked his father without opening his mouth. ‘ Theres no bathroom…There’s a bathroom. You cant stay somewhere without a bathroom. NO ONE would let you do that. Its underground. That’s probably where everything is.’ He decided starring at the flat dirt of their camp. His thoughts were interrupted by the peripheral image of his father pulling a hatchet from his knapsack.

“Dad why do you have an Axe?” Art asked , taken aback.

“Its going to get cold kid. Real fuckin cold. Were gonna need wood for our fire. Ill teach you how to use it.” His father replied.

This was going to be a fun trip. Only fun Dad said ‘Fuck’.

Over the next two days Art and his father hiked through the park, stopping and taking time. Something Art had never truly experienced. His father taught him more in those two days than Art had learned in his entire life.Real skills, not just facts. Practical things Art knew he would use for the rest of his life. Or hoped he would.

They had been keeping  an eye out for the bear wherever they went. His father would stop and turn the flat of his hand to face back, in a half crouch, scanning the landscape. Art stopped out of fear, and his father out of an excitement the man thought could only exist in memory. Art was terrified but as the days and lessons went on he became more enchanted with the idea of seeing something truly wild. Every fantasy was peppered with images of white teeth wet with blood, tearing his limbs apart, red muscle glowing in the sun. The sound of his father’s back connecting with a bed of pin needles. Their last screams. He told himself the only re-assurance he had ever heard: “Too many Sims, the world isn’t really like that.”

It was day three when they saw the bear.

Art’s father had taken him on what seemed to be a death march up the steepest incline anyone had ever endured. They were headed to the smaller of the two lakes in the park- ‘Lake Morris’. Art kept his mind fluid with humor. He imagined a massive escalator bypassing the trail, progressing effortlessly to the plateau where the lake kept itself wet. Dreams of some elevator inside the mountain, rimmed with cushioned leather seats, walls adorned with screens showing the latest Sim highlights.

By the time they reached the top he forgot it all.He was too tired to think. It was one foot after the other, one breath then the next. He felt the trail level out and looked up for the first time in what seemed like hours. It was amazing. Looking over the park he could see and expanse of unadulterated wilderness no Sim could duplicate. No photograph could portray. No description could describe. He almost felt bold enough to say that it was ‘Beautiful’ outloud. But he held back again.

“Come on kid, Lakes just past those pines.” His father said. His voice trailed off as he kept the pace.

They pushed through the trees and brush, bypassing the winding path that would serve only to slow them down. As Art caught his breath he filled his lungs with a breath of cold air and felt his heart jump. The water became clear. Such a calm and flat sheet of dark blue anything he had never seen. It was natural yet somehow more perfect and smooth than any plasteel window he had ever seen.

“There!” His father shouted shooting his tan left hand forward to point at an all at once massive but silent and shinning beast. There it was. The bear. The creature moved with such ease Art wondered why man had even bothered to mechanize anything. The bear in the zoo didn’t move much at all. It  now seemed that caged marvel of nature served only to hold down the concrete beneath in place. The bears in his hunting Sims moved like people, without anything near this level of finesse. The pictures he had seen of brown bears made it seem as though they traveled with a heavy footed stomp that could shake the earth. This bear didn’t make a sound as it sprinted from the tree line to the Lake’s shore and dove in.

“They can swim?” art shouted dropping his walking stick.

His father’s hand fell to his side as he crouched. “ Oh they can swim kid, watch.”

The bear (Pedaled into the mountain sea, head just above water) swam -less gracefully than it sprinted but still moved with surprising ease through the water. Upsetting the liquid crystal as it made its way toward the center of the lake.

“Now where the hell is he going?” His father pondered aloud.

Art’s eyes darted back and forth between the bear and his fathers face, unintentionally gauging how to react to something so amazing and new.

His fathers face contorted in disapproval. This was something Art had seen before. Homework, messy room, broken dishes. The first familiar image he had absorbed since they hit the dirt.

“Jesus fucking Christ really? Godamnit.” Art’s father said standing again. “Why do we have to fucking ruin everything. Godamnit.” His hand met a wrinkled city brow.

Art looked (ahead to see where the bear was going) where the bear was swimming . A mass of Mylar bags and Dorito mulch had amassed at the center of the lake. The sight of trash was for jarring for the first time. Something Art had seen every day of his life was now so  surprisingly foreign and offensive. The bear reached the island of litter and began to lick and nibble at the trash.

Art’s father hung his head, looking up from time to time to reaffirm his disbelief.

“They eat trash?” Art asked quietly. He knew they didn’t. Or shouldn’t.

The bear became less graceful, and while it didn’t emote in the same way Art’s friends and family did, he could see it was afraid.

“Dad what’s happening?” Art asked taking a few steps closer.

The once flawless beast began to thrash and (Gag) roar. This was going wrong. Art started crying.

The bear had ventured too far into the lake and was losing energy. Water began to flood its mouth and throat, coughing clear water back and forth. Sucked in through its maw and ejected from the snout. And then it was gone. The lake was calm.

They packed up the campsite and hit the ‘Coulier Group Fond Farewell Trail’ without speaking a word.

“It was beautiful Dad, Before, you know” Art said looking out his window.

Dad didn’t say much after that.

Nineteen years later Art was sitting in the apartment of his supplier. He handed over a loaded credit chip.

“Got somethin new for ya this time. Sludge.” Crazy Chester his supplier said. He pulled a sheet of  perforated plastic-like material from the flat of a paper cutter and folded it in an accordion pattern.

“That time travel, shit your pants stuff?” Art replied.

“Yeah.”

Art’s phone rang. “Hold on.” He answered it.

“Im sorry to inform you that your girlfriend has taken her own life.” A nurse admitted from 17.9 miles away.

‘She was beautiful before, you know…’

Red White and Burbank- The itch you didn't know, the itch you couldn't scratch.

The itch we didn't know.
The itch we couldn't scratch.
The hockey stick,
The plastic gun,
The absence of the snatch.

In the electric blown out fog of my memory we were a roving band of hooligans.
Tyrants.

Plastic rifles and wooden Disneyland muskets on our backs, we patrolled Screenland drive as if we had vowed to protect it, and some other neighborhood sought to take it. Willing to pay the raspberry price.

Some other horde of pre pubescent miscreants with the implied firepower to overcome us at any moment.

Our block was sacred- not because we were told it was, but because it was ours. The treads of our power-wheels held this section of earth to the face of the planet, and without them it would be nothing. It would be Verdugo Blvd. grown-up waste. It would be the shitting grounds for big kid scum. It'd fall helplessly into the hands of "Dinner at six, bed by nine" parents who's retinas had been tattooed with the likeness of Lenny. Who's ear drums had been manipulated and shaped by the thunderous and unyielding 8 o'clock thunder of their "Law and Order" church bell wail.

We had a job to do. This block belonged to the kids. The Ninjas. The Basketball Allstars. The Street hockey kings in oversized black and white jerseys. The Commandos in ill fitting fatigues and big sister cammo face paint. The card merchants with an untold wealth in their deck. The Pog barrons with riches in their neon tubes.

Like any well trained unit we all had our roles to fill. There was, first and foremost, our leader- Garden Hose Greg. Greg was the oldest and had the experience and know-how to keep us alive when shit got hairy. We were all of variable age so he was elected leader by default. He had all the tricks. This motherfucker could fill a water-balloon faster than anyone i've ever met, to this day. And god damn if he wasn't a surgeon with the garden hose. Once saw him nail a kid four houses down and across the street without getting a drop on his chords. Then there was his sister- Donna. This girl had at least a year on all of us and knew how to use it. She could play both sides. Everyone wanted a little attention from the older girl, she could make you stupid with a glance. Next, ( in order of rank and age ) was Kyle. Sonofabitch was 3 times the size of the biggest guy in our unit and about half as bright. Wasn't much for strategy but just the sight of the boy would keep you at a distance. No one fucked with Kyle. After that was Rad. Now, Rad had a temper. He was the living, breathing definition of a 'Loose Cannon.' He'd follow the plans Greg laid out for a while then lose his shit on whoever was closest. It didn't always work out in our favor, (in fact most of the time one of us wound up at the wrong end of a rubber snake, or worse- a brick) but when his "Talents" did shine on our side it was as if we had harnessed a force of nature. In reality we didn't harness shit. Next up was Myself and the Tornado. We were the "Bash Bros".  Born on the same day, the same street, with the same reckless abandon, and an identical affinity for "the Mighty Ducks", Tornado and I were unstoppable.

We were a team from birth. While we were both members of the Screenland Dr. Militia (SDM) we had plenty of solo mischief under our belts. Me and the Tornado were the only two who had fully explored the catacombs and dungeons of our territory and lived to tell. We bore the scars of week long groundings.The memories of crawl-space beasts with 3 inch fangs and no souls. The wisdom of day long living room adventures into the mind, into territories unknown to most. Through lands of "Golf Magic" and past the four legged creatures native to every backyard in our territory. We were brothers and remain so till this day.

But the SDM wasn't without its peripheral soldiers. Every great army employs mercenaries.
The Gurkhas of the british, french, and foreign legion. The GalloGlass of Scotland, The Swiss guard of Vatican city. Yeah, we had our own.

There was Bloody Valentine from the Kenwood territory, He wasn't the kind of kid you brought to the front line but this guy had an arsenal to be reckoned with. Be it high-powered super soakers with extra ammunition capacity, to long range precision Nerf weaponry. This wasn't someone you wanted on your side, it was someone you couldn't win without. He was outside our lands but the ruler of an adjacent territory. He kept his lands quiet without raising a finger.

Some might disagree, but I am a fan of the mystical. I believe in an army without some sort of shamanistic sooth sayer at its aft is without conventional direction. A strategist can only get so far without someone who doesn't just think outside the box, but lives outside the fucker. We had a priest. Waxy. He was out of his mind but in tune with the out of tune chaos that surrounds us all. Waxy would show us what was and what wasn't. What could be and what couldn't. What was never, and possibly, what would be. He lived on the outer rim and a journey to his territory was more of a pilgrimage than a march. Only leaders were aloud. The Maple territory was absent void of combatants. It was neutral ground. A place for contemplation.

Our ranks were prepared for any foe, any invasion. We had the weaponry and the know how. We had the leadership, we had the Allies. We had the vehicles, siege engines- well, they did.

Bikes, roller blades, scooters and skateboards were more so recreational vehicles. Scouts would sometimes use bicycles on account of their speed an silence but PowerWheels were our war horses. Well- their war horses.

Greg, our General, had a jet black Jeep with room for a driver (Usually himself) and a gunner(More often than not his sister Donna). His machine was faster and more sleek than the rest of the convoy, and rightfully so. Kyle had a beast of a machine to match his physique. A bright red 4x4, lifted. This thing was scrapped and scarred to shit. Perfect as far as he was concerned. Rad had a low to the ground Ferrari with a gold stripe down the center. It was fast as hell but had pretty low battery life. Not a problem. So did he. Bloody Valentine had a silver BMW of some kind. This machine was so damn quiet he could make the alley run- back and forth- without a soul knowing. The vehicle was tops but his knowledge of those alleys is really what let him move so deftly bellow the radar. There were soft spots. Ridges and valleys. We could spot em on foot but V had the terrain memorized. Tornado's ride was similar to Kyle's but in better condition. It was red and a different model but served the same purpose: brute force. I would ride tail gunner a lot of the time but some operations required us to split up.

So I'd have to take my own ride.

My own ride?

No.

I didn't have my own ride.

Maybe it was because I never asked. Maybe I knew my parents couldn't afford a bullshit plastic battery powered car I would end up using for a year and a half. Maybe I was afraid if I asked for a bullshit plastic battery powered car and dint get it my life would end.

It Wasn't the Distraction, but the Bother.

It wasn't the sound of the train,

The constant or consistent churn of it's measured gears,

And careful path.

It wasn't the idea of an operator I couldn't understand,

With a path so plain before him,

So much weight behind him,

And so little to do.

It wasn't the half kept business hovel,

Occupied by landlords who kept their order,

Of currency and obligation,

Without the aesthetic to purchase dutiful faith,

And a sense of obligation.

But with tittle enough to sit in a filthy wheeled office chair,

And crack a whip,

Without raising a finger. 

It wasn't the cheap jug of drug store wine,

Round and loving,

Cradled by the fetus of my adulthood.

Emptied by the child of the upright bearded forever-untill-never.

It was the past-tense,

Easy and painted up,

Shinning like a new bike.

It was the nonexistent,

Ever present,

Always fading,

Never leaving.

It was the unbrushed hair of childhood,

Made to look intentional by backward eyes.

It was true love in the classroom,

Made to seem undying by the sound,

And texture,

Of a crumpled and miss spelled note.

It was the pocket hole in thrift store pants,

For a dumb girl's hand,

And an anxious boys cock.

It was the lunch bell,

That tore apart the most important conversation,

That had ever been ended.

But really it wasn't anything.

Because it still is.

And it will be.

I still think one day I'll see the future.

Despite my fetish for the past,