when you noticed your ghost

It's so warm today it could be summer. She empties the drawers and lays out her dresses. Cotton soft, bright and clingy.  It could be oblivion. We ride our bikes when the sun starts to fall. The breeze through her hair and dress, breaks every bone in my body. It's warm, my bones heal, my blood is blue through my skin. Red outside where the air touches it, where the lies and sweat and wine flows.

New noises: baby cries, dogs barking, the high-pitched whistle of our dented tea kettle. Perfect in it's imperfection. The last few notes of a song you recommended. Am I the ghost you wanted me to be?

The heat sticks to the pavement like a summer dress to skin. Neon lights and palm tree sway. Tourists on spring-break pack hotels and emergency rooms with sunstroke. To many beers with lime and key west shrimp. Tits bouncing to the reggae beat. There are more clothes off than on. Tattoos telling the stories of each others lives. The salt water draws them in. The briny air and art deco moon. 

swimming with sea bears

sea bears like warm salty water and the sun. hibernation is in the summer - the opposite of winter bears. sometimes they sleep, sometimes they stay up all night writing tall tales: buried treasure, sharks teeth, pirate hookers. eating, drinking, fucking, swimming, writing, sleeping, crashing waves. Yeah. that's our thing.

all my days by the beach and ive only ever found one single shark tooth. I was about 9 and it was on the West Coat of Florida. not even in my own back-yard. I bent thin wire around it and tried wearing it as a necklace but it fell off and i lost it. I looked for more but only found shells and sea glass.

why not stay home all day and make art? why not be rich with the reward of gifts? i dream of one of those treasure finding things that you wave over the sand. going out on the beach in the early morning looking for lost treasure. I listen for beeps and high tones. gold, silver?. memories someone lost. I'd hang out until the sun was just above the ocean, ready to fall. pages torn from my notebook; a sea-side adventure tale that takes place in a sun worn motel. thieves and liars and whores. it would be mostly fiction. mostly.

Casually Smashed to Pieces

road journal in no particular order:

june of july when summer starts. It used to be when school ends - is summer. simple enough. now we pack bags and load the truck for camping or some disney world bullshit. stock up on explosives; fire- crackers, mortar shells, bottle rockets - the 4th. charcoal for the grill, bright red cooler stocked with bagged ice .

I like the road at medium distances. the great lakes and oceans blue. I like mile high cliffs and smokey mountains the peaks and valleys and her curves. anywhere. anywhere with you. I try to count the orange trees. they fly by in a hazy blur, im doing 85 or 88 mph. bugs hit the windshield with a Thump.Thump. Splat. Florida presents one the most boring of drive. flat awful roads; the occasional road kill. skies can open and pour down on you in a blink of an eye. torture you with black and grey and wet. Yes, there is lightning, more strikes than any state in the union. As suddenly blue skies, birds singing. all in all the surroundings near and far are not much for recalling. drink your fluids, check your gauge for overheating.

high noon mind numb with motion and vibration. It's not long before the sun drops off a western horizon. keep the radio playing loud, keep driving, keep taking mental notes. Are those mountains or clouds up ahead? Is that the ocean im driving into.. the abyss? tricks and illusions. Im not cut out for long distance. she kisses me awake with sugary redbull kisses. Im vaguely aware of She & Him playing from the tiny dashboard speakers- it seems to fit my mood now, fit this road and hour, twang and whisper and zooey eyes. I start to fade again. Half asleep I pull into a small motel, single level maybe 15 rooms. serene, half cozy half dirty. neon pink screaming Vacancy and cold a\c. In the dawns early light the office window is fogged with condensation. a glow creepy and inviting.

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The gas light has been on for the last 30 miles. So now I m pumping gallons of fuel into the tank. road weary with a slight Red Bull buzz. I like motels with window shaker a\c's units. the soothing hum and glow of vending machines that for 2 dollars can dispense me ice cold Mountain Dew. A motel that suffers through the off season months, through the hard times. like these. a motel so rightly fucked in and fucked up. Over chlorinated pool that burns my eyes and tingles my skin. A hard pillow and hard cock and two fingers in her mouth. scream. moan. It's okay. We ain't from around here and we aint never coming back.

june of july how wonderful to be alive and able to write this. running out of ink and out time. she calls for me to hurry it up, there's a nasty storm coming from the South. Get back in the truck, get back in and just drive. drive. drive.

She & Him - Thieves (BBC)

this is how it used to glow

a pink house next to a yellow house, next to pale blue. it's South Florida. I drive past Spanish, key west, ginger bread style casa's. pink flamingos and invisible fences, little dogs that play on dry lawns while shiny cars sit in the drive ways.

a pink house next to a sun yellow with swamp green trim. I drive past road kill iguana, road kill raccoon. I've counted six in the last two weeks. it's the half moon crazy fuckers fueled up on red bull and orange juice. It's the black top and salted earth lit by headlights and tourists drowsy from the sun. they come down from where it's cold, from some place else. sometimes i think that's where I'm from. not the cold. just some place else. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ... pastel houses and road kill.

I think it's the heat that makes everyone so crazy, makes the women so kinky down here. fisting, spanking, spitting. been there done that. fist fights and bottle rockets. the days are slow and the nights dance with the glimming hope and fear of anything better. But is there?

It's funny, i remember those nights meeting up in some dingy motel room, pulling at each other clothes with the longing you only have with strangers - when the only parts that matter are the ones you fuck with. freshly shaved down, if i thought about it, it's almost comical. who the fuck were we kidding? tattoos, sweat, and empty promises. sometimes, I still think i own a piece of it. If i call her name that girl can probably still hear me. she'd have to, anyone fucks you like that..they own you. now, you see what i mean about the heat?

The girls down here... smile often. they sleep to the right side of the bed, they drink bottled water, green soda, and blood.

and everyone came over to watch me light the fuse

sit around a lot of the time. wait for summer. it comes and then it's the same. it goes and then its the same. probably thinking whats next- whats next?. waste my time.

come waste my time and let's fuck like we used to and if we can't like we used to then how about we like now.

now is all we have and if its with me or him or her the difference is slightly to the left of the moon. where you are. where i am.

we just happen to be stuck in the place between. the silence.

i don't know why it ends up like this. short choppy sentences. no structure. kind of like us. kind of like me. or the story of us or of me. the one i wrote with you in it. the one I'm writing now. and you are gone.
here. gone. here.

it wouldn't be much different but lets pretend it would. lets pretend we wouldnt get along. that we are strangers. you don't tend to make me angry. Ive learned something. I've changed and things are just splendid.

i don't even eat the same foods. i don't even have the same job or the same hair cut. things change. when they do - it' s now. no use thinking about tomorrow. when tomorrow comes it will be now.

love me like now. at least say you do. at least say you'd meet me somewhere. I want to get in my car and turn toward your direction. I want to light up the tires and light up the night. fireworks.

it's because of the fireworks. it's because of you.

July. we waited so long for summer. it comes and it's the same, it goes. what's next? who cares.

it's now.

i declare a cease fire

the temperature has dropped below eight-five, so my windows are open, and there's a breeze carrying in the smells of molasses, oranges, mesquite, papayas, rum, powdered sugar, arroz con pollo, newspapers, dogs, road tar, cigars, garbage, perfumed women, babies, lumber, paella, sex, car exhaust, chlorine, mint, horses, manure, coffee, lime, gardenias, seafood, Tabasco, stone crab, prostitutes, lemonade, barbecue, pianos, sweat, the ocean, bananas.

Hoping it stays just this broken

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.
-Anais Nin

Coke and coke type products were banned from my home as a kid and so to me soda was nectar of the gods. Something one only drank when you went to visit Grandma's. My parents didn't mind the no limit Coca-Cola party there, just so long as I was to be staying with Grandma for the entire weekend. By Sunday night was I wreaked for a week- crashing down to earth in my sugar and caffeine trip. I slept in the car on the way home and had to be carried in. Screw 4th grade. I had now discovered the 2 great joys in life. Coke and masturbation.

Back then it was really Dr. Pepper that was my course of medicine. It seemed to soothe me in ways no other beverage could. Don't get me wrong Yoo Hoo had it's place in my trailer park upbringing as well. I dreamed of jerking off with one hand and sipping a D.P. with the other.
Madness would be if I were to be watching an R- rated movie through the squiggly lines on cable at the same time. ( We didn't get cable until I was 14)

I started cutting lawns when I was 10. I figured if i was old enough to fuck. Which is what I thought I did with the girl down the street. I could start up my own buisness. I tried the lemonade stand thing but, my Mom bitched about me using the card-table. The same table we called "the kids table" during major holidays. There wasn't much money in it anway. Even on the hottest South Florida summer day i was lucky to make 4 dollars. Chump Change.

It didn't take me long to find out it wasn't actually sex I was having with the girl anyway. Fucking, which I called hunching back then was NOT peeing on her while she laid down on top of leaves in the woods?. It took someone much older and wiser than me to set me straight on that. It was my best friends sister. It's where I learned most of the things I knew then about girls and sex. I figured her the expert, being 13 going on 14 and me only 10.
By the way, my friend, he didn't have soda at his house either, but his sister would make us the meanest Kool-aid this side of Belle Glade's Happy Gardens trailer community.

I guess his sister was supposed to watch us, (Their parents were never home) but all she ever did was talk on the phone or have boys come over and then shut herself in her room and play loud rock music. We used to try to listen for them having sex through the wall of his room. We both had drinking glasses to our ears and a hand down our pants. We once saw in the back of a DareDevil comic-book an ad for a SUPER hearing device. We planned on going halves for it once I started making money doing lawns.

If she wasn't on the phone or didnt have a boy over she would hang around us. I liked that. She would ask me all sorts of questions. Things about sex. Did I like listening to her through the wall? If my thing got hard?. How big did it get? I thought it was strange she talked like this in front of her brother, but he didnt seem to care. I mean he was the one always trying to see her naked.

One day I was over there and we were all on a Kool-aid and Tussin high. Totally "tussed" up as she called it. She was always going through her mom's medicine cabinets and taking anything she could find in a bottle. She tried to make us take things too. I never did. I told her I was allergic. Little fucking hypocondraic that I was. I thought I'd probably die. The Kool-aid's sugar content alone made my head spin. We spooned some cough syrup and washed it down with the day-glo liquid. She drank right from the bottle. I liked when she tilted her head back and i could see the muscles and veins in her skinny throat. Things were in slo-motion. I sat closer to her on the sofa, and she started kissing me and then her brother. We were on either side of her and she took her hand and slid it down my pants and started to rub me while her brother played with her boobs. It didn't look like the first time he had done it either. My friend, he goes " Do that thing to him" She smiled and put her face in my lap, pulled my shorts and underwear down passed my thighs and put her mouth on me. Suddenly I was awake and alive and feeling good and feeling sick and and wondering if this was a sin, and wondering if ........
she fell asleep or passed out or something. She stopped. I got up and let her stretch fully out on the couch. Then we both took her clothes off and pet her skin and touched her and looked at girl parts and took turns putting our fingers in some and then out. She was breathing softly and moaning, making little noises.

We never talked about it. I went back to the super awesome sweet Kool-Aid. She went back to her room with boys and loud music and funny smelling stuff coming up from under the door. She went back to the phone and back to teasing me about things I didn't know. Did she know? Does she now?

I did cut the lawns and when I made enough money I bought a fishing pole that I wanted (I still have it). In between I would use some of the money to buy Coke. Ride my bike to the bait n tackle shop a mile or so away and get it in the glass bottle. 10cent return.
At home I would hide it back in the woods. It had been a long time since I had one last. When I finally drank it, it wasnt as sweet as I thought it would be. I went inside my house and took packets of sugar and then went back and added them to the COKE. The weird thing is nothing happened. It doesn't matter how much sugar or aspartame you add to a Coke, it can't get any sweeter than it already is. That's their secret formula. It's not some secret ingredient, it's that they are already supersaturated with sweetners.