dreaming sometimes swimming

summer always brought me to a place of isolation. school out, friends gone. I waited for you. I hibernate with music and books. good times gone bad and good again. I'm numb to the vibrations of air conditioned rooms, to bed springs, to the rumble of thunder. I feel so far away.. from you.

ive been up and down the coast, drift fishing, unsettled. the way ive broken bones and cut lips. the sky blends to the color of your eyes. distant lighting. distant storms. distant sleep. dreaming sometimes swimming.
    
i wonder what it must be like drifting so long across the sea and one day come to the shore of your heart.

Two ball screwball

When i was a kid, school let out for the summer and it was jumping ramps with my bike time, fishing the canal for large mouthed bass, mowing lawns for buying shit like slurpees, watermelon gum, going to the movies and the ice-cream truck. Our ice-cream man was a ol perv who gave little girls free stuff if they lifted up their pretty little pink summer dress and showed him undies. My favorite off the truck was screwballs - cherry slush and a gum ball at the bottom, second was push-ups, then rocket pops. It was the late seventies. Rock music was still hard, cars were still fast and we rode our bikes without helmets, skateboarded without knee-pads, stayed out until dark with no supervision. We turned out just fine. Video-games were stand up machines at pin-ball arcades, you fed them fucking quarters. You didnt hide in your house all day, no kid stayed indoors.

Even though i lived in South Florida i didnt grow up having a swimming pool. There was only one family that had one put in, a few had above ground pools, the rest of us had kiddie pools, home-made slip-n-slides and sprinklers. I didnt learn to swim until i was seven. To cool off from the heat I rode to the movies with my friends or sometimes alone. They played old Disney movie double features for a dollar. Herbie the love bug and Escape from witch mountain type of stuff. The movie Jaws kind of changed my life, until I saw a movie called Star Wars. I also recall The Warriors, Rollercoaster, and Carrie having some effect on my young mind. I went to the library on occasion too, i was obsessed with soccer and took out books about pele. I got into S.E. Hinton, and later Stephen King. I looked at rock magazines and anything that might have a half naked girl.

Addidas. All.day.i dream. about sex. Something changed. After awhile nothing else mattered, everything i did, wore, said, liked, faked, every fight , scar , tear, drop of blood, every note written, poem, song, goal i scored, any money i made, bike i rode, car i drove, every stupid hair-cut, body spray, truth, lie, every drug i took, cigarette smoked, glass i tilted back. Anytime i ever danced, pretended to like your parents, said it would be forever, said yes, we could be just friends.

It was hot today, i was in the pool thinking about screwball icecream. About the first time i fell in love, about bmx bikes. About the awesome sex i used to have with you, puffy stickers, trapper keeper notebooks. I got out dried off and drove to four different gas stations in an attempt to find a screwball. I looked online and now they make a two ball screwball. ( holy shit two disgusting after two chews gum balls at the bottom!) Im listening for the bells. The music that broken down looking white truck blares. Wheres the ive cream man when you need him?

Low tide at sundown

And thats how Memorial day went down.

 

Sea Sex Sun

I'm used to leaves in the water it was a murky above ground pool where i learned to swim. In her backyard when her parents weren't home. On the last day of school. I mean like last day forever because it was high school and i was getting a job and just enough money to travel. To go somewhere new and different and not here. And she taught me to swim, the girl next door, we grew up together and now she had tits and curves and a murky pool with leaves.

I rode my bike home the last day in the rain. Washing away the ill effects of hormones and lies.  The promise if I went to college id get a good job and a good wife and house and wed have a baby and id live this fairytale life. Grinding through traffic to go to a boring job I hated, strangled inside a pressed shirt and fancy tie that feels more like a noose than success. But, the office girls talk behind my back- "What a powerful well behaved man."

I jumped off my bike and let it just crash into the yard. I saw her in her backyard getting in the pool in bra and panties and she waved me over. I thought how gross the water was and how beautiful. She ignored me at school the last four years, though when we were younger we had played doctor. We played king and queen too and i tied her to my swing set with her jump rope. It was still raining, i took off my jeans and shirt and climbed the ladder. I dove in head first and grabbed her foot underwater. It was murky and smelled like burnt leaves, warm as a stew and the bottom slick with algae. We were sure to catch something. Don't drink it she told me laughing. All of a sudden we were free from school, free from burden. And she swam over and kissed me like she meant it. Its what goodbye feels like and i have felt it many times since. But i was happy then and everything was new. Like learning to swim again. Two strangers in last winters dark water.

Fist, teeth. Money

 

Ever wonder how you got to the place you are now? ' How'd i end up in this windowless box within a box within a box'Wasn't i just here? Didn't i just escape this?Take another sip of corporate Kool-aid. Sell something. Sell something electrical. Electric. I've only ever been good at selling my words. payment in the form of connections. bad intentions. secrets. sins. in photographs. in memories. in blood. in sweat. in tears. high commidities. based on the nothingness abliity to read between the lines. Take another sip, go ahead and tilt it all the way back, taste the creature comforts.The fear of living simply within myself, without the distractions purchased by extra money ive made off commisions. I dream about a cabin in the woods. I dream of wine country. I dream of salt water. Where are the melodies i cant get out of my head, her smell i cant rub off my skin. The road trips and hotel rooms. the half naked stranger shaved smooth. willing. my commision. This box within a box within a box. my only escape - are these few lines written on company time.