another gentle choke excerpt

 

I am in a tree house…it is late to a child of twelve, so not really late at all. But the sun has set, and with the setting of the sun little urchins of small town suburbia take off their daytime masks of obedience and reveal to the lucent moon the true pagan heart of the young. Spiders weave in the shadows then wait with tireless patience for their next meal…I see a furrisome-leggy beast of the night zip across the rotted boards and try not to look concerned. If I look concerned the others will notice and no doubt pick the thing up and try to put it down my shirt in a laughing torture. It's tiny really, in comparison, but alighted in my innocent blue eyes its is gargantuan enough to raze Tokyo…and it bites…what if it carries a deadly poison? I don't want to die so young in a rotting, spider-infested tree house! ..

            My degenerate companions are flipping through some Hustler magazines. Dave smiles and laughs, pointing to a young girl that looks as old as sin itself to us, and says something derogatory to give effect that he knows all about what is happening in that picture. We laugh evilly in response, as if to say 'oh yeah, I know what you mean, man…I totally know' but of course none of us did. As far as we were concerned, when it came to sex, we had lost our virginity soon after punching our way out of the womb, cigarette dangling from blue lips and a bottle of Molson Export in hand, the other tiny wrinkled paw slapping the nurses a*s…similar to the way we will die too I'm guessing. 

            We have a six-pack between the three of us, Dave, Shawn, and myself, and by the time we're done we will be quite drunk. Shawn's legs are pulled up close to his chest. He's only fourteen but already over six-feet tall. Dave's Mohawk shakes as he twists his head at the sound of voices from below. Shawn and I peer out of a hole in the wall. It's Dave's older brother and a few of his friends, including a short but sleek girl with large breasts and sexy crooked teeth. I am instantly obsessed. My mind is filled with juvenile romanticism. As a dying man sees his life repeated a young boy will see his life laid out ahead of him. Chance and still unknown intrusions and obstacles, hidden paths revealed, and the chaotic whim of nature are the only things that keep us from possessing a true psychic ability, but I believe that an obsession is the mind manifesting biologic connection through desirous pictures of what could be. In an instant I see our wedding, children, special moments that were ethereal before the muse takes it form in my reality. Where do these messages come from? These movie clips that spur us into action or debilitating, self-conscious inaction? Inherent? Learned? Whatever it is I praise and laud it for its symphonic prose that can leave life itself stale as a soggy cracker if it is not followed and redeemed, held to be real…we must follow the dream or be wrung of existence like an old shirt in the wash…our minds bless us with possibilities. It's much too easy to sleep on your dreams than to live them awake…

            That night to me is a dream. The colours richer, the odors crisper, the moon brighter, the moment lasting… The fears of the moment are all gone and I am left with a glowing beatitude pulsating my soul. I see her face as a smiling specter of innocence, as fragrant as the dewy grasses and as animated as a blithesome willow swaying in the warm lake winds…her image, physically and mentally, will hover abstractly in wispy projection at will…

            Dave and his older brother, the chiseled model type, exchanged some words of kindred banter and they melted into the inky backdrop of my life's play like bit characters…

            I dreamt it…I had foreseen…I was a shamanic adolescent in a pagan tree of knowledge biting into the soft insides of bitter chestnuts of hallucinatory fervid yearning. Yet seeds of doubt always plague the likes of me who have been let down so often or who have never risen, only fallen. I knew my fate and desire held that body as if it were my own… but I deny myself joy for the timorous world of the artist and thus sit on time in wearisome self deprecation until I am so pent up I explode in poetic fashion and lunatic haste…

            Fear gnawed me to a sinewy stray dog starving and rabid in drunken back alleys for so many dreary years I thought were character building…I lost out on so many moments…or so I tell myself when I'm feeling regretful and leaning on hindsight. Truth is, all moments are beautiful and to be remembered with fondness. Don't let the past kill you slowly…

Reviews

[Sweet_pale_cacophony]

You know Jason i will say this it is foolish to come to read one of your writes and think that i will not get sucked into it :)...i always connect with your words,and hence it is easy for me to write a response.You write with such candor,honesty and an insight that it is always very very nice to read what you have for us.It is always as if you are looking at your past,and weaving into it your insight..as if your memories have ripened with the knowledge of life in general you have acquired over the years.I am thinking if that is how with all of us...when we look at what had happened with us years ago..how do we actually view it?..not as we did at that time thinking that was the moment..the end,life could not be happier.You have written this so well,i like that entire stanza about obsession,and how we get fixated on the times that are to come.We always think if i do this and reach this goal in my life i would be happy.That doesn't happen...thinking this way we are losing out on what we have in our hands right now.If we can not be happy now,we will never be happy..cause happiness is a state of mind.I love the last stanza...Truth is, all moments are beautiful and to be remembered with fondness. Don't let the past kill you slowly…you are on the right path,keep walking :)

[Hedra Helix]

Hey sweetz, you want real intricate critiques or just my over all impression?

Tell me, I'll come back and give ya whatever you need.