black and blue

black and blue

                       would be his immediate endgame

no twisting in the wind

ugly fierce reprisal

leaving no room for equivocation(because everything is)

   

prior

when the young man crossed the street in the neighborhood to interrupt him  excusing himself  and then offered a virtually unexpected apology  forthright  for offending him  obviously provoking him  by flying a Confederate flag from the bed of his pickup

then

he was astonished and moved by the young mans apology  

it seemed to him most people  unfortunately of all stripes  came down to lack the stones to reverse and correct themselves and apologise when either they were wrong or had wronged someone

everyone so keen to double down

as if doubling down was manly or virile or could possibly inspire more respect

bizarre

seemingly a full-blown adult hasnt the moxie to apologise  admit they were wrong  say they misspoke

if there was anything in this world that is imperfect  it is the erect two-legged animal  Man

he accepted the young mans apology

frankly  thinking back over it  he was almost eager for the apology  eager to take the young mans hand firmly in his 

like finding a lost talisman  and then refusing to risk losing it again  or misplace it

taking his hand  the working of it through his mind  the honor his hand meant to him when he gave it  akin to when he gave his word . . .

then

disheartening bullshit

its vulgar dishonor   blatant dishonesty

theirs wasnt the oldest town in the state 

                                                                   founded when public buildings were built with handsawn timber   metals tortured at a local foundry and hammered by soot-blackened smithies   their stone frieze  facing out in the four primary compass directions  inscribed with empowering mottoes of civic pride devotion and common decency   quarried and finished and pulled to site on buckboard wagons at the behinds of stubborn drafthorses and oxen

their city hall stood at the east end of a broad mall  the grammar school across the street from it   up on the westside was the high school  the buildings between two broad avenues

the high school was severed from the campus in the 50s by the interstate   

that planning and execution allowed the city hall to retain the greatest part of the mall whose one hundred year old trees shadowed the parallel avenues and the serpentine public walks that wound the manicured lawns and eventually lead to the huge carved marble fountain that dominates the heart of the grounds

granted   thats the way he perceived it

 

his perception  and backdrop  to the defamation the young man calls his heritage 

who parked his truck on the mall  unfurled the flag  letting it flutter in the crossbreeze

this wasnt the South

he wasnt stupid

  

he understood how cancer metastasizes through a communal body

and his antivenom  as was the provocateurs  is drawn from the same vial of First Amendment rights

 

unfortunately 

                         not the black and blue he held straining at the chokecollar wrapped around its throat

percolating just beneath his skin

Truth*

it reminded him:   all my enemies are turning into my teachers

he was learning to stay his hand

and turn his tongue into a lash  unsatisfied  until its split skin and tasted blood

1646,  Friday,  24  7. 15

1612,  Saturday,  25  7. 15

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5O49Wwsbgdw

hello

Tull

Aqualung

                                                                                                                                            

he  anyone  would be at a loss if they attempted to affix any other I D to him

he lifted up his eyes glimpsing forward from his Algren  so not to walk through anyone

                                                                                     

doing so he saw this ungainly wraith walking directly towards him
staring back at him from the diminishing sidewalk between them
 

his black eyes were set deep in his skull

peering from anguished hollows

he was a stark man   unsettling

knotted tight at his forehead he wore a marl-colored bandanna

it held his greasy hair up out of his sunburnt face and crosshatched eyebrows  

under his wanton eyes  sharp cheeks  pocked with blackheads and many pustules   which also rode the drawn gauntness at either side of his sucked-in broken-tooth face

uneven whiskers ran under his broke hawkish nose  and thickened at his pointy chin

it was impossible he might ever have been an attractive man

he wore a military khaki jacket  it was soiled and hung off his rail-thin body as if off a wire hanger

liver-spotted ulcerated hands hung limp and near-lifeless out of its sleeves

his filthy pants   he had no idea what color they were originally   bagged at his knees and ridiculed what he dare call shoes  bits of cracked and broken leather held together with black electricians tape and silver straps of duct tape

and even as he returned to read his book   these  details  reappeared to him seamlessly  held fast in a raw snapshot that roiled madly in his astonished eyes

reading  he could feel the old mans glare scald the top of his head  taking his measure  as it were  with laserish intensity and circumspect

when the distance he determined between them had eroded and he readied to pass inside him  to his wizened left  leaving him the riot of street traffic  he again lifted his eyes to the old mans as he intended

Good morning  he said to the gentleman  boldly taking in his lackluster blackblue eyes with his own  unashamed

Hello

the old man replied

they passed

he couldnt quite understand  digest  or identify the timbre in the old mans somber hello

it seemed a hello 

as if the old man wasnt sure he would understand English

a hopeful hello

then it seemed a haunted hello  as if the old man wasnt flesh and blood  but something else  that the old man didnt pass him  but passed a phantom in his imagination

a fearful hello

 

a dont-hurt-me hello

a haunting echo of a hello   a hello      hello           that was never returned

he walked on nearly the entire block looking at a sudden page of senseless hieroglyphs

his mind beckoning him  bitching him with every footfall to stop walking and turn and look to see if he really passed anyone

he turned 
the old mans disheveled form hobbled and staggered in the long blue distance

inside his throat there croaked a hello that he refused to emit

he tried hard not say hello
otherwise trying to encourage or invoke a goodness  for the day  
Good morning

Good afternoon

Good evening

hello  had never inspired him

but then he never heard a hello  like the old mans hello

he strangled it in his throat  hello  and hawked it out onto the ground with a companion of green snot and yellowish phlegm

he spat out Aqualung

morning,  Day-Between-two-Ts,  22  7. 15

0034,  Friday,  24  7. 15