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Armed to the Teeth

Armed to the teeth. Big deal. Booby traps set for the One who never comes. The words you speak to my face are just background noise. It is the same thing as a thousand yard Stare when your eyes don't focus from lack of sleep. Swinging a wood t-ball bat through thin air with high-pitched grunts. No wonder; I gave up on them years ago. Even when you can touch them, even when they are warm, even when you smell the old food breath, they are not real. You cannot make an investment of faith in them. Just distractions, that's what they are. Phantom targets. Mustn't get distracted. This is real. This is what is real. I am real, they are not. My machete slices through clean and all you do is maintain eye contact with me. I aim, I fire, and my bullets smash out holes in the wall right behind you. Late at night, my house is being probed. The claymore wires are tensed and anxious. I know it, I just know it's out there. Waiting for my eyes to close, waiting for my thoughts to drift, waiting for me to lose focus, lose my edge, all in a split second and they'll know just as it happens and that is exactly the moment to strike and with a slow motion rising light the gleam of metal will strike me down. I hear you, fucker. I know just how that doorknob rattles, no matter how slow and careful you turn it. fuck yeah! come on! I got a 6 D-cell Maglite in my hand right here and I left the batteries out so I can swing it faster. I am just around the corner. That shadow just moved didn't it. Yeah it did. This is it. I got you fucker. This ain't yer lucky night. I heard that, the sound of carpet being compressed. I breathe with my mouth wide open. No noise. I can hear my heart beating. Can you hear it, it seems loud. I got courage because I got the drop on you tonight. I wait. I wait until I am absolutely certain it has been dead quiet for long enough. Evaporated into thin air. I can sleep tonight with a strong slow heartbeat underneath my ribcage. I wish more blood would come out. Of them and me. These intruders in my life, walking nonchalantly through spider webs, standing up in front of the screen the video screen of life, shouting over the music. Inappropriate ad nauseum. Their strange places and dimensions. Like the lighting is all wrong for all of them. What is with the sun today. Like I am always looking at their bad side. I am a big fan of the human spirit until I find it in no one. It feels like reaching in your pocket and $20 is missing. It is a burn and I lash out and miss. They swing back and it feels like a breeze crossing my face and it almost feels good and that's the hook, that is the gimmick, that is the trick. No way not me not this time. It is the call of the wild. A hundred machine gun pistons slamming flat rat-a-tat-tat against the metal plate in my head. Adrenalin reserves open full flush into the bloodstream and J. Christ what is about to happen? The walls start to smear. Like a whore's legs, my pupils open wide and running into the dark I go hollering where no one can hear me, terrified and empowered, my head filled with the image of you standing behind a kaleidoscope glass, watching you move and shimmer multicolored and crinking and jagling and tiny bits of stars popping all over you. I hear so much noise that I know better to keep my mouth shut. Later, sitting on the bed in dull fascination with the thoughts that cover the carpet, the wisps of ideas that curl under my cuticles. Their moth faces and their moth-worn faces. I jag with a static charge. I'm gonna scoop my hand under this highway and lift it dangling limp like some forgotten crusted ribbon. And the blood will waterfall over my lower teeth, the drops hitting the ground with silent frozen magnetic explosions. I will use the ribbon to slash the tops off of dead volcanoes, dip my hand inside and come out with a Reaper's hand, my hand squeaking into a balled bone fist and the sound will be so loud that they become nauseous in Iceland, loud enough to make the Vietnamese say What the Fuck and their stone-faced gods will crown their foreheads up through the black jungle dirt. And with white hot diamonds in my eyes, with my ground-pounding fist shaking the birds out of the night air in waves of thunder, with my X-ray blue face howling to the stars I'll know that
I
just
Can't
Lose.
And the leaping desire to live everything right now is just this very moment right now. You get up and here is outside the window is a wet street with streetlights shining off of it. My arms covered with the strands and juices in the ambient air and nothing to show for it. Nothing to show for the slashing and pounding and toil. Devil's war drums are beating loud, inexorably and underneath REM-twitching eyelids my eyes flicker to life and they open to see the flashing dark lights on the ceiling, the walls and in my brain and my heart pounds aback its own threat, suspended over sweat-drenched sheets. White knuckles on the rope up high with a thousand samurai below, waiting. They have the discipline that lasts, the patience that outlasts. I'm waiting, too. To slip. How will it happen and when. The dreadful certainty that it will happen and I will be the cause. Skewered and sliced to ribbons. How will the first hack feel. A legion of chanting monks nearby bellowing in low monotone, urging me to let go without so much as a pronounced word. Half empty. Dolphins break the surface to arc for air and spew blood from their blowholes, blue skin ripped and bitten. You see my eyes burieddeep in the rings and as I strobe in and out of sight, crossing the street. People who are different are mostly ignored. You'll see me practicing karate at the off-ramp by the highway. You can see me coming: He don't walk right, he don't look right. Put together, put it together. You can see the skin cracks, you can see the lumps under the skin, you can hear the gristle of ill-fitting parts. You will hear an electric voice that bounces off an iron plate: I-am-lonely-please-hug-me. At the shoreline I hold my body at attention while my eyes study the crystal shimmer of the tidal wave cresting and ready to roll. And with a smile of tarnished cheer and with cool relief gurgling through the pipes and sweating off in big, fat drops, shame is barking and jumping and tugging at the leash gripped at my side. My Life- my one and only chance at anything. It's my responsibility. Though all of it is meaningless, I stick out my chin. The rest of me has stuck it out for long enough. Who talked me into that one. What voice did I listen to. Fuck me. The day to day has been meaningless; the long haul has been meaningless, my brain on fire, the quarrels I fought and won, fought and lost, the bills I paid, the rent I paid, the good times and celebration, the hard times and survival as reward, this dark snowstorm before me, the low-hanging branches at night, the pricker bushes in the day, those who deliberately stood still so I would have to go around, the math problems and the mood swings, all this swirling clutter, your words and the resultant cold feeling in my chest. The things I find myself doing that will certainly be regarded on my death bed as having been an utter and complete waste of time, precious time, on my death bed with years behind me and minutes before me and nothing, nothing can be done, not anymore. To acknowledge that before me is this and behind me there is nothing to show. What is a memory and prove it. There is no life there. Air has swirled in to replace that I have occupied. And it takes guts to admit it and that too, means nothing and with my arms unshielded and enforced to my sides and with my chin out I will face it. Just this once. Just this once, I'm up for it. And yet in the face of all this roaring Glory my
heart
again
sinks.

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