What hits you in a way that doesn’t catch my interest as we walk together?
by Mark William Darus
May you and your higher power hear the words of this song as you read my tiny offering. Read the God line in any respect in your lives.
Don't take it personally, okay?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esXTFQzvXJI
Why do some of us slow down as our eyes catch the swirl of reds and blues flashing on the other side of a freeway, causing us to slow and see the possible carnage of blood on the highway? Perhaps a mangled body, bloodied face down on an auto’s hood, caught at the hip by shattered windshield, catches our fancy. Others seek the frantic elements of bodies running about to save someone else with their energy. Occasionally, there are a few that just want to get somewhere and are tired with another Gawkers block on the road.
You are standing near a towns square during a warm summer eve. It’s about an hour and half before sunset. Birds quickly stop chirping as squirrels madly dart toward trees . Heads snap in all directions as sounds become frightening echoes banking off many a stone structure.
In the towns center, a polka band plays Frankie Yankovic’s Beer Barrel Polka, it’s lead accordion player rocking about like a heavy metal god. People are dancing, most so inebriated they think this song is the Turkey Dance.
An ambulance sirens cut this eve in half though few notice. Apparently someone is beyond drunk. A trashed, highly overweight man fell on the mayors third cousin. Granted, she of stout form and holding 365 pounds on her own, got leveled by the town drunk with his 250 pounds as he passed out.
“My lord! He crushed her!”
“I’b thunk he jus wan-ted a Queen sized to zretech onn.”
“Please tell me your camera is rolling!”
“FLAT, LIKE A PANCAKE, MOMMA!”
“That bitch had it coming! Is she dead?”
“Dude, why the fuck is the mayor smiling?”
“I did tell her it was not just a yeast infection.”
Towns process what they do in their own way.
Yet there were about twenty five townsfolk that saw a tiny woman take a beating from some cowboy hat wearing idiot in northern Ohio.
She yelled, cried, and needless to say, screamed her fucking head off.
In Ohio, all the screaming a female can do only means getting the one beating the shit out of her a bigger audience. Blood from her chopped lips flies about,, landing on storefront windows, pavement and passerby as they lick it from their face or passionately kiss one another.
She attempts to stand, rising to her knees before her husband, he spirals with pivoting left foot and plants his right heel to her forehead.
Pain rising fully, tendons hitting hard bone. “That hurt, slut!” His Achilles hit her solidly and he dropped to the memory embossed brick pavement: "in the loving memory of Irving. You bred such good pigs. My Loving wife, sorry, yourbest friend did me better. and so forth," fools payed to have cut into Beldon Brick.
Shaking off his tumble, standing fast, he aims his fists at her.
“She mustta done som’thin to git this.”
“Christ, someone needs to stop him!”
“Y’uh, I saw her by Johnny’s Feed last wee’kund. I seen her face.”
“Why’s the ambulance over there?”
“I guess calling a cop would be pointless here, honey. Time to bolt!”
“Oh! Fuck this!”
A single gunshot rings out, worthy of Oswald, and kills the abuser as the sounds of Frankie play on and the whiffs of elephant ears getting cooked fill the air. Children laugh about in the background as gasps hit this near place where ones murder is a delight to see.
In my opinion, the best line of this night went to the moron that asked if the mayors third cousin would be alright.
What do you see when you see?
Is that such a hard question to ask? What do you see as life passes before you?
Look at it this way: How many seasons can you experience before you die? Perhaps eighty, more often less, and what do you take into memory to pass to others? If you’re lucky, out of the 70 or 80 years you have to share, how many really good Christmas’, Pass Over’s can you recall?
I see this land I walk as some extremely disturbing place to be. Problem is, to me it is not disturbing at all. I see drug dealers and hookers all the time and I find their conversations quite interesting with twists you just can’t get from the more pathological in our society.
A few weeks ago I did the Donate-For-Cash plasma thing. Got fifty for my hour of time for my first visit. Know this: This is the first time I donated anything and had an IV connected to me. I hate needles: period! I wasn’t freaking out though. I was in ‘recorder-mode’ and did so.
“Uh, let me get my supervisor,” stating and bustling away from me.
Tall, slinking mid-length hair brunette looks down at me. “You asked for a supervisor?”
“Nope. I did ask questions though.”
“You free at 6PM?”
“You buying?”
\
“depends. What’s your thoughts on Genetic links in homosexuals versus nature?”
I gave her an answer and she stuck my right arm. Clean, painless stick like none I have ever known from tetanus shots and blood work over my decades.
“You’re a real vampire, aren’t you?” I asked.
“Meet me at six, and you’ll see.”
“okay, but do you like bacon?”
Laying flat on a mirrored bed.
I asked aloud, fighting my bodies wanting to faint dead away, I bit my lip hard and asked “So, what brings you all here?” I cannot say I hate the taste of my blood in my mouth. Truthfully, I did not mind the blood of women that ran their cycles when they were with me.
When they began to answer, I fully realized what landed in my attentions-mesh and the shit passing away like piss to a colostomy bag.
Questioning those that said: “my momma’s dying.” My asking them how: Small cell cancer? Remarkably many said their moms had kicked several years ago. Wow, cool, got them held by the arms on couches! Rock with me Freud!
Let’s speak clearly here. Did I want fifty bucks for 60 minutes? Yep. Was it my intention to talk to others laying flat and vulnerable? Absolutely! Was this a chance to dig into the minds of others? Oh yeah!
“Sorry to hear that, how’d she die?” I asked emotionlessly.
“Sh’ got trumphed by Amtrak, sucka!”
“she was weak, you see. Her man killed her.”
“I really don’t care how she kicked. The whores around here will give me a discount on a blow job!”
When my sixty minutes concluded.
I strolled to the employee smoking area and hawked a few lougies with them. I smiled as my mind thought this like some odd communion of the strange.
Wearing various forms of acceptable clothing: nursing prints of flowers, country-western themes and clouds and crucifixes, I had to ask: “ So, does cotton and polyester really prevent the connection from infected blood?” Like roaches fleeing when a light gets turned on, they split quickly.
So, what falls into your strainer?
What hits you and makes you think?
What makes YOU human?
At what point do you cut yourself from the norm?
Mark William Darus 10162016
