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Headin' off to bed, LJ...
Jun. 15th, 2009 12:54 am
"Someday we'll find it/the rainbow connection/ the lovers, the dreamers and meeee...."
Jun. 15th, 2009
"Someday we'll find it/the rainbow connection/ the lovers, the dreamers and meeee...."
Phantom Key
Jun. 15th, 2009 08:16 pm06/06/09 -Exile Day 3, Saturday Night*:
Locked out of sanctuary. The roomies haven't made me a key yet. An hour and counting sitting on the front steps to Vee’s with a knee-high stone statue of Saint Francis for company. I have to tell you, he’s not much of a conversationalist. We sit there silently mostly. Me smoking cigarettes and him frozen in modest prayer, most likely contemplating the crackle of not-too-distant gunfire down Campbellton Road a few minutes ago. Later, as in much, the sirens will follow, arriving too slow to do anyone any good. Behind us, in the darkened house, Smokey starts clawing at the window frantically. She wails at me in a series of chirps that falls on an evolutionary scale between miniature dinosaur and a large flightless bird that’s been sucking helium all day.
“Well then let me in!” I yell back at her.
The scratching stops and she jumps from the ledge of the window to the top of the frame. Perching herself against the glass to watch me with naked disdain across her pitch black pinched face.
I throw up my hands with a shrug of mock exasperation and let out a stage sigh you could hear clear down the other end of the block. I turn to Saint Chatty on my right.
“So, Frank… I mean you don’t mind if I call you ‘Frank’, right?”
He offers no opinion one way or the other on the subject.
“Cool. Anyway, we might be stuck here for awhile and I was wondering if you wouldn’t happen to have any cards under that robe of yours, would ya?”
Frank plays it cool, poker faced and mute.
“Didn’t think so.”
We sit there in awkward silence. Lightning bugs graze across the shadowed lawns aimlessly, it’s like watching drunken green stars try unsuccessfully to form into haphazard constellations of whose shape none can agree on.
I check the time off my phone. Seven minutes since I last checked.
“You know it’s funny, Frank” I say in a manner that implies no one’s going to laugh, “but I keep looking for the keys to my apartment. I’ll be on the train or just walking around and I’ll stop in a sudden panic to pat myself down for them. Of course a moment later I’ll remember that I don’t have any keys anymore. That and a door to fit them in, I guess. But then a few hours later I’ll stop and start digging through my pockets nervously all over again.”
Frank watches the ember of a lightning bug float out of the bushes and vanish into the white glare of the neighbors carport security light.
“Same thing when I’m riding MARTA. I keep getting off at the wrong stop. My old stop that is, without even thinking about it. There I am reading my novel and suddenly I’ll realize that I’ve gotten off the southbound and have boarded the east train towards Little Five. I won’t even notice until I catch myself watching the skyline roll by out the window and realize I'm looking at it from the wrong angle.”
I stamp out my smoke and light a fresh one. I have to piss something fierce and debating sneaking into the backyard to do so.
“I don’t know. It’s like my life’s been amputated or something and a part of me keeps forgetting to remember it’s not there anymore. It's like I got a... I dunno...…” I hold up nothing between my thumb and forefinger and inspect it thoroughly in the dark, “… a phantom key. That’s what I have. Seriously. I keep thinking at some point I’m going to find it tucked away on me somehow and when I do I’ll finally be able to go back home.”
I stand up. Stretch. Yawn. Walk up the driveway and back down it. I soak in a moon just a slither off full climbing through the tree branches to peek over the roof.
“But it’s not there anymore, is it Frank? Home that is.”
Frank clutches a cross and a bible to his chest. They hold the only answers he’s got for me right now.
Another burst of gunfire goes off with a pop-pop (pause) pop-pop-pop-pop. Sharp squeal of tires and cars honking. My first Saturday in Southside. Murder Olympics 24-7 and aggrononymous violence all around.
“Sure you ain’t got no cards on you, Frank?” I laugh, checking the time again. Four minutes since last check-in. It’s gonna be a long night, with nothing to do but listen to the distant sins of man grow closer with only the silence of a saint for company.
*-Wrote this during my first Saturday Night here in West End
Locked out of sanctuary. The roomies haven't made me a key yet. An hour and counting sitting on the front steps to Vee’s with a knee-high stone statue of Saint Francis for company. I have to tell you, he’s not much of a conversationalist. We sit there silently mostly. Me smoking cigarettes and him frozen in modest prayer, most likely contemplating the crackle of not-too-distant gunfire down Campbellton Road a few minutes ago. Later, as in much, the sirens will follow, arriving too slow to do anyone any good. Behind us, in the darkened house, Smokey starts clawing at the window frantically. She wails at me in a series of chirps that falls on an evolutionary scale between miniature dinosaur and a large flightless bird that’s been sucking helium all day.
“Well then let me in!” I yell back at her.
The scratching stops and she jumps from the ledge of the window to the top of the frame. Perching herself against the glass to watch me with naked disdain across her pitch black pinched face.
I throw up my hands with a shrug of mock exasperation and let out a stage sigh you could hear clear down the other end of the block. I turn to Saint Chatty on my right.
“So, Frank… I mean you don’t mind if I call you ‘Frank’, right?”
He offers no opinion one way or the other on the subject.
“Cool. Anyway, we might be stuck here for awhile and I was wondering if you wouldn’t happen to have any cards under that robe of yours, would ya?”
Frank plays it cool, poker faced and mute.
“Didn’t think so.”
We sit there in awkward silence. Lightning bugs graze across the shadowed lawns aimlessly, it’s like watching drunken green stars try unsuccessfully to form into haphazard constellations of whose shape none can agree on.
I check the time off my phone. Seven minutes since I last checked.
“You know it’s funny, Frank” I say in a manner that implies no one’s going to laugh, “but I keep looking for the keys to my apartment. I’ll be on the train or just walking around and I’ll stop in a sudden panic to pat myself down for them. Of course a moment later I’ll remember that I don’t have any keys anymore. That and a door to fit them in, I guess. But then a few hours later I’ll stop and start digging through my pockets nervously all over again.”
Frank watches the ember of a lightning bug float out of the bushes and vanish into the white glare of the neighbors carport security light.
“Same thing when I’m riding MARTA. I keep getting off at the wrong stop. My old stop that is, without even thinking about it. There I am reading my novel and suddenly I’ll realize that I’ve gotten off the southbound and have boarded the east train towards Little Five. I won’t even notice until I catch myself watching the skyline roll by out the window and realize I'm looking at it from the wrong angle.”
I stamp out my smoke and light a fresh one. I have to piss something fierce and debating sneaking into the backyard to do so.
“I don’t know. It’s like my life’s been amputated or something and a part of me keeps forgetting to remember it’s not there anymore. It's like I got a... I dunno...…” I hold up nothing between my thumb and forefinger and inspect it thoroughly in the dark, “… a phantom key. That’s what I have. Seriously. I keep thinking at some point I’m going to find it tucked away on me somehow and when I do I’ll finally be able to go back home.”
I stand up. Stretch. Yawn. Walk up the driveway and back down it. I soak in a moon just a slither off full climbing through the tree branches to peek over the roof.
“But it’s not there anymore, is it Frank? Home that is.”
Frank clutches a cross and a bible to his chest. They hold the only answers he’s got for me right now.
Another burst of gunfire goes off with a pop-pop (pause) pop-pop-pop-pop. Sharp squeal of tires and cars honking. My first Saturday in Southside. Murder Olympics 24-7 and aggrononymous violence all around.
“Sure you ain’t got no cards on you, Frank?” I laugh, checking the time again. Four minutes since last check-in. It’s gonna be a long night, with nothing to do but listen to the distant sins of man grow closer with only the silence of a saint for company.
*-Wrote this during my first Saturday Night here in West End
