Let's Try This Again: Sam Hill Isn't a Bad Person, (He Just Gets a Bad Rap)

Let's try this again. Once more Blogger has eliminated a long drawn out blog post from the page it had appeared. I don't understand it, I won't attempt at understanding it. I just hope that the issue does not continue to burden the poor bloggers trudging this site. It's difficult to remember exactly how I put it before, but I'll try to remember the best that I can. From the 27th of April, 2012 Just what in the hell is going on here? There is dust on the floor and the shelves and tiny footprints where someone might have passed through but certainty of this cannot be told. Just what the hell went on in here? I've returned to this blog after maybe more than a month of absence. I feel inclined to let those of you who read this blog know what has been going on. I think I may have to list these events to make the form more comforting to the readers eyes. 1. Went to Seattle. Great place. But the place is notoriously cold and rainy. And It lives up to it's notoriety. Great record stores and even better bars. Highly recommend the Unicorn for good music and great atmosphere. They make the place up to be something like a Carnival experienced by even the most seasoned LSD veteran's knee deep in a case of the fear. If you're looking to treat your lady as I did, try Oddfellows. Amazing food and our drinks were free because nobody contacted us for the first five minutes we were there. No big deal to me but I'm not one to turn down free drinks. I did the touristy stuff, the Space Needle, the Music Experience Museum or whatever they call it. A friend of mine who lived across the bay came over to take the Underground Tour. Apparently modern day Seattle is built on a smaller city of Seattle that was prone to flooding. We took the "Underworld Tour" which is the same tour they have during the day save they let you drink and tell dirty jokes about prostitutes and feces. My friend and I drank a pitcher and a half before the tour however, which turn what should have been a fun and educational tour into a search for a dark corner to piss. As soon as the tour guide led us back to the surface world, my friend and I were able to relieve ourselves on a couple of doorways in an innocuous alleyway. 2. So that was my vacation. Five days in Seattle. I came back to work to some unsettling news however. The store I work at is closing. Not that the company is going out of business itself, though I could speculate otherwise. On a Saturday morning, we were gathered in a meeting to discuss what was called an important transformation. Now that I think about it, isn't that fucked up? Calling it that? Anyways, we were told that the store was closing and we would be provided a severance package if we did not want to work for the company any longer. Provided we stay on until the store closes on May 12th. I don't want to work for this company anymore. I have a pretty promising opportunity to work for another company who pays very, very well. So I am worried, but not it's not as though I've been left out on the streets. They will continue paying me after May 12th until June 12th. 3. I wasn't going to mention this last part. As it may reflect poorly on the other person involved. But I think my integrity as a writer may depend on relaying the events as they unfolded that night. As long as this person shall remain nameless, I think I may retain some of that integrity. What began as a dispute of differences quickly escalated that night into screaming, pushing and shoving. As this writer began to wind down after the fight had taken just about all he had out of him, he was struck a few times in the side with a broom. Trudging back to the place he had left his keys, he witnessed the abuse of his automobile. It was almost surreal, now that I think of it. I can't believe any of it actually went down the way it did. Irrationality can be a frightening thing I think. After this, I decided to take a new stab at independence. No man is an island as today I received charity I swore the day after this ordeal I wouldn't take again. 4. I finished my novel. It is still in the editing phase. I have unfortunately not conjured the same motivation in editing as I did in writing the damn thing. Please be patient for the few of you who may be wanting to read it. I have done much research into local publishing companies around the city and a few independent publishers beyond the state. One day soon you may own your copy of "A Meth Addict Who Has Stolen Poetry and Will Not Bring It Back". But for now, you'll just have to make up your own stories.

A Scene from a Restaurant Downtown

A coat hangs on some stained mahogany rack in the corner of the room.
A Stetson pork pie hat hangs from the tip of the coat and drips tonight's bad dreams all over the yellow tile floor.
A bus boy with itchy hands and heavy eyes hangs his head and smiles and says in just another hour he'll be on his way.
He hangs a mop in a strainer and watches it mash wet ropes until all those bad dreams spill out into the murky water below.
And all types of memories hang in the air around this place.

Bought On A Road

This is what started as a free-verse poem that became a sort of epic. It's cut into parts, though the parts do not need to be read in any specific order.


Bought On a Road

I.
Giants walking, fiends talking hyphenated spells on wretched little ears.
I borrowed these flowers for you.
We all want to be discovered by the right people.
I want to be discovered.
This vanishing act is getting old.

Sunday I wrote a poem for our dead fathers.
We have these ghosts around us.
They shriek and moan and they tell us they didn't have to tell us it doesn't happen this way.
Without these verses the forest is just wood and chlorophyll.

Undying rest, spare my love this awful burden.
She knows not of the whispering you and I do and with a binding kiss such as this we will never grow old. We will never believe in another single thing.
It will be this and only this that makes us and the world and nothing in between.

But I cannot refer you to a clown who shares his shoes with a politician.
I cannot lie to you anymore.
It will be a hard, hard rain that falls on our heads.
Yours and mine.
Black is white and color is a mystery onto us again.
We won't worry ourselves with such sensibilities.
Instead, we've only this tangerine.
Will it last us all night?
Will the candle last us dear?
Don't tell me you love me again.
Our breathes must be still.
I have only the one match and you still have your corduroy dress to mend.

So did you see that great white beast rolling down the highway in the dead of night?
His knuckles as white as the headlights that lead him to that terrible place.
Where the ghosts leapt up from their chairs and shouted, "What the fuck are you doing here!?"
You and I aren't welcome here.
Their faces twist and contort like some awful circus side show.
We run out to the desert where the wind cuts our face and the sky is a cracked painting.
Your great-grandmother hands me a peach and asks me to recite your name in Arabic.
Again and again she says until my mouth is filled with dirt and Indians build fires on it.
They dance around.
Drums are played loudly and children laugh uncontrollably.
Coyotes smoke peyote and witches brew tea of Egypt.
And there, in the center of their madness is my father.
He is wearing purple stones around his neck and asks you to recite my name in the old language.
You open your mouth but the guttural sounds of the old language cannot be said by such a beautiful tongue.
He says, “Speak!"

II.
Now is my own discontent,
Where from behind panes of glass I am mocked,
As a stowaway on my own vessel.
I christened her in the beginning of this journey but I am losing control.
Again and again I am reminded that I must quit this life of the imaginary.
Return to my home in Glastonbury and be quick among the moors.
Dance, Prance, be quick along the moors, boy.

We die tonight.
I hope we die tonight.
With, Without this club of heroes.
Always arguing,
They laugh,
Always at each other’s throats.
Like wolves.
They feed on the weakness of our great uncles and our granddaughters.
It is nothing I cannot worship on my own.
What we were asking for were answers.
What you offer does not console us.

Someday you and I will cry,
A dehumanizing cry.
A tirade for tyranny.
A fulmination at fascism.
Our gums will bleed.
Our skin will crawl,
Up your walls.

I wrote you a letter on a leaf of paper.
How elegant it was, the way the ink formed letters,
Then syllables, then words.
It was my intention to fold this letter into a boat.
A small paper boat.
I could sail in the gutters, along the street.
The rain water could carry me to the heel of your boots.
There, I could dock my vessel,
And be taken up in your empty china hands.

III.
You and I,
We play these games,
Running around in Circles,
Until we are sick.
And we die.

And if you die,
You’ll worry me sick.
Spinning on the lawn, in circles.
Playing your games.
Wouldn’t I?

IV.
Hey Alan, You look like a Tuesday, you sure that tie ain’t on too tight?
Hey Alan, Hey man.
Hey Alan, You look exhausted way up there.
Hey Alan, Hey, Hey man,
Hey Alan, You know, we all miss ya down here at the pool hall.
Even Frank admits he misses ya.
And you know how hard it is for him to say that.
Hey Alan, Hey man,
Hey Alan, ya know Margery cut some Guido punk the other night at the pool hall.
They locked her up for a night but you know Frank and the boys bailed her out.
Hey Alan, Hey man,
Frank’s boy Tommy had a concussion at the game last Saturday.
They say he might not make it through the night.

On/Off

"When I was five
I went fishing with my family.
My dad caught a turtle.
My mom caught a snapper.
My brother caught a crab.
I caught a whale.

That night we ate crab.
The next night we ate turtle.
The next night we ate snapper.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale.
The next night we ate whale..."
Tao Lin

I got talent. I got a taste. My story "Thursday" was published in the University literary journal. I guess that gave me permission to go wild. I was looking down a road that could have ended me in my mother's position. I can't keep going on like that. There's something I need to be working on. I haven't had a drink in five days. What started as a pact has now become closer to an endurance contest. The smell sickens me. I think of that feeling in the back of my brain and the pit of my stomach turns. Whatever.

Yes, I was published in my University's literary journal. Which means... something. It means an audience of six credited editors found a story I wrote one morning as practice (a Thursday morning) worth putting in their simple typo riddled journal. But I appreciate it. It gave me the initiative to submit to other journals.

Last night I had a dream my significant other was unfaithful. I wasn't angry. At first. It was Halloween. I dressed as a vampire at a Church function. I thought this was clever. When she told me I remember I thought, "She buys me everything, why shouldn't she be allowed to see other men?" I'm smiling. I'm still dressed as a vampire when we lay on a hotel bed and I ask why. I got angry but a black man told me not to argue. He told me she was so good to me I had nothing to complain about. He went downstairs below our hotel room to a room filled with water where he was attached to a machine. He said, "I can hear everything down here." Fuck.

Death.

Me? I prefer to drink until I feel that irreversible feeling that my head is about to fall off. I dream of a day this feeling goes away.

As for my father. I hate to think this is where I get out all my demons. I always think about how he never met any of the women I've dated. For all he knew I could have grown up a fruit. Or someone of the homosexual persuasion. I'm an atheist. I believe that when someone dies, it is a tragic thing. What's worse, is it becomes more tragic to an atheist. The death of a person is also a death of a life, a legacy, a story. So my father could never see the women I've dated. He will never see the children I bear. He will never see the beginning of their stories. So I think that is tragic. What is saddest is most beautiful. I know a girl. Her father died in a hospital about a mile from here. In the waiting room, she held his glasses in her hand. She cries now because she could never give them to him. I tell her this is beautiful but she doesn't understand me. I don't even understand anymore. Maybe this life isn't beautiful after all. Maybe it just begins, and it ends. Sometimes abruptly, sometimes late. My great grandmother died in her nineties. Far after her siblings had died, I remember her saying,

Sometimes I think God has forgotten about me.

Something That Happened Tonight

I don't know what happened.

My Mother has been going through a trunk full of family records. Pictures and letters mostly. I read a note written down on fragile yellow paper from my father to my mother while undergoing his treatments. His handwriting was terrible.

"I hope you can read this because I am very nervous."

He asked how I was. He said I was growing like a weed. It's hard to imagine my father saying that. I don't remember his mannerisms. Or his voice.

I put the note back where I found it and decided to investigate pictures. Pictures of Eric, pictures of Aaron, Christopher, Ashley. Some of them brought me back just as memories do. I came across a picture of my father holding Eric. It moved me. I moved on to a picture of our first dog Penny, a Black Labrador. Like my father, she seems like a memory from an entirely different life. Sometimes it doesn't even seem like my life. Like a movie I saw one afternoon in my old room, at my old house. A dead father, a dead black dog.

These things moved me so much. I had to write something down. A poem. In my head the words kept repeating: a dead father, a dead black dog.

I sat down and opened up my laptop but the words stopped there. How can that happen? How can something move me that much I can't put it into words? Maybe words can be said but they could never resemble any decent articulation. A dead father, a dead black dog. A dead father, a dead black dog.

Eleven.

I'm sitting here. I'm watching Lynch's Mulholland Dr. with my younger brother and I don't think he quite understands it. Besides this, I'm aimlessly wandering the internet. I have an interest. Something I want to read about, but I don't know what it is and have no idea where I'm going to find it. I stopped a moment ago when I read an article called "The Three Traits of a Writer..." by this idiot, K.M Weiland.

Weiland begins her list of the most important of her three traits every writer must have with talent. Talent is an abstract concept. What one person views as talent is not what another may view as talent.

...I'm attacking an article posted on the internet. What am I eleven?