Morning Prayer

MORNING PRAYER:

‘I don’t want to write anymore!’ I said pounding my fists into the ground, scratching my fingernails into the cement like dirt. ‘I just need to get to China’. I punched the yard and pushed the empty liquor bottles away from me and fell to my knees, bent over, praying to the east. Clawing my way to freedom.

‘There are easier ways…’ he said with the confidence of a fact we all should know. ‘Sure’, there was easier ways, but I couldn’t think like that. The earth was right in front of me, below me, under my nails, but I didn’t seem to make a mark. I ripped at the ground and only managed to scratch it like a kitten does an arm. ‘Nowhere to go but down’, I repeated to myself, over and over again. At first it was a whisper only heard in my head, but now, I could hear myself out loud. I was shouting, screaming it in fact, Over and over again.

I couldn’t take it anymore (For real this time). We had all been busy in our own ways. we worked, we collected aliments or diseases, some bumps and breaks, a bit government assistance, occasionally by the grace of God and the continued help of loved ones. Anything to make it through this coma called life. But I was waking up and the medication was wearing off. I been tasting tainted air for a few months now. Walked out into a world, broken, and believing I earned every rejection, rough time, and bad break I got. I stopped to catch my breathe. The universe sat still, remaining indifferent. We embrace yet ignore irrationality. we create new meanings for the words, in other worlds but can’t reshape ourselves. We have already been carved in stone. I kept digging.

‘Come inside and have a piece of cake…. Or a cup of coffee’. His monotone temperament invited me. ‘I hate coffee!’, it wasn’t true, although I preferred tea, but was in no mood for anything that didn’t have alcohol in it, or poison.

My fingers had broken the skin of the concrete, looking like an old piece of chalk was used to draw mountains. The tears weren’t big enough or wet enough to soften below and I didn’t have enough to make it into mud. My white dress shirt was turning dust to dirt and abstract with blood. I had finally made a dent. A scoop of ice cream removed from he ground. My numb fingertips finally felt something other than soft earth. I felt buried treasure. I closed one eye and removed my hand from the hole. A tightly rolled brown bag sack lunch sat in the hole, wrinkled like an old man’s hand. I picked up the bag, not caring what advice or assistance was hidden inside. I picked it up, I shook the dirt free of it and fired it back at the voice over my shoulder, hitting him in the crotch. ‘Leave me alone!’ I spit thru my teeth. I rolled back down on my butt and stared at the bloody hole.

I sat there, ugly, and dirty. I couldn’t stand it anymore. A lifetime of punching myself in the face. Of banging my head aimlessly, of hurrying in line just to wait. Even in death there will be no freedom. Either streets of gold or the farms of shit. Well, I’m allergic to gold and I hate walking in circles waiting to be slaughtered (although I have more experience contemplating the last one), and if this is all a dream, fine, but I better not wake up sitting in traffic or next to someone who hates what we have both become. Even if I’m a glitch in a computer program, ok, fine, sure, why not…plug me in. But the screen better not freeze up on me just as I’m about to get to the next level!

‘I got to get out of here!’….’well that isn’t the way.’ I heard him walking closer, but was no longer listening ‘blah, blah, blah’ he yelled in my ears from behind me. I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t laugh, I could only go back to tearing at the ground until I was tired, or dead or had made it to China. No breaks, no meals, no matter what! ‘Better men then I have died doing much stupider things, chasing more worthless dreams!’ I knew it was true but with each drop of blood I smeared, and tear left on the ground I knew it didn’t mean a thing. This was my worthless dream. As the moon floated barley above the mountains behind me, bright like a streetlamp, I fought myself and kept trying to go deeper. X marks the spot.

Looking up to see the sky the color of rubbish. I told the hairy faced man, ‘Men with mustaches should not (be allowed to) have sex.’ He laughed and tried to hand me the paper bag back to me. I ignored him and concentrated on my tunnel. He must have got tired because he dropped the beg and head back inside. ‘Good luck’ he said, defeated.

‘You really shouldn’t drink anymore!’ yelled an ugly voice/head from the bathroom window. I had heard that voice criticize me thru every step I took since we met, every meal I ate and every fake evening we spent in each other’s arms. 'I love you so much more when you’re not here' the voice shot at me. Her words just charged me like thunder to a kite. I was now breathing like I was in a marathon, sweating stink all down me. With no end in sight, I thought like a robot. I closed my eyes and felt the blood mix with the dirt, sticking to my hands to make some weird suave that would used by a witch. I machined my way nowhere, over and over again.

‘For what it’s worth, I hope you make it’, the voice yelled out the window, sang as a joke before the small box was closed and the curtain pulled/yanked shut. ‘Let me die in peace!’ I begged the body behind me…. ‘I won’t make it to China, but maybe I’ll make to hell! Can’t you let me try!!’ Sadness seemed to be the only sound she could share with me. maybe she was right. I open back up my eyes expecting only to see a baby ditch filled with bloody stumps at the end of my arms. But the whole world was suddenly bright. No more moon, just a soft sun standing tall in the sky. The hole was gone, and the grass grew between my fingers, my hands no longer shovel, but completely clean and manicured. I looked down to see my clothes spotless. My shirt tucked in, and corduroy jacket with two buttons closing it together. I looked over my shoulder to the empty yard. No steps behind me or cruel words coming from the house in front of me. I hopped up to my feet and slid a step back. I took a few shallows breathes and beg myself for a question, but no clarity or acts of God could explain me now.

‘Maybe, I shouldn’t drink anymore’. I reached down and grabbed my lunch wrapped up like a baby and left. I wondered what, if anything, any of this meant. I headed thru the gate and to my car. I was late for work.

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