Clinching dirty white handlebar tape. Hot magnolia breeze in my teeth. Peddling the yellow ten-speed, pumping, swerving, up a hill. Freewheeling down the other-side—the buzzing click-click-click—everything left behind for a while.
CHRIS ANANIAS
Do they even make ten-speeds now? I should have a little black transistor radio gray-taped to the handlebars with “Three Dog Night,” singing “Shambala” serenading the curious cows with their long eyelashes blinking over soft eyes, asking, “What is this life?”
CHRIS ANANIAS
The silver ripples in the distance. The undulating road swells, stretching in the summer fumes. I race toward the mirage, popping tar, but I can never catch it. What is this silver blur? Is this Shangrila?
I stop where the mirage was at the same distance it is now up ahead. For no reason I swerve right—right off the rocky berm. The fast whip of tall weeds cut into my bare ankles. Too much speed—a header. The flash of a creek. The yellow Schwinn lies on its side, yawning, getting off its rubber dogs for a minute.
CHRIS ANANIAS
The stench of slick gray mud sucks at my ragged Dockers. I step, unbeknownst, through a spider web—frantic swipes—it’s in my hair! Then I see under the bridge.
The destroyer is coming. He wants to undo everything. It doesn’t have to be like that. A world where everyone is against you.
The dog is barking. It means trouble. He’s out in the yard causing problems, but you love it. The air conditioner kicks on. It’s loud and churns cold air, but costs money.
A creak under foot to the door. You look at the black house that looms on the hill. All the cool air is behind you then suddenly it’s in front of you too. Tombstones stagger down the hill—getting so big you can read one. It proclaims, from across the street, leering over a wrought-iron fence, like an unwelcome eye, “FOREVER MORE.”
Black shadows abide like open wells. One wrong step and you’re forever falling.
All the little American flags in the graveyard drop to their staff. Like they are “at ease” for the coming of night. The dead are still known by their rank in this world.
The dog is inside the living room. He is staring into the kitchen like someone is standing there. He won’t take his eyes off this apparition like they are holding the instructions on how to raise the dead.
This worries you—you worry a lot. You know God hates a coward. “What are you looking at?”
The dog’s toenails click around in the dark. The fan on the air conditioner is coming in for a landing. A bar of dying light is on your dirty fingernails perched on the keyboard. You never learned to type, but the words spew like a rabid dog’s drool. You send scorching letters then regret it.
An ear worm goes through your head again. A song fragment, like a subliminal message, has played for three days straight and it won’t stop. You fall into its guitar thrum and openly sing the song in your mind. You know this is not the cure.
Samsung, in white, floats up and bounces from edge to edge on the black TV screen, like Pong. The dog is bouncing around the room from corner to corner, just like this word, but you love it.
“Oh, my God, lay down you freak of nature!” Then a low streak runs through you, all of your wrongs—that you can remember—some you will never forget. One is earmarked to be your final thought, all cascade down from the black cloud of the past, “I’m sorry, Pooch.”
There is a heaviness in the air. The smell of rain and it hits, without God’s knowledge, and pounds on the roof and pounds on the metal air conditioner. Rain helps, but the rain is being channeled away from the land. The marshes, which re-energize the groundwater, are filled in. The destroyer likes this. He desires famine quenched by leagues of sea water.
A thickness in the throat. The words are getting hard to swallow. People of your generation, “Gen X” are dying at a rapid rate. They were the uproar for a minute, which now seems like a second. Where are they now? Buried in the Earth’s axis? Each previous generation must in its hypocrisy hold up the Earth. “The Lost Generation” knows this well.
You watch a lot of TV and feel like a power somewhere enjoys this. A power that reeducates your mind to seek laziness and comfort. A way and will that becomes the spoke and wheel of your life.
After a while you believe your ways are hurting you and doing no good. There is constant pain. The steady flow of apathy won’t quite erode, but there is no quicksilver of action. No heroics…
You’ve done something wrong when you were drunk. People are yelling your name out on the street. One or two want your blood. They’d like to shut your coffin lid. God hates a coward.
The dog is barking, senses trouble and does something. You want to stop writing these words. They are bothersome, maybe even loathsome to a reader, a fellow sojourner of the dwindled spirit. The vainglory of youth has vanished—you were scared then too.
What to do? Where to go? Then you remember another friend has died. Wait for the clamor to subside.
Take it slow to the mortuary. No need to hurry. Sit under the tree and read Emily Dickinson, ride in her “carriage of immortality.”
On the way, on the street, a fracas, becomes violence between two red oligarchs of rage. A fracture—one’s hurt. The other is slap-happy. A defunct phone booth bears witness, but wordless for a long time now. The lines of communication are down.
Cars are lined up, and the black hearse backs out of its embalmed shell. You are late for the departed but you are lock-step now.
Your friend in the hearse, in the new lines of a bronze casket, breathes one last breath of death.
Nothing left but…
Doornails, church bells and a brief farewell.
THE END
Chrisopher J Ananias (with our appreciation for Django)
(Editors’ note. We are collectively gobsmacked by this collection of photos snapped by Christopher J Ananias, and we are equally pleased with the text. Enjoy–the Eds.)
They came running. Maybe this will never happen again? Giant, once they were upon us. Their size was intimidating, but something made me want to pet them on top of the head. I feared for their tameness.
The Light Bringer was amazed. I asked the Light Bringer what she thought, and she said, “They’re huge… Kinda scary.”
“Yeah, I wish we had some food, Light Bringer.” A sadness gripped me. I so wanted to make the magnificent birds happy.
The Light Bringer looked around inside the car, but the cupboard was bare. They surrounded our vehicle. The Light Bringer said, “Move now, c’mon now, Honey. Please move.”
The streets of Marion were one way, even the alleys. If I went past the address, it would be a hassle. My GPS led me with its robotic commands like I was its mindless servant. That’s about the way I felt driving the Medicaid Taxi van, old No. 4, that smelled like a dirty laundry hamper. The so-called clients, “The Riders,” gave me a hard time if I showed up late for their free ride.
“They’re a bunch of deadbeats, Cal.” I said on our daily bullshit call.
Cal, who was always ranting about them, suddenly said, like a big company man, “Hey, don’t talk about our riders like that.” He was a fanatical Trumper too, hounding me to vote for the orange man. I almost did, thinking Trump was for Christian values, what a crock. Now I’m wondering about Biden and his senility.
Editors’ note: Christopher (or as I like to call him “CJA”) has provided us with another fine collection of pictures. We believe that the beholders will agree to the excellence in and of CJA’s eye.
(On some services the header image is not included–for those of you who are unfortunate that way, I include the train a second time because it should not be missed–Leila)
Not everything is a rerun this month–oh no, no. And today we are pleased to present another stunning collection of photographs taken by Christopher J Ananias. “CJA”–as I like to refer to him, has a keen eye for words and the world–Leila
Christopher takes pictures as well as he writes, which is saying a lot. So in keeping with the old adage of words and pictures, we present his latest Springs’ gallery–LA
Saragun Springs 