J♥rdan's Blog
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Vicious Circles
It was a hot one. Sixty degrees over freezing and climbing. This combined with the Maryland swamp made the air stickier than a hooker's thighs on a Friday night. I smoked two cigarettes, one slow and one quick, because my boss was barking up my tree about digging a ditch. I put my cig out on my boot and donned my plastic cap, ready to slave away for a few more hours. Hopefully.
I made my way out to the street, which was hot enough to fry a stoner, and face my tools of mass destruction waiting for me. I picked up a shovel and started digging, spitting curses into my hole as I went. I looked up from my hole at the house in front of me. It was whither than Mother Teresa's ass, yet dirtier than a Taiwanese boygirl who just got off of work. And inside lined a man whose job description consisted of lying, cheating, and stealing. Yeah, the White House as a real "diamond in the rough."
So I dug and dug until I couldn't dig any more, and before I knew it, my shift was done and hopped on a train back to my shitty two room apartment to drink my night away, if I even made it there. I popped three uppers and downed a fifth of vodka, ready to rock and roll my way into the nearest strip club with a blinking neon sign. Instead I stumbled into an alley filled with "colorful individuals", who, after some less than gentle persuading, caught me with a hook or two and made off with my wallet and a few back teeth.
I woke up with a kink in my neck, and a bum spooning me. I shoved him off and made my way back to the street, where I saw a parade of 'Nam protesters marching around screaming something about bringing someone home, but I didn't have the patience or the time to sit and listen. I made my way back to the White House, now flooded with Dicks and Janes waiting to get their two cents in about the War and all its royal fucked-upedness. I was late for my shift, and as the Pigs came riding in on their steel chariots, I knew when my time to walk had come; I hopped over the barricade and slapped my hard hat on again just in case.
When the first of the tear gas bombs hit the protesters scattered like roaches, afraid of taking a hit for good ol' Charlie in the jungle. This all made for a pretty scene, and my boss was more than happy to stop and stare at the chaos in the streets, but I just scoffed at the kids, tucked my dog tags back into my shirt, and kept digging. -
The Desert Songbook
"The desert highlands were filled with the bones of men like me. Foolish adventurers meddling with forces beyond their control, caught between their lust for full pockets and their mortality. The multitudes, huddled in squat tents, smoking and drinking, caused me to doubt the spiritual quality mankind possesses. Their unfeeling and unthinking dispositions persuade sympathy from the deepest regions of the inner gut. They'd stare, with beady eyes, to a rock, or a desert lizard, or another man, hoping to see the fortunes they crave spring forth like a geyser from the innards of the planet. " I looked down at my son's face, and he looked up at mine. We both then looked on at the sky above us, to the constellations, the moon, the wispy hair-like clouds that fluttered over us. It was no Hollywood hotel, but it wasn't Hell.
"Finish the story daddy, please" He said, grinning.
"Okay," I smirked into the darkness surrounding us and began my short tale again."At night they'd shoot their guns towards the moon, hoping to land a shot and catch some falling dust. Once a man claimed to have actually found this magic dust, then proceeded to parade it around the camps like it was pure Aztec gold, looking for a sap dim enough to buy it. Eventually he came across a boy, traveling with his father, who hadn't yet lost the shimmer from his eyes. He sold the dust to him for two dollars and a canteen of whiskey; but before the deal was done, the boy's father stepped between them. The argument that followed cost the moon dust salesman his left eye and a few teeth, but all funds were repaid and all canteens returned in full, plus the moon dust was the boy's to keep. It stayed there, in its glass jar, for many years, until the boy left it next to a cactus somewhere along a trail."
"The boy lost it? I thought that dust...was all he had."
"He didn't need it anymore, son."
"Why...not?" He yawned.
"He started growing up, I gue..." I stopped. His eyes had slid shut and his gentle snoring vibrated the small space his head occupied on my chest. I combed his hair from his face and pulled our small blanket over him. I looked up again at the dark desert sky, counted the stars, just to make sure they were all there; pointed my trigger finger to the biggest star of them all, and pulled.
"Bang." And then sweet slumber took me too. -
Firefly Radio
**Note..I highly recommend reading this while listening to "The Beast" by Angus & Julia Stone..**
They drove the car to the edge of the railroad tracks. The key still in the ignition, lucky rabbit’s foot dangling. The radio played some song none of them knew, a love story in the form of verse, and one of them, with his curly California locks resting on his shoulders, tapped his toe against the dash in time with the words. The girl with blue eyes pulled out a lighter and lit the cigarette hanging from her mouth. A singed bit of ash tumbled down to her lap, where the boy that she thought she loved would eventually push it away. Her lips were decorated with red; and they left marks wherever she put them. His neck...Strung with shells, was crooked against the headrest, as he gazed out the passenger window. The woods were darkening with the opaque tint of summer, and a gentle storm of fireflies bled from the trees. They sat there, in the heat of a July night, with the little green lights glowing around them like a thousand lanterns, waiting for the next song to play. -
The Weight of a Child’s Coffin
The windows of the school became green and caked with grime over the years. After the bombs fell no one had time fore educating youth, so the buildings gained a monstrous look of abandonment. The once living halls were just windy pathways for spirits to haunt, and at night the sounds of gunfire nearby would echo off the cracked walls. Dust would settle in the rooms still sealed from the maelstrom outside, creating a thick layer of history on the desks and chairs. If you looked hard enough you could find small remnants of children’s things scattered in this dust, just the way they were years before.
In one room, a soldiers body lay decayed, bones protruding from his sagged skin, with a rifle placed across his lap for protection, his boots and uniform faded from the sunlight that leaked through the many broken windows around him. A vulture, which pecked away at the corpse for days, shared the same tomb as he, it’s feathered remains at his side, shaking in the wind. The soldiers dead hands held a wrinkled and torn photograph, it’s subjects blurred but recognizable. His last thought before he passed on was of his daughters eyes. As he gazed at her picture he saw their blue abyss and fell into it silently. He felt the warm wave of comfort come over him again knowing that she would not share the same fate as he. He imagined her in a paradise with angels and mirth, as he imagined all the children killed in war would go. He kissed the picture with his torn lips and uttered an apology, "Forgive me for what I have done." Soon then he slept, just as his daughter did, and his own little war was over.
The comparisons, oh the comparions
Not that it matters...but i think it's great =)
was this just sudden inspiration? lol
it's cool to see something like a couple of paragraphs of writing evolve into a couple of more paragraphs of writing.
it's going good so far, homeboy.