It was a humid, angry, broken down city, and it had lost its mind.
It was screaming into the night, and somewhere off in the distance, in one of it's old quiet forgotten corners, there was a motel room, with an old man making visions, secrets, and madness.
It was a dim lit room, with filth stained walls and yellowed windows, and the fleas were jumpin. And there was moans next door. And there were gunshots outside, in that wet stale air. And someone was laughing in the alley, outside, down below, I think it was laughing?
There was no fridge, no food, and nobody, just a small cot, a desk, and a sink to pee in, and the old man, in boxers, on his back, sweating like a pig, in that hot night.
He was staring at the yellowed walls, covered with stains and water marks, and he could see faces in them.
Faces in the filthy walls, haunting the room, with all the desperation they've seen.
And he could hear them.
Wailing together, in shame, from the other side, putting on a show, for thirty thousand nights.
And this night, was his night, to see the show.
"After I'm gone, Will I be up there too?" He wondered.
The old grey sedan barrels down the highway with a cigarette in its mouth.
The old man's suit and five o clock, stare down the road to see the future.
Tall trees whop whop by, like giant pendulums, as far as the eye can see.
It's The Eternal Corridor, Ladys and Gentleman, there's nothing but trees and road, and sky.
The engine wails and the wheels roar, on down the road.
But he's still under the tree, in front of his house. Tree sap and bird droppings litter the car, marking it for purgatory, marking it for all the years down the highway.
His head is static, squealing, clicking, buzzing, and regret is stabbing over and over. White knuckled on the steering wheel, he goes, stoic, barreling down the highway he goes, trying to get home.
And the vents in the dash, blow hot hot winds, in his face and heart, off the engine, and up from the furnaces of hell, in the hot night, in that old car, down the highway, down the eternal corridor.
Staring into a thousand years, but he has no currency here.
Pray for him, my brothers and sisters, that he might have change for the tolls.
I saw old men in dirty old suits, with slightly
overgrown tapered hair cuts, slicked back with grease.
I heard raspy voiced, wild tales,
about adventures on the road. It was like a private club out there, on the sidewalk.
I saw them conserving cigarette butts, by rolling. Eating two dollar breakfasts and
drinking one dollar drinks all day. In make shift "holes in the walls", with businesses built
from hallways, with bar stools, and a long counter.
Ash trays and condiments down the
counters, like an exhibit.
And every seat filled with a worn out man, huddled over each
plate.
A dingy, chatter, smoke filled, tight fit. Sometimes with lines of men out the door
like a soup kitchen.
I saw this when America was free.
I saw them eke out tomorrow's living, by peddling, pitching, and performing for small
bills.
I saw them working manual labor, looking out of place in their suits, dirty and torn.
Like saints.
They were that town, right down to the accent, it was written all over their faces, you
could smell it all over them and every town has one of them.
Every night before I sleep, I hear that night train far way. And it's crying out, like whales do for sailors. And I know, one day it comes for me, to go to the other-side. To that place all men dread, because we know Hell is there. Hell for those who don't pack well for trips far away.
We all hope we packed well, but judgement is stark.
In that day, it's naked and real, and final.
So hear ye hear ye oh man!
Pack well for trips far away, for no man knows the schedule.
Pack well for trips far away, for no man knows for sure what he'll need.
Pack well for trips far away my brothers, it's time to find out, what to believe.
Surrender your comfort now, because we can't hide from the truth over there.
Worry about Hell, because our vanity beckons it.
And one day the the man oppenned his eyes and saw that humanity was hopeless...
The Lunatic woke and came out in the morning; it was 8 in the evening.
He sat on a sidewalk trash can til 3 in the mornin. At 3 he jumped off and ran through the city screaming lunacy. He ran and screamed as much as he could, and when he was done it was around 4am.
He sat down in the middle of the late nite early morning street and he began to tell a story....he said; "life is full of good things and life is full of crud. Every man's got a dream and every man's got a problem he'll tell you about."
The spectators of the problem solvers, look and laugh and cry. The drunken leaches of the bars with sombre happieness and men who work themselves til one day, they don't show up for work...they die."
Good art isn't appreciated, just forgotten as another subject in school, and all of this, and all of this, and no one gives a shoot! And no one gives a darn! No one, no one, no one gives a darn!"
" Laurel and Hardy stand tall above my head like ominous scare crows, and the children of tomato sauce and the cookies of jello, consulted with Latners." he said in the middle of the late nite early morning street.
"But there was a time, a lunatic I am if you will for a momment, a time, of understanding, but they - we killed him, and now nothing." "Remorsefull belligerence fills the streets of all our minds and laser beam head lites fill my eyes like thighs and lips and toes of a beautiful woman, and if you don't know what I'm talkin about man, then you ain't real!" "And to you I'm just some crazy street person!" he screamed the tail end of that as a matter a fact.
And the man looked at the world and his time period with disgust and hate for it all. He was out cast. He was an any way. Though. He sought change, change never found him not even a nickel or an open mind unless it in some way benefit the holder of that mind. No one knew of what trouble he coveted, no one knew. Though. He saw a horizon of intellectualism it was only in his mind...He said; "To heck with you." to humanity, its children, and its leaders, "To heck with you one and all." Spontaneously he blurted, "Humanity is a curious animal it don't know what it is.The portrayal of death excites me." sang the Lunatic in orgasm.
All the mind frames of curiousity abandon him, left him to himself and his maddness. "I'm sick of my insight, sick of my knowledge of the truth, it lurks behind me in dark alleys late at nite and terrifies me, it prowls where ever I go and people look at me and know I know the truth, and laugh at my torture. The stupid ones laugh without fear, knowing they're immune, the ignorant ones laugh confident, then nervously knowing it might happen to them."
The Lunatic stood and walked to a darkened large business window some feet away and stared at his reflection in it. He saw what the ignorant saw, he saw what the stupid could see, and he laughed because his insight was consistent. Looking the world in the face he saw the truth. He saw the solution of uncaring, he finally figured it out, so he held up his bottle and from his mouth he uttered it...a proclamation to the street he said:
"But oh Man!"
"Where is our humility?"
"Can you see what the great minds of the Modernists have done to us?!"
"But can it really be Christ the hope?"
"Can it be so simple and so complicated that we forgot how it is that we blaspheme?"
"Did we rule him out for some thing better, or for the sake of our own vanity?" "For even the protestants rely on they're own interpretation.." "Is our authority really our own vanity?" "Chesterton and Belloc knew, they knew." "Kerouac the st. Augistine of our times." "Marx the genius who must have forgotten to add God when designing a perfect society." "Einstien who could have been a great shoe maker." "Thankfully the same people who made the bomb couldn't understand Nietzche...may be if he would 've used math."
"In this mass transit society of emediate gratification, no one understands aquiring a tast, instead of a cigarette, a candy bar, instead of caviar, that same old crud on top 40." "Once again the savages have invaded Rome." "But for me I see...I see giant icons of the Mother Mary and Fidel Castro luming down with big shifty eyes and a big cigar in his mouth."
"I see Machiavelli and Charles Bukowski arms over shoulders singing drunkin Irish songs and pointing with sarcastic grinns." "Laughing at the confused failings of the great expanse of the American 'know how'." "But as Americans we cling to the hopes that computers, technology,materialism,wieghts and measures, the here and now, the great myth, will some how save our souls..BUT!...Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us."
And the Lunatic went and confessed, hanging off a priests ear, he confessed, for he knew he was mad and he knew there was only one hope, that latin god Jesu Christe the God man from the Jews.........
My eyes blackened and I could see no more. . . . .
