IT DOES NOT SWING
Gloves for my hands, socks for my feet, a hat for my head keep me warm where four walls dare not challenge the ambient air. Strange world we live in, collapsing into earthquakes of most unreal savages, romantics, living in fantasy worlds corrupting ours only more; murdering true romance by adhering to canned romanticism. And I am trying to be gentle with you, to tell you a song that won’t repeat your being in a bad way, songs vibrate through our being, they cling, resonating bodies that assimilate their melody.
I was trying to tie it all down now, so I will tell you a tale of tying it all down. About being so secured that everything makes you afraid. About being in joy as if one could be happy. A tale of a mad time that was sane, a dirty time that was clean, a repulsive sterile time that was Perdón perdida piada. (It sounds like I know Latin when I do that, or French.) I did not wish to be the one to tell it, still my obligation leaves me no choice but to speak and burn my tongue with these here words, spoken from my heart which fears them and fears repeating them, bludgeoning sounds that they are.
I come from a land now, where I go is not the same land, I come from a land where they die overjoyed as if they could be happy, a land where there rises much gold, where fire experiences ravage the senses, where every movement is measured by speed, where every core is nuclear, where it pumps, pumps and manifest production, where the beat of the music is athletic, where the heart beat of love endures marathons, where friendship thinly widens hemispherical influence; I come from a land, a land that I am divesting myself from, I come from this land of obtainable perfection, a terrace of munitions, a land disfigured by the child that has ripened before sensuality could find his heart, a land that waves arrest warrants towards its thousand cultural faces which share the same fearful expression; and so all together Ostrich their souls into terra firma. Know them for these fears, the fear of authority, the fear of control, the fear of individual tyranny; and only to those fears will they surrender all their struggle and toil.
A land of a thousand faces all sharing the same fearful expression. The fearful expression of fearing emotion!
They were not always like this, they are all fragile and beautiful souls that come from every place the earth would birth. They marched, swam, crawled, wombed, married, asylumed, pilgrimaged, refugeed their fears and tears here; here in this land they promised themselves no more suffering, no more pain, no more uncertainty, here in this land everything will be well and endure; an abyss to be placed between the place of birth of agony; a distance so wide that any crossing needs end in clashing perdition. It is a matter of right, of making right in the world, of having the certainty that comes with golden justice. Unmovable perdition.
It was a somber morning the craters in my heart were dulled up from all the beatings, they had taken a crow bar to my kneecaps, mostly just to remind me what a privilege walking was, Maria, my histrionic pleasure chamber, had been incarcerated as well, for a very different reason. She had worked with a lady seamstress who had befriended her, and over time they shared many drinks, if you can call Amaretto Sour a drink, and manic conversations about how men are so little knowing on the ways of women, having they substantial academic evidence from the lack of male induced pleasure in their lives. One might better think they were just teasing each other by affirming the divisive stance of the repudiated relationship between the sexes. Maria eventually got bored with the production aspect of her job, not wanting to stitch away repetition, this was how Maria was, not willing to partake in the labor aspect of any relationship, I put up with it because it served to grant me some control over her, which was hard enough won; so it was that she left her stitching job, just forgot to go in one day, never really quit and never really got fired, and one might correctly suppose that the lady kept her there much more for conversation, and affirmation, than for sewing, which was stitching their souls anyway. But on Maria’s unknown last day, she had borrowed a shawl which was dark green and royal blue beautiful with petals mushrooming comforting dispositions; Maria just had to borrow it because she loved it so, she may have just taken it, but Maria was no thief she just thought that all things belonged to the person that had them in their possession, and all possession was temporary; this was the part of her philosophy that forbade her to declare her undying love towards me. Everywhere Maria went wearing her sumptuous shall she rose life affirming smiles, and envious compliments were dashing her way like bullets, and Maria was basking in the sunlight of all that lovely veneration. But unexpectedly, no more than three days into her parade, all the eyes begun to turn to grizzly stares, people would look at Maria as if she were a member of the now defunct communist party, their eyes were marking her every move, the shawl hanging around her neck like a tracking bracelet, stare after stare growing less shy, and whispers of her whereabouts and complicity were marching military bands; to such extent that Maria begun to paranoid her walk and gaze, defiantly almost, which only added to her complicity in the conspiracy that was unfolding with her every movement; not five days later, it was an odd number, she was arrested by the authorities while mounting a bus. She was a surprised as might be expected of an innocent, but the evidence against her, and the witnesses but too numerous to refute. All over the town she had been seen wearing and even brandishing the stolen shawl, as was reported by her confidant, the lady seamstress, “stolen!” The lady very much reported that her lovely and irreplaceable shawl had been stolen after being convinced by her new young male lover that Maria’s taking of the shawl was an act of treason. Ah the controlling rancor of male youth, he certainly had orchestrated the separation of the two women that would have performed his psychological autopsy. Maria found herself unable to refute the charges against her. A lie detector caught not her innocence but rather her nerve endings spasmodically masticating her inner being into strenuous madness. She called me to come rescue her but got the answering machine, I was busy getting a crowbar to my kneecaps.
Incidentally, after Maria’s prosecution her defense attorney felt victim to her emotionally volatile heart. Unable to rescue her on appeal, he eventually concluded that histrionic individuals would invariably fail any and all lie detector tests. The idea that he might have been a horrid defense attorney could not cross his mind. So he led a successful campaign to create lie detector test prints of every citizen; to be kept on file by the federal authorities. In this way, if a citizen were to be accused of a crime, the results of the lie detector test on record could be measured against those conducted after the presumed crime was committed; if the citizen was innocent the variation between the two test ought be comparably insignificant. Or so went the theory, regardless all citizens come their eighteenth birthday had to take a lie detector test, which also became an opportunity for a non-tax, only $16.00 Dollars a pop.
I had bad kneecaps, inherited from Dad, there was really no need to make them useless or more painful but they did, which was not nice, I was caught with drugs rushing out of a crack house, I went down the corridor of F street, then into an alley, where I bought a large doze of stuff that everyone, including the cops was using at the time. Niche dreams could come out of that acid, you just kind of imagine a thought in your mind, rested with it and plunge the syringe deep into your veins beyond your tomato flesh, and the unfolding machinations would hallucinate your original imaginings into Technicolor with surround stereophonic sound, blast. Crossing the street blocks, from F to H Street, don’t ask me what happen to G Street, it all goes back to bad city planning, the major of the city had been shot over in G street, I am not telling you more, only sometimes G is H or H is F, that is how nasty happenings were civilly erased in our little town; you don’t have to ask any more than that; only I will rumble on a little bit so as to say that at my work, the building had more than 23 floors, but not a second floor, it went 4, 3, M, and then the First floor. You see there was nothing on M, hadn’t been nothing on M for years or so I was told, sometimes the elevator would stop at M, the doors would open, no one would dare get out, and no one got in, I never saw anyone get in, but then back then I could only see real people, today, today I can see auras and emotions and floating energies, today I might see something on M floor, but back then you just kind on knew to follow your path and not to M. Anyway I was jaywalking, across the streets with my heavy load of narcotics when I was turned in to the cops by a citizen that decided to take the law into his own and make a citizens arrest; he even knew to read me my rights, and to alert me that he was acting on the authority temporarily granted to a citizen by the legal system when suffering to witness an incriminating calumny. Detained, I did not take to panic, thinking the cops would busy themselves with other things, but I had been detained by a prominent member of the community, a member of every association known to men, and maybe even to god. A citizen with a loyalist voting record that went back to when he was twelve year old activist, demanding the right, the school principal, to tell us all that he loved god and country. Wow them daring harmless acts that make a difference enough, if kept in the school yard ok, but that boy grew up, Jesus I was dog meat. The Authorities seemed much bother by my case, they made it plain and clear that they did not want to arrest me, but neither could they ignore a respectable citizen that had the tendency to report all and any that might dare to trespass the civil code of duty. They took me to the station, just hoping to take a picture of me, grab a share of my money and let me go for good behavior, only during their financial search they stumble into the drugs and then to look away became immediately, for them, more difficult. I chagrinned a little, sort of saying I was their buddy and they could trust me to move on and ignore that they had ignore my felony; but they thought better not to trust me, they concluded that maybe Mr. civil citizen was testing their integrity and their adherence to the law. Which made me a decoy to test the ethics of our police department. They put my extra cash back into my wallet, unholy Jesus, they took the drugs and charged me with high crimes, there was too much just for mere consumption, the daily recommended allowance was zero, anything was too much and all that excess that could not be consumed by me left them no choice but to conclude that I was a dealer, a major distributor perhaps, they were about to bust a major drug ring. Fearing my underworld might they told me not to try to bribe them because it would not work; having overworked their ethical credentials in some strange way they hinted that they were aware that I was, aside from a major drug lord, a decoy to test their ways and actions; which meant that they presumed that as they were preparing to launch the gravitational brunt of the law upon me person, that I would be rescued come the final hour by the officials that had master minded this entire operation. They would at once be commended for serving with such high mindedness. For system people everything is a systematic scheme. Ah but I dared to say nothing to disagree with then, expecting that my none complicity, in the none plot would not be found out but rather that it would aid my way out of the tank. Instead the propensity for high climax heightened the corrupt judge had been warned that I might be an ethical double agent, and so he laid out the law as he thought he knew it well, describing in detail the charges, illegally crossing the street, endangering my life, endangering the community at large, instigating possible manslaughter, drugs were illegal, completely and totally illegal, distributing them more so, he was brief on all that. My inability to cope with my addiction a danger to society, people like me dirtied this town, a town that was willing to eliminate an entire street to clean itself up. The guy was staging to become a member of the supreme court. The law was pronounced to my punishment and from thinking that my crime had been a dull one I turn to the realization that a good citizens arrest mandates such extremes.
From my cell I could see the days drift by and each I won myself a little bit more death.
I was trying to tie it all down now, so I will tell you a tale of tying it all down. About being so secured that everything makes you afraid. About being in joy as if one could be happy. A tale of a mad time that was sane, a dirty time that was clean, a repulsive sterile time that was Perdón perdida piada. (It sounds like I know Latin when I do that, or French.) I did not wish to be the one to tell it, still my obligation leaves me no choice but to speak and burn my tongue with these here words, spoken from my heart which fears them and fears repeating them, bludgeoning sounds that they are.
I come from a land now, where I go is not the same land, I come from a land where they die overjoyed as if they could be happy, a land where there rises much gold, where fire experiences ravage the senses, where every movement is measured by speed, where every core is nuclear, where it pumps, pumps and manifest production, where the beat of the music is athletic, where the heart beat of love endures marathons, where friendship thinly widens hemispherical influence; I come from a land, a land that I am divesting myself from, I come from this land of obtainable perfection, a terrace of munitions, a land disfigured by the child that has ripened before sensuality could find his heart, a land that waves arrest warrants towards its thousand cultural faces which share the same fearful expression; and so all together Ostrich their souls into terra firma. Know them for these fears, the fear of authority, the fear of control, the fear of individual tyranny; and only to those fears will they surrender all their struggle and toil.
A land of a thousand faces all sharing the same fearful expression. The fearful expression of fearing emotion!
They were not always like this, they are all fragile and beautiful souls that come from every place the earth would birth. They marched, swam, crawled, wombed, married, asylumed, pilgrimaged, refugeed their fears and tears here; here in this land they promised themselves no more suffering, no more pain, no more uncertainty, here in this land everything will be well and endure; an abyss to be placed between the place of birth of agony; a distance so wide that any crossing needs end in clashing perdition. It is a matter of right, of making right in the world, of having the certainty that comes with golden justice. Unmovable perdition.
It was a somber morning the craters in my heart were dulled up from all the beatings, they had taken a crow bar to my kneecaps, mostly just to remind me what a privilege walking was, Maria, my histrionic pleasure chamber, had been incarcerated as well, for a very different reason. She had worked with a lady seamstress who had befriended her, and over time they shared many drinks, if you can call Amaretto Sour a drink, and manic conversations about how men are so little knowing on the ways of women, having they substantial academic evidence from the lack of male induced pleasure in their lives. One might better think they were just teasing each other by affirming the divisive stance of the repudiated relationship between the sexes. Maria eventually got bored with the production aspect of her job, not wanting to stitch away repetition, this was how Maria was, not willing to partake in the labor aspect of any relationship, I put up with it because it served to grant me some control over her, which was hard enough won; so it was that she left her stitching job, just forgot to go in one day, never really quit and never really got fired, and one might correctly suppose that the lady kept her there much more for conversation, and affirmation, than for sewing, which was stitching their souls anyway. But on Maria’s unknown last day, she had borrowed a shawl which was dark green and royal blue beautiful with petals mushrooming comforting dispositions; Maria just had to borrow it because she loved it so, she may have just taken it, but Maria was no thief she just thought that all things belonged to the person that had them in their possession, and all possession was temporary; this was the part of her philosophy that forbade her to declare her undying love towards me. Everywhere Maria went wearing her sumptuous shall she rose life affirming smiles, and envious compliments were dashing her way like bullets, and Maria was basking in the sunlight of all that lovely veneration. But unexpectedly, no more than three days into her parade, all the eyes begun to turn to grizzly stares, people would look at Maria as if she were a member of the now defunct communist party, their eyes were marking her every move, the shawl hanging around her neck like a tracking bracelet, stare after stare growing less shy, and whispers of her whereabouts and complicity were marching military bands; to such extent that Maria begun to paranoid her walk and gaze, defiantly almost, which only added to her complicity in the conspiracy that was unfolding with her every movement; not five days later, it was an odd number, she was arrested by the authorities while mounting a bus. She was a surprised as might be expected of an innocent, but the evidence against her, and the witnesses but too numerous to refute. All over the town she had been seen wearing and even brandishing the stolen shawl, as was reported by her confidant, the lady seamstress, “stolen!” The lady very much reported that her lovely and irreplaceable shawl had been stolen after being convinced by her new young male lover that Maria’s taking of the shawl was an act of treason. Ah the controlling rancor of male youth, he certainly had orchestrated the separation of the two women that would have performed his psychological autopsy. Maria found herself unable to refute the charges against her. A lie detector caught not her innocence but rather her nerve endings spasmodically masticating her inner being into strenuous madness. She called me to come rescue her but got the answering machine, I was busy getting a crowbar to my kneecaps.
Incidentally, after Maria’s prosecution her defense attorney felt victim to her emotionally volatile heart. Unable to rescue her on appeal, he eventually concluded that histrionic individuals would invariably fail any and all lie detector tests. The idea that he might have been a horrid defense attorney could not cross his mind. So he led a successful campaign to create lie detector test prints of every citizen; to be kept on file by the federal authorities. In this way, if a citizen were to be accused of a crime, the results of the lie detector test on record could be measured against those conducted after the presumed crime was committed; if the citizen was innocent the variation between the two test ought be comparably insignificant. Or so went the theory, regardless all citizens come their eighteenth birthday had to take a lie detector test, which also became an opportunity for a non-tax, only $16.00 Dollars a pop.
I had bad kneecaps, inherited from Dad, there was really no need to make them useless or more painful but they did, which was not nice, I was caught with drugs rushing out of a crack house, I went down the corridor of F street, then into an alley, where I bought a large doze of stuff that everyone, including the cops was using at the time. Niche dreams could come out of that acid, you just kind of imagine a thought in your mind, rested with it and plunge the syringe deep into your veins beyond your tomato flesh, and the unfolding machinations would hallucinate your original imaginings into Technicolor with surround stereophonic sound, blast. Crossing the street blocks, from F to H Street, don’t ask me what happen to G Street, it all goes back to bad city planning, the major of the city had been shot over in G street, I am not telling you more, only sometimes G is H or H is F, that is how nasty happenings were civilly erased in our little town; you don’t have to ask any more than that; only I will rumble on a little bit so as to say that at my work, the building had more than 23 floors, but not a second floor, it went 4, 3, M, and then the First floor. You see there was nothing on M, hadn’t been nothing on M for years or so I was told, sometimes the elevator would stop at M, the doors would open, no one would dare get out, and no one got in, I never saw anyone get in, but then back then I could only see real people, today, today I can see auras and emotions and floating energies, today I might see something on M floor, but back then you just kind on knew to follow your path and not to M. Anyway I was jaywalking, across the streets with my heavy load of narcotics when I was turned in to the cops by a citizen that decided to take the law into his own and make a citizens arrest; he even knew to read me my rights, and to alert me that he was acting on the authority temporarily granted to a citizen by the legal system when suffering to witness an incriminating calumny. Detained, I did not take to panic, thinking the cops would busy themselves with other things, but I had been detained by a prominent member of the community, a member of every association known to men, and maybe even to god. A citizen with a loyalist voting record that went back to when he was twelve year old activist, demanding the right, the school principal, to tell us all that he loved god and country. Wow them daring harmless acts that make a difference enough, if kept in the school yard ok, but that boy grew up, Jesus I was dog meat. The Authorities seemed much bother by my case, they made it plain and clear that they did not want to arrest me, but neither could they ignore a respectable citizen that had the tendency to report all and any that might dare to trespass the civil code of duty. They took me to the station, just hoping to take a picture of me, grab a share of my money and let me go for good behavior, only during their financial search they stumble into the drugs and then to look away became immediately, for them, more difficult. I chagrinned a little, sort of saying I was their buddy and they could trust me to move on and ignore that they had ignore my felony; but they thought better not to trust me, they concluded that maybe Mr. civil citizen was testing their integrity and their adherence to the law. Which made me a decoy to test the ethics of our police department. They put my extra cash back into my wallet, unholy Jesus, they took the drugs and charged me with high crimes, there was too much just for mere consumption, the daily recommended allowance was zero, anything was too much and all that excess that could not be consumed by me left them no choice but to conclude that I was a dealer, a major distributor perhaps, they were about to bust a major drug ring. Fearing my underworld might they told me not to try to bribe them because it would not work; having overworked their ethical credentials in some strange way they hinted that they were aware that I was, aside from a major drug lord, a decoy to test their ways and actions; which meant that they presumed that as they were preparing to launch the gravitational brunt of the law upon me person, that I would be rescued come the final hour by the officials that had master minded this entire operation. They would at once be commended for serving with such high mindedness. For system people everything is a systematic scheme. Ah but I dared to say nothing to disagree with then, expecting that my none complicity, in the none plot would not be found out but rather that it would aid my way out of the tank. Instead the propensity for high climax heightened the corrupt judge had been warned that I might be an ethical double agent, and so he laid out the law as he thought he knew it well, describing in detail the charges, illegally crossing the street, endangering my life, endangering the community at large, instigating possible manslaughter, drugs were illegal, completely and totally illegal, distributing them more so, he was brief on all that. My inability to cope with my addiction a danger to society, people like me dirtied this town, a town that was willing to eliminate an entire street to clean itself up. The guy was staging to become a member of the supreme court. The law was pronounced to my punishment and from thinking that my crime had been a dull one I turn to the realization that a good citizens arrest mandates such extremes.
From my cell I could see the days drift by and each I won myself a little bit more death.
posted by Ricardo Correa at 8/31/2006 10:45:00 AM
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