Friday, November 18, 2011

Officer Tompkins Put Me To Work

Resenments harboured toward wolf killers kept me up as the rain pelted the van and air crafts jammed their air brakes down my throat. The night was alive with ghosts haunting my fearful sweats. These are trying times as I learned that Marajuana helps us forget...and since I stopped smoking marajuana as part of my boycott of the Mexican Drug War I have basically remembered every conversation and crooked smile and darting eyes and the countless shirts I see pulled down to hide love handles of women drinking jugs of dunkin donuts coffee. And these images do not ever diminish or intesify but they gather like screaming Labrador flies over my head in the van and are countless like demon sheep jumping skeleton fences. I can confirm that a flawless memory is not such a good thing. Oh, I'll forget leaving my registration to my van back at my van requiring a trip past the pizza place with no sign and the midday joggers huffing to their tunes as I retrieved it, but I won't forget the trip to get it and the laugh of the DMV lady, "I love it when a plan comes together," and I'm wondering if she'll ask why I left with no nose ring and returned with a lip ring, but she says nothing and I am pushed along as A22.
"Forgetting well is as important as remembering well," said author Michael Pollan and I seem to be unable to either.

So, these images haunt me nightly among other regrets, though I can say the window doesn't leak so I finally don't have to worry about my Xanadu album getting wet along with my other precious LPs.And it was hours and hours of compulsive obsessive resurrection of my family of dead dreams until I wore my brain into exhaustion around 6am, like my timex automatic (self-winding) watch that only stops if you don't wear it for two days, my brain finally ran out of energy after gnawing on the petty complaints salt lick for 4 hours and I drifted into a tormented sleep...only to have the awful sound of a police baton on my van awake me from some fantasy of nymphs and labrador caribou.
"Blah blah blah....Oggy....Officer Tompkin.....Open Up!"
Even in my feverish sleep I realized I'd been sleeping through at least two minutes of pounding on my van. I could hear a police radio dispatcher calling out my license plate number.
"Eh?" I called out as I untangled my neck from my filthy fleece blanket.
"I want to talk to you, Mr. Bleacher."
I almost said, "About what? Am I double parked?" but I said instead..."Alright. Hold on," as I climbed out of my sweaty sleeping bag to piss in a nearby milk jug. This was automatic. I tried to remember where I had parked the night before but when you move and move for three straight years you tend to forget. If I looked out and saw the gulf of Mexico I would not be surprised. Or the court house, or an iceberg or the Rocky Mountains. It could be anywhere. I wake up and start my day as I can. I figure out where I am and then move on from there.
I muttered, "Jesus christ. Can't get a full night's sleep to save my life." as I hunted for my underoos. I couldn't find them and put pants on with my balls swinging around the ragged pockets. Couldn't find my socks either so I figured, "Fuck whoever books me into police custody. They'll get an eye full of my halitosis and tonail fungus."
Did I say this out loud? I've been talking to myself lately and having good conversations.
I found my shoes and was prepared to say, "Can't a guy take a nap in the middle of the day?" and I chuckled as the background of this statement would be a wood stove, a disco record and an unfinished bowl of macaroni and cheese perched atop a pile of dirty laundry and a moped. I opened the door thinking at least my DMV license would give them a laugh. But I couldn't find my wallet. Oh, christ, this would be an interesting conversation with the police. Where's my camera?

I opened the van door up and nearly hit the side of the Chicken man's resurrected lesbo truck. He was having a good laugh, assuming I had opened my curtain to see who was pounding on my van at 8:30 AM. But I hadn't and believed I was confronting Portsmouth's finest in a showdown like Dillinger outside the Biograph Theater.
Thus began my day that produced a self-explanatory poem:
"I ate a fiberglass sandwich for breakfast,
A sheetrock calzone for lunch,
A broken glass pizza for dunner
and a kick in the ass for brunch."

I should be an expert on busting up tile but nothing about demolition is easy. If someone before you did their job right then their work will not collapse under a sledge hammer or a nasty look. You will have to burn your fingers on glowing hot sawzall blades and chew your nails as the toilets overflow onto your shoes. But it will fight you with every slotted screw they jammed home back in 1991. But I'm not picky and I have to respect that my buddy was trying to save me from myself by keeping me busy and maybe buy me a few hours of distraction from my own worst intentions. So I will take a sledge hammer to a toilet or a claw hammer to a bath tub because I have painted myself into a corner of despair with long drying laquer that will take weeks to dry and every step I take leads to another corner and I dream of playing piano until my resentments turn into lyrics that lonely poets kill themselves while singing and dreamers etch on subway walls. Until then I will live in a self absorbed bubble of egoism, digitally kicking tires of motorcycles I can't afford.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Xanadu! Olivia Newton John & Electric LIght Orchestra at it's finest! I am a huge fan of both, I have every Jeff Lynne Album (who is a genius as far as I'm concerned) My favorite songs are "Magic" & "Xandadu".. just hearing those tunes sends me right back to being an innocent 10 year old kid in 1980, lusting over Olivia! I don't blame you for not wanting that album to get wet! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m1UWSD-FaA

Anonymous said...

I love the fact that you mentioned Xanadu! I've tried to tell so many of my friends about this way underated movie, and not one of them even know what I am talking about... the only guy I know that new what I was talking about was Mark Webster... the man is a god! He tries to stump me on music trivia, but I can keep up with him.....

Oggy Bleacher said...

Xanadu fans need look no further than my novel, Memorabilia, for all your nostalgic needs:
http://workedtodeath.blogspot.com/2007/09/memorabilia-chapter-2-xanadu.html

A clip:

“So do you agree to think about the consequences of your actions before you ride your bike through the hospital again?” the old man asked me in the tone of voice of a father taking a measured response to his son's recklessness.

I was sitting on the scratchy blue couch in our new living room, anxiously picking a scab on my elbow. My cap, Dewey's cap, was pressed down snugly over my ears. I wanted nothing more than to leave the room and go back upstairs to my radio. I'd been waiting four weeks now to record my favorite song, “Xanadu”, off the radio. Every second I stayed away from my stereo meant I was more likely to miss the opportunity. Why was this so hard for people to understand?

“No! I hate this place,” I shouted. “I hate you and I hate Bone Harbor and I hate the Yankees. I want to go live with mom in Ironbury. My friends are lame here. Cristo’s lame. There are too many girls and they make fun of me cuz I like the Sox. This place bites the big wiener.”

I think Webby is a character in the book.

Anonymous said...

That was a great read my friend!

WeRo said...

This is a good piece....

Anonymous said...

I think you meant to say, you untangled your dirty neck from the fleece

Oggy Bleacher said...

No, I meant to say I untangled your mom's dirty neck from the fleece.

hobo soup said...

Officer Tompkins was the giveaway it was chicken farmer. Even my parents have learned his phone calls are pranks.

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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.