Through the shock of summer we revelled. Not to say that our revelry was purely seasonal... indeed there seemed a certain symmetry to this affectation, the shock of summer. Through the sun we passed and frittered the hours - even boredom, that tangent of the first evil trailed the days and we never noticed. Even summer passed and also it's shock. Through our eyes we filtered the days of light, the season of growth. In this time it often felt as though our skins were too small... so small that our muscles and our stomachs threatened to burst through the boredom.
At times, when the screams would curdle with heat in our minds, we would allow the wailing to pass out of illusion. We would allow our bursting to outflow over the bed of that gravel river that sifts the voice of Tom Waits; outflow speaks of heat and sex and boredom... after all there hasn't been a funeral in MONTHS and the dog's tether is bending in the confines of it's stress. There aren't many angles that don't have an exhibit in that length of chain; we imagine we are waiting in a harbour for a hurricane to test our bond with the floor - our anchor.
These days are seamless. The dissatisfaction is dogged by apathy so that even IT won't swell into a decent rage, so that there is no hair-trigger for action, more-so for relief. We recall asking the doctors what the affliction was. We recall laughing lightly at their seeming discomfort. It looked to us as if they did not want to face the nature of our affliction, the cause of the symptoms that defined the problem. They didn't want to see our disease with bald eyes. They did not want to see that we were young.
In the shock of summer I recall asking old Snuffy what shame was: "Hey, Snuffy... What's shame?" Snuffy gurgled through his hair lip and ignited a Queen size Corona with a wooden match. The crackle of sulphur reminded me of seamless days in a fluid stream.
The smoke lingered in the old Packard and we broke out a mickey of Seagrams. It was a day that was baked under a heavy tarp. I could smell the weave of oily canvas through thick smoke.
That was the August that Tommy Jenker smashed his alarm clock with his baseball bat and his mother called the cops to get him out of bed. I felt like cooking on an old tin roof that season...and old lady Jenker wailing all the while in the haze of crackling sulphur; it was the smell of her scream. In it's wake we always struck out for the pool-hall where we lolled with cues against old walls and listened to the click of billiard balls. The green tables were the crucibles for rendering frustration from hope and elation from despair; everyone smoked roll-yer-owns and talked about the big time like they were the real thing while fans whirled obliviously up near the ceiling. The haze of the closed room was a vault, and the air may as well have been the densest matter on earth as the emotions of sickness pressurized the room.
For the sake of the age we eventually broke down. At the instigation of a scratched ball or a cutting glance we split the tension and cured. In roaring file the fresh heat of a sunny day hailed our brewing court. The wet smack of blood and grind of torn skin kissed the parched pavement. The ground was broad. Through the exultation and boredom of pain we railed. In curdling heat we healed ourselves. Through the shock of summer, we revelled.
