just float me

this damp old house needed help, but the basement was quiet like a desert.it never occurred to me to go swimming.I wanted to dream of schlitz and the old boathouse.when I die just float me in the boathouse with a rusty motor and some ravioli. just plop em in, dont be shy.Lately the a-team pinball just stretched days into weeks and I played and dreamed of half-hearted attempts to make it down the road to the old pub. the couch smelled like red lifesavers and dogshit. was danny's 4 wheeler still operable?that dusty shack with shit living in it, oh shit yeah you need a fucking rifle to prowl in that old screwy greasy tool hut made for snakes and wild cats.a hundred coffee cans with nails rested on cobwebbed sills.I glanced down to see an ripped bazooka wrapper with that idiot and his eyepatch.Steam rose up from the campground near the water amidst the morning fog….I could just see clemmy's maniacal gums bouncing, racing, on a burnt slimy kiver-- the pond water shooting and dribbling over his mess of dead white chin hair, his head bobbing like the tall wobbly, weathered skull it was...and that bucket...

so

I had been in the basement so long the cobwebs started looking like cotton candy.  So delicious like the real stuff we got after demolition derbys '82 in the fall when mama was swearin hollerin and Uncle Hervey's third flask was dry.

I guess it's another day here as I lay on the couch.  Did the sun come up?  Oh, maybe.  Whatever.  I had 3 diet slices left in the fridge that was more like a rotting dead plastic cooler.  I don't even know why I told you that.

There's a knock at the door - No...it was the hefty wind of dead Clemmy.  I can almost smell the gasoline on his hands from the boathouse with the peeling teal paint with underslivers and crimped crispo flakes of 1940s white, revealing the smooth cedar as if just newly sanded.

isn't it great

when your wife is yelling at you 1/2 way across the house and your mouth is full of crunching goldfish?

Van Gogh

Creeps me out and I love it dearly.

the coming

dead is the wind
just as the dead
numbness overflows,
creeps in my head

where has she gone? 
why am I here?
if now I'm not here,
Are not we both dead?

III

~Posts from the Basement~ III


Posted by: Mike (Character Zero) Message ID: 463 Jul 9 2:18pm
Reply
Post
< Previous
Next >



Hervey never came back for the cottonball pickles, they're all yours Ron when you return next week.



I found some skittles under a flap of frayed carpet by mistake. I bet they taste like dead popcorn.



There's a framed picture of Uncle Buck and Clemmy next to the snowshoes posing with 10 fish on a chain and both gripping Schlitz popoff cans. I had to dust the spiderwebs off to see it. I never knew Clem had teeth and Buck looked like Jeff Reardon with curly chest hair and a Rollie Fingers mustachio. They looked like they were on uppers and hash.



The schaefer is gone but I peeked out the window at the big lady with the mooseknuckle. She was carrying a 30 pack of Guiness. I am getting out of this mess. Get me some brew.

II

~Posts From the Basement~ II


Posted by: Mike (Character Zero) Message ID: 454 Jul 8 2:24pm
Reply
Post
< Previous
Next >



I was just eating my clammy kivers from Clemmy's bucket and Uncle Hervey showed up with some firecrackers and dirty pictures. He wasn't dead, but I thought he was at first. He said he had been living in cousin Danny's old shack up near firepit #4.



He wanted to hug me, but I just tossed him a warm Schaefer and took a couple steps back.  He wanted to sell me an E.T. doll but I reminded him that I wasn't into dolls anymore and besides, he picked that off the bulkhead steps. I could tell he tried to brush off the hairballs.



He was quickly drawn to the A-Team pinball machine, a beam of radiance in a murky pit. I didnt like the way he was eyeing it.



So I gave him a kiver and he threw up a little, and said he enjoyed the kiver anyway. But next he took out the dirtiest handkerchief I have ever seen and wiped the muck from his chin. I think he made it cleaner.



Now he's gone and I'm wondering where Uncle Clem is.



But at least Uncle Hervey left his firecrackers laying on the pinball machine. He'll be back for the cottonball pickles.