Serial, part two

Gimletsville had been a one-horse town

until very recently, I saw

but it’s dusty corpse now rested in the middle of the street
it’s tether frayed and one ear missing.

My guide was a mustachioed man who expectorated on the horse’s corpse and exclaimed: “Damn shame!” I couldn’t say to what or who he referred, as his slitted eyes broiled on me as he spoke. Later I would realize that anger was more of a lifestyle than an emotion for him.

The bank was apparently abandoned except for a single teller. He slept soundly at the window. As he was not roused by my companion shouting “Damn Shame!” at the walls, I raised my hand to shake him by the shoulder to find it was covered in cob webs. Rigorous oscillation drew an irritated mumble from his depths, but his snoring remained. This was distressing to me, as I relied on my banknotes and carried very little cash (at the behest of many of my wisest friends).

Eventually, he roused enough to pocket the notes I handed him, but fell promptly asleep again after telling me there “weren’t no money.”

“Dem shaim;..” said my companion, chewing his cud.

I returned to the street to gaze at the dead horse and its floppy tongue, which a withered feline batted at with its paw. The heat was growing intense, and the noon star baked the thoughts right out of my head. “Well um i guess.” I lacked ideas on how to speak or live for the present.

“Yap,” said the mustache man. “Diiim shim.”

That night, I bunked under the stars with my loquacious companion, who set to his boiled horse with a will. My own appetite was lacking as I felt on the edge of being gobbled up by the desert.

old poem

grounded dreams of dreary days
lie cradled on the shore
of oceans spent on goddess ink
to ask for so much more

Where are the bloated visions of yesteryear
grumbling, gurgling, feasting on the lore
they lie now in numbered graves
brittle and rotten at the core

to leap from mountains became
to hop from hills
to skip on moondrops
now to pace the shore

of the dreams you once had
when worry was a boy

to walk the moon
the eye of night
as she folds you
in her silent dress

to talk with death
the sigh of life
as he holds you
to his viral breast

dusty black and dreaded white
where went your roaring breath

it left you at the edge of hope
where skeletons of monstrous plans
smother in the stink of life

Serial, chapter the first

    What I imagined to be cacti, shrubs and bushes were streaks of dull green as I stared out the train windows where I met a man on a quest. This, in itself, was not significant. One is always meeting men on quests in this world. The countless miles of nothing between any place worth being turn the smallest errand into a journey.
    His name was Eustace Grimehorn, and his quest was to taste the meat of every animal within his lifetime. He had prepared a list, from A to Z, of those animals which were known to him (perhaps forgetting the less delectable varieties). He described, in his excitement, having completed the As - including such creatures as the ‘Armadiller’ and the Antelope - and moving on to the first animal on his B list: the Bald Eagle. He was taken with the idea, not only through imagining that it must taste like edible gold (being equally rare), but also because he felt that it would make him ‘more American.’ The idea made me somewhat uneasy, so I made an effort to divert him to another task.
    “What about Alligator?” I said. This had not been on his list.
    “They’s under G, for Gator.”
    My first meager attempt thwarted, I moved on to other strategies. “Why Bald Eagle?”
    “Pardon?”
    “Well, why not just Eagle? If you must specify a distinct variety of each animal, your list will be too long and redundant to ever be completed. Why not just Eagle, and be done with it?”
    His eyes quivered, and stared straight through my head. As I attempted to explain, he became increasingly more agitated, so I resolved to move to another seat. As I left him, he was already happily writing in the many varieties of eagle with which I had tried to convey the futility of his task. Still, he was not to be diverted, and hoped to find a Bald Eagle family roosting along the California coast. He had shown me the rifle he would shoot them with, leaning against the window; and he had flint and steel to make a fire, and a metal spit which he could assemble to roast them on once they had been plucked. I declined his offer to join him in the coming feast, and excused myself to the dining car.
    I was not in the mood to eat, after his explicit instructions on how to prepare large birds for consumption, but I could not grudge him his excitement as I found a seat in a different car. I was on a quest, myself.
    Most journeys end with a goal, but mine began with one, which I sought to move further away from until I reached an optimal distance. The goal was law school in Boston, and whatever dry existence might be waiting for me afterward. In order to move both geographically and socially away from this grim prospect, I had decided to make my way into the West, where there are neither laws nor schools. I looked on the surreal and inhospitable landscape flying by the train windows with an excitement only surpassed by our own Mr. Grimehorn and his noble task of devouring the entire natural world.