Tricked out time

Train whistle, brassy and loud, a giant lummox blowing his nose in the distance. What time of day is this—could be anytime; early morning first cup of coffee on the back porch before the light rises or later trying to read a dense novel or write an email on the second cup of coffee, hands twitching every odd minute or early evening after driving from one side of the city to the other at rush hour with breaks begging to be put down, crying for mercy, catalytic converter rusted from a thousand years at the bottom of the ocean, the ghastly rattle of dull knives and jostled coffins, bone crunching death ten feet in front of me, pulling up to the curb outside my apartment and in the spot where I park there’s a hybrid sports utility potato beetle, a blue one with dark windows, dark enough that I didn’t see the semblance of a man sitting there on his phone or on his own dick from what anyone can tell, whatever it is people do 22 hours a day sitting in their cars in sunbuffed lots and in their garages still idling edging close to passing out and dying while their small children in the house take vegetables out of the crisper, the old lady living next to me having left her trash can in the remaining space on the curb ahead of the strange parked car and I tried to wedge myself between the can and the car and I moved with arrogant anger not knowing a man was in that car but feeling mighty alright with the idea of showing someone, some bitter diminutive god, that I could give it right back in my own small way now and then, and I hit the front bumper and when a guy hopped out of the plastic moon beetle buggy I got a look at him and said sorry in a deadpan that would chill a robot and walked to my apartment.  

He was a paunchy white man in his late fifties with a sloppy white beard and we were in one of the nicer neighborhoods in the city, and I didn’t damage his car, a little paint came off, it wasn’t bad, but every detail of the conflict factored into my sullen cavalier attitude as I in so many words told this soft and slackened old man he could go jump off a bridge, but had I been a little farther northeast, say on 10^th street, trying to parallel park and had I hit the car of a different sort of a man, a younger man with a stronger sense of pride, no other sense but violent pride along with a passenger seat full of machine guns then I’d be decomposing in a dumpster behind a burger king. Similar to how a 35 year old deaf man met his end a few days ago bleeding in a polluted pond off the interstate, shot in what they call a road rage incident, who may have asserted himself in a flash of choler, venting the spite of his deafness and other assorted handicaps and setbacks, real or imagined, who probably had no inkling of his death even a few moments before it happened and didn’t hear the shots or the horns of hell blaring and probably had barely enough time to feel the lead tearing through his organs and probably didn’t feel his car bouncing on the grassy slope or sliding into the water. Rage not from people but from the roads themselves, seething all day in the heat and rain and shouldering the weight of rocket-propelled two-ton slugs, demanding blood from present-day Aztechs in ghoulish improv travesties of ritual sacrifices.  

The most passive and servile conflict averse population mixed in with honor-bound atavists, duelists with Tourette's and automatic pistols, numbskull knights of degenerate breeding. When someone says culture I reach for the gun I don’t have and then I go to sleep; someone says culture a hundred times a day, society does this or that, people never do anything, they herk and jerk on strings pulled by puppets tossed about by higher powers, abstractions on stilts walking the streets pissing in ears filling up empty jugheads. Play a deadly drinking game, take a shot of vodka every time anyone says society or culture, hurl up your intestines in an hour.  

So much culture every pair of underwear overgrown with mold, feet-smelling cheese in our drawers, toejambands on tour in perpetuity, an oily film on every surface, the shades of the dead trapped in cellulose with a silent wail in their chests, cursed to act out the same tired parts without rest, ever.  

Any time of day the train whistles and the sun shines and the wind runs through the leaves. Some afternoons the leaves hang motionless, green and glistening like strings of cut gemstones. Then days of gray mush and cold drizzle, wet toilet paper skies. Round after round, I’m drunk on the swill of years. Time is an octopus with boxing gloves punching me in the skull. 

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Another name for feedback is noise; the system, insofar as there is one, soaks up your dear diarrhea, wolfs down your diary entrees; the system a mother spitting regurgitated brain worms into chirping baby birds. Vulnerability; the hottest order on the menu.  

Show your soft underbelly, go door to door handing out pamphlets on your bad dates, your lost faith. No more missionaries but doggy-style sermons. Have you heard the disgusting news, my latest disappointment, the thoughts I had while I thought about my thoughts; offshore those weighty regrets, subcontract those misgivings. Mechanize the physical labor then outsource emotional toil. A confessional stall in every bathroom, lower case catholics with lurid scripts for perverted administrators.  

Free to do anything, therefore more sweaty back-patting and foam rolling parties than ever, announcements about preparations for early inquiries and updates on the struggles of resolving a chapter. Stay inside until you check the temperature. Squint at dirty dipsticks. Lotion up chafed skin from all that dry poll-dancing and desert strip teasing.  

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The real job has started and I’m managing a cafe. Finally reached the bottom rung of the professional managerial class. For a decade I’ve worked entry level while people asked if I owned the joint. Now I’m playing a part with some responsibility. Ordering equipment that cost more than the GDP of third world countries, developing programs and conducting interviews when I want to hot box the walk-in. We talk about our feelings and talk about talking about our feelings, talk about what we need to talk about. Stretch 4 hours of work into 8 hours of discussion. Squeeze time of its value then wonder why we’re feeling worthless. Streetwalking clocks, time turning tricks on the corner. We pimp slap the hours into degrading themselves for a cut of ill-gotten gains. A little more hard physical labor and a little less psychology would do us all some good.