The Long, Slow Burn

As stated previously in this space, apologies for the stagnation. The dog days of summer are taking their toll. Everything seems a bit overcooked, overworked, and overused. The days at work are simply a sweat-based endurance trial with no finish line. After a few days in a row on the clock I feel like the bastard son of Kafka and Henry Rollins.

This summer has left me on an island all by myself. My mind goes its own way, usually to the streets of my hometown. Summer becomes a jail, a ship run aground, a ladder to nowhere. The summer animal, I can never outrun or hide from it. The summer bores me out, turns me into a hollow carcass. Fueled by insomnia and a thirst for everything. I turn into boneless limbo man caught in the middle. My skin turns to leather, I turn inside in. I seal off. Underneath this leather exterior I scream, twist, convulse, and burn silently. I wonder to myself wouldn’t I be better off far from anything that bears the least resemblance to this? You can change the scenery that surrounds you. You can run from the fists that pound you, but you cannot escape your feelings. I’ve crawled every sewer from here to there and I’ve never done it. And I burn silently.

The streets lie, the sidewalks lie. You can try to read it but you’re gonna get it wrong. The summer evenings burn and melt and the nights glitter, but they lie. Underneath the streets there’s a river that moves like a snake. It moves with smooth, undulating, crippling muscle power. It chokes and drowns and trips and strangles and lures and says “Come here, stay with me,” and it lies.

Thanks Henry, I needed that. Stay cool.

Ares