Another Guitar

.2:40 pm

(This written after reading Faulkner for the first time - As I Lay Dying and Intruder In The Dust over the course of three days).

and I guess it's really just gonna come down to words. I mean that's how it always is. And that's not gonna change. Right? Nothing ever changes. Right? No. That's not true. There's always words but I'm different. I'm not even the same person I was yesterday or even this morning. Now I'm sweating and this place is hot. Do I walk faster to get to that shade or take it slow and burn the whole way there? Not like it matters cause that shade's not going to last. Five or six steps and I'll be through it. I wonder how they'd feel if I just set up a chair there in that shade. Would they come out on the porch when I wiped off my sweat and drank my water? Maybe I oughtta just go sit up on their porch and wait till they bring me out a nice cold beer and a fat sandwich. Sure is an ugly yard though. Look at that mess and all that dog shit. Oh well, never mind if there's dog shit. What have I got? Like a buck eighty? That'll get me a beer. Yeah, that's a good idea. I like how you think.

I swear if a car knows you're waiting for it to pass it'll just slow down and they'll fiddle with their air conditioner or change their music - but if they think you're gonna try to cross the street before they get there then they'll speed up and get all mad cause you're in their way.

So if things do change if they can change then what makes them change? Maybe nothing changes but the way we see things. Words'd definitely have something to do with that, right? But if I see that something's changed and nobody else does am I gone crazy or are they all just stubborn stupid? Maybe I can just tell myself everything's what I want it to be. This warm water is really a nice big glass of whiskey with ice in it and these shoes are a hell of a lot more comfortable and I'm really sitting some place nice like a garden or by a river and there's dancing girls all up and down the place. Uh huh. Yeah. And now the clouds are low and it's going to be a slow and peaceful laying down of a lot of snow and I'm carrying in another armload of wood for the fire that's already going and there's mugs of hot chocolate with whiskey in em and she's just finishing up another batch of those chocolate muffins that we can't get enough of.

Damn this is a bitch. It's so hot. No place to sit down around here. Why's everybody got to own everything? And they just let it sit there and dry up and rot and some other man comes along and sees it and says to himself this sure does look like a nice place to sit down for a while and then the other guy - the one who owns it - comes out with his shotgun and his eyes popping out and he yells get yer filthy hands off my desert. Shit if I owned something like that I'd say to anybody and everybody hey if you wanna come have a sit that's okay by me and if you wanna bring a few beers well that's just fine too. And somebody could bring a guitar and someone else too and before you know it people'd be moving out of their houses and into their front yards.

Now where can I get a beer for this buck eighty that's close by? Ha! Look at them cops hassling them bums. Don't they know any better or maybe they're lazy or just stubborn stupid. All it takes is decent clothes and you wash your face and comb your hair and then you don't look like a bum. And decent clothes is easy to find cause people like buying brand new things all the time and eventually they're going to throw out the old stuff and there's just plenty enough of em that it makes em feel good to give stuff away that there's always decent clothes to be had if you just ask at the right places. But maybe they just give up maybe they just like to sit there on the concrete and look like they're dying. Maybe they just walked around too many years in the sun and they're tired of it and now they just want to settle in with the dust and the trash and let themselves fade out.

I think they got cheap beers in this place - at least I can get cold water and cool air for a minute. Oh man, look at that. That is so nice. If I was a man that had any kind of money I'd be going right up and saying 'Hello' and 'How do you do' and whatever else I could think of. I'd be offering to carry her stuff out to her car and we'd be setting up a date for a picnic or something real soon. Shit. I'll bet she can smell me. Well, that's how it is and here I am with nothing to do about it.

Now where can I drink this beer and not get a hassle about it like it's even anybody's business to begin with? Why does everybody got to own everything and they don't even use it and it just sits there and now I gotta go hide in some alley and drink my beer and these trash cans stink and there's more ants and flies here than all the people on the earth. Well, at least I don't look like a bum.

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and here's that bum again going straight for his dollar fifty beer and he thinks no one can tell he's a bum just cause he's got decent clothes and he washes his face and combs his hair but by God believe me I can tell a bum when I smwll one and we oughtta just get down to it and rename this place 'Beer for Bums' or something like that cause that's all we get here all day long is just filthy stinking bums by God believe me I'm just sick of them scaring off any respectable customers and staring down every decent lady that wanders by and them always wanting a handout saying hey brother I'm shy a nickel can you spot me and by God believe me I ain't a brother to a one of em and the next one that calls me his brother I might just about punch him in his stinking smelly face and now you got two or three of em they wanna hang out like this is their own private air-conditioned clubhouse and why don't someone tell me why I don't just sell this place and take that money and set up a nice little shady yard where they can all just sit around all day and drink their beers which of course I'll be paying for and keeping cold for them and by God believe me it wouldn't be long before one of em brings a guitar and then another one.