Sunday, November 28, 2010

The air is cold and wild


In the woods there are two stone lions, the kind that rich people keep by their doors.  One is missing a head.  Rain streaks their bodies, crooked lumps that squelch the earth like gravestones.  They say that if everyone died today, it would take 20,000 years for all traces of humanity to disappear.  

New York will be a jungle, not of concrete ,but of fat, slow growing trees.  Magnolias will bloom in the local Wal-mart. Across the street, a parking lot will sink under leaves, shit, and dead animals.  A fawn will be born where my bedroom used to be.
   

Someone dumped a TV by the side of the railroad tracks. 

 My parents just bought a new TV, one of those sleek, 2D screens that take up  a whole wall.  The first movie they watched on it was 2001: A Space Odyssey.  



They didn't watch much TV after that. 

 The Railroad Crossing sign reminds me of a crucifix. 


 I wonder what Jesus would think of TV. Except for saturday morning cartoons, I don't think he'd watch much.



The railway tracks are where I go when I want to escape, listen to Bob Dylan, or get run over.  I like the open spaces, the lines that go on forever like the perspectives I used to draw in art class.  The air is cold and wild.  There's no grocery store architecture, only ruins of a time before fences.  I'll be a ruin too, someday.  They'll dump my bones by the tracks next to the TV, all the while wondering why I never got rid of the crayons at the bottom of my purse.
  
I keep the crayons for two reasons.  The first is so I can draw sunsets for waitresses.  I'm too poor to leave a tip, so I leave sunsets on the napkins instead.  I hope the sunsets help them forget that they've been working for six hours, or that their shoes are too small, or that the woman at table 11 is a vegan bitch.

I also keep the crayons in case of emergency.  If a guy shoves a gun in my ear and says "draw me a sunset or I'll pull the trigger", I'll whip them out and draw him a sunset so beautiful, he'll die looking at it.  His gun will clank on the pavement where, 20,000 years in the future, a dandelion is bobbing in the wind.




1 comment:

  1. 2001: A Space Odyssey is a great film, I'm a BIG Kubrick fan! nice pictures ;)

    xoxo

    ReplyDelete