AFTER MATH

A grey morning after last night’s rain, the front loader is sloshing around through pools of muddy water at Bob’s Material Supply, a solid stream of headlights in the oncoming lane won’t let me in, I scream at it, then notice I don’t have my signals on.  Then I scream at the NPR announcer for being a zombie and ask him to show some human emotion for a change, then I give up and just stare at the gloomy crossbars of an empty sign with slowly retreating clouds behind it, and remember the little bits of shit falling into David’s colostomy bag while he talked to me yesterday.  And my own face looks like death warmed over in the restroom mirror in Bob’s, making me wonder if I can ever get this property into balance with nature so the non profit I’m giving it to after I die could take it from there.  Rene’, the block layer, says I work better and harder than a twenty year old.  He doesn’t understand that’s all just desperation.  But when the sun doesn’t shine here in Southern Arizona, it’s such a shock that gloom seems to be all there is or ever will be.

And Jane calls like a human echo chamber to tell me again how irritated she is by the pots and decorations and stuff left over from Bob and Mary’s “crappy yard sale” in the common area between the two apartments.  I say we’re getting rid of all that and putting in a block planter going all around the fence,

“That’s what it’s all about.” I say. 

Then she says she’s irritated by her own mattress that she had to leave outside her fence because she didn’t have a way to haul it. And I say there’ll be a dumpster at the church in a few days.  And then there’s nothing left to complain about except maybe she just doesn’t feel good.

And I get back with a yard of ideal mix and idealism, unload them both simultaneously, and start moving the knick knacks and trinkets from the trees where we’re going to work.   Little bits and pieces from Sue’s last go round before the meth just wiped out her whole brain, pretty little things the poor always seem to spend their money on to make everything all better.

The way our vision goes.