Getting old… and losing your touch

Sure, you could say I’m in a slump lately. It’s the bump and grind of blue collar life and it ain’t getting prettier. Perhaps ill blame it on my age. This month spells out the completion of my quarter century.

Here’s the formula; maybe I have too much time to think. I’m in the truck, and within the first hour I’m spitting out stuff about how open and free the morning highway is, and all this imagery starts up with my dad and I in our early morning house moves. That was a long time ago, damn. We would get up at 6 and drink down some bitter Dunkin Donuts coffee and wreck our bodies for the rest of the day loading up our earthly belongings into that rented U-haul. It’s was always some shitty truck with gray tape across the faded vinyl and absolutely no horn. We must have done this together half a dozen times, and I don’t think he knows it, but those are some of my favorite memories of us. Sure, the moving was ball raking stuff, but at the end of the day we moved a goddamn mountain together, and that’s something to be proud of.

The creative phase can go on all day and I’m left at the end of the shift with nine pure hours of associative free form material about my life and relationships. It’s a daunting thing though, perhaps you don’t understand. It’s the mental effort of passing a grapefruit out your nostril. You need to do it in pieces, not just have one lump sum of citrus and mucous come popping out of you. It’s too much cathartic shit for one little day.

My notebook is something the cat likes to sleep on or paw at. I haven’t gone to a pub or taken a walk or kissed a girl in months. Wordplay is something used for little more than insulting obnoxious co-workers. On more than one occasion I have substituted the dizzy caress of bum wine for cuddling a lover to sleep.

Maybe it’s all just part of getting old, cranky and apathetic; but ill just call it a slump for now, until I break my hip. Maybe it’s the Feng-Shui of having a job you like and some goddamn town you can stand that evades me. Ah, fuck it, lets have some poetry!

Here’s to my readers, you know who you are. Daddy loves each and every one of ya…