April: bastard daughter of February

chill, damp april. gray veils rushing back in over the sun, as though the sky is embarrassed to have shown it so early. a spatter of rain last night. the asphalt glistens before seeming to suspiciously disappear, except for the sheen from the streetlights. in a surprise verdict, i am sent home early from work. i spend the night lounging in a green stupor before the television. it is all mindless. i investigate the more absurd corners of this glowing world: so-called 'reality' programs, game shows, a truly terrible movie, cartoons, even the news. the news, i find, is the worst of all of it. sensational headlines. although one of them was merited: in our small town, two nights ago, an individual set fire to ten cars over the area of three to four blocks. some of the flames were so intense as to leap to buildings nearby, leaving twenty people homeless and most people (at four in the morning) awake to the shrieking sirens. E. is incredulous: this, all this, the work of one person? apparently he was down the block, setting more fires, as the sirens & lights filled the streets just behind him.

from that story, it's onto another house fire, this one fatal, killing a young man and gravely injuring his friend. from there, a murder, a killing. the weather, which is dramatically rendered in poor, halting, 3-D graphics. there is a wide swath of variegated green rushing across the lower half of the state.

morning: chilly. that kind of filtered gray light that still makes you squint. the air seems thin. i can feel it in my lungs - amidst the cigarette smoke, mucus, and god knows what else.

the cigarette abruptly undergoes a transfiguration. no longer am i holding a paper tube filled with god knows what else, suddenly i am injecting a white syringe deep into my throat. the needle curves, spitting noxious black liquid into the cushiony bottoms of my lungs. i hack & cough as a convulsive result to this grotesque image, and stare for a long time at the ash-end of the thing. a few seconds pass. i watch the smoke curl into the air, nearly invisible. the clouds become god's exhaust. i stub out the cigarette but make no commitments to quitting. just the vague, formless notion.

i watch the cat, curry, a plump patchwork lady, stare at a row of three birds on the curb. she is far enough away to ready herself for the pounce, eyes fixed on her target. the one on the end, i imagine. it hops a little stranger than the other two, looks smaller. the runt, i'm sure. curry's tail is lashing, deliberately, side to side. her hind legs are tensing - i can see the minute twitches of instinct running electric through her muscles -

i blink, and there's a brown dog, large, barking madly, skittering against a leash, and curry has bolted backward in a contortion of adrenalin, somewhere up & beyond me, to cower & quiver up on the second story porch. the dog is straining against the collar, chuffing, spittle at his jaws. i, being on the top of the food chain, can't help but laugh. there is no sign of the three gray birds on the curb. the dog's owner, or at least, the woman on the other end of the leash, is getting on in age, chiding the dog at the same time as reining him in. we make amiable chatter for a moment. i fill her in on the moment before. she tells me what happens from her perspective, which i imagine is a sudden jolt in the arms, followed by a stumble, a regaining of balance, and then that brief tug-o-war.

she moves on. curry is nowhere to be seen.

oh, yeah, and the IRS took my tax refund to pay for some of that, like, 20k i owe to various loan-places. i figure if i keep this up, say, at $250 a year in taxes withdrawn, i can pay off my debts in my eightieth year.

ha!