Another day

Guitar solo plays.
I'm sitting.
Drinking again.
She walks up, the angel from my nightmare.
"Hello," she says.
"Hello," I say. I think a thousand thoughts, most worthless. We sit under a tree and the bugs bite my leg. The tree shades the courtyard where we sit. How can it shade at night, I think.
She talks. I think.
I miss you.
I'm used to it by now.
And I think some more. Where are you? You know, you haunt my dreams. All I do is believe. And think. Think too much.
And I'm so sorry, all of a sudden. The feeling randomly overcomes me.
It's dark. A sick strange darkness.
The tree makes it dark.
I think about calling. I don't. My indecision to call you bothers me.
I miss you.
Guitar solo plays.
I breath.
I exhale.

a shot and a mission

Flying down the street was the silver bullet that I think ultimately hit him harder than he could handle, knocking him off his feet and to the ground.
The bullet flies. Low set, new tires, Mitsubishi Eclipse, a convertable, of course, because that would be all she'd drive.
She's that kind of girl. Speeding down the street.
I'm on the sidewalk and I give one of those glances where it is pure luck that I'm glancing in the right place at the right time and right to her - becauses she is flying - and I see as the car bullets by that she's in the driver seat smiling and I think to myself that I haven't seen that smile in about....
....a year.
That's how long it's been, hasn't it, a full year since the gun - which, may I add was already loaded in the the first place - was cocked and the safety flipped off and the trigger pulled straight by her at her former boyfriend. A crosshair was coincedentally placed dead on his heart. Funny how she works. When the bullet finally exited through his back, after piercing it's intended target, he was, in many ways, no more. That's what they'll do to you I supposse. He hasn't seen her since, doesn't want to, not after what she's done to him. Not after he took the shot. She was that cool sniper that ended everything he ever hoped and dreamed.
As I watch the bullet race by me and see her cold-as-steele-grin, the one that I'm sure is the last thing he saw before he was no more, I think to myself that it's kind of ironic that he'll now be pulling the trigger for real.
He's headed to the Marines.
Headed to war.
Sounds cool, until you really think about it, I think. Blood and guts and horror and pain. Sure, you're on an endless beach along the hottest part of the world (great for tans) and sure you get to drive a tank (great for chicks), but, c'mon, how many hearts are shot to death after somebody comes back from war, alive or otherwise? That's something that changes people.
But maybe he needs a change, I think as I'm watching the brilliant shimmer off the car as it bullets forward. Change for him is what he's looking for. Tables reversed is what he's looking for. He wants to break hearts. After being hit with a bullet once I think he got it in his head that he would be either more of a man or less of a failure if he got shot (at) by a thousand more real life bullets. That's a weird way to look at it, I think, but more or less true. He's out to prove something. Maybe that will help him feel like the first blast he took from her was actually one that he could handle. Maybe his solution, war, is the one thing that will help his broken heart feel fixed again. Doing to others what was done to you in order to feel like you're...stronger.
Maybe I'm all wrong.
Maybe I'm thinking too much.
Maybe he'll be an expert at building sand castles. That would do him good. He would need that more in his life than a jihad against him. Sand castles. Because his original castles in the sky got blown to hell along time ago.

Cliche'd

As he talks the cigar smoke swirls from his lips. His head blocks the light of a porch lamp, the only light in the summer night. It makes for that effect where his head is covered in a silhoutte of beaming yellow light, but I can't see his face.
"The perfect cliche momment right now," he says.
We're all sitting outside, in the summer night, and he plays "Wonderwall" by Oasis on his guitar and we all listen.
"The perfect song, though."
"Wonderwall" can debatably be the quintessential song of our generation; that perfect song that everyone knows and everyone knows the words to and everyone wants to hear at a moment like this, and that any able guitar player will play at a momment like this. The song touches everyone. Has that special feeling for everyone. Maybe it saves everyone. Makes them all think about their wonderwall.
I don't believe anybody in the entire world feels the way we do, here, right now. That's what the song does to you.
He puffs on his cigar and tells me about his upcoming trip to California. I was born in California, haven't been back since. Does that mean I'm from California, I think? But I don't say it because I'm not in the mood for back porch philosophies on just who I am.
Wonderwall is kept strung in the air, with a chorus of cricketts to go along with it.
Nobody really talks, they just jabber. I don't really talk, I just listen and watch as his cigar smoke spirals and is swallowed up by the moonlight. I'm quiet. I feel peaceful.
As he plays I begin to sing the second verse, "All the roads we have to walk are winding...," and I think about another time I sat and sang this song, in Mexico, two years ago.
Needed to get away then, find some sort of wonderwall, I remember. That was a winding road, a blinding light. Mexico was a wonderwall.
I remember there were four of us: my Colombian friend and two Swedish girls we met at a bar the night before and me one warm night. We were walking down one of the allies in the quaint little tourist town of Playa Del Camren. Near the end of the Cobblestone road was a bar and we walked in and after I walked in I noticed that I was the only blonde-haired, fair-skinned person in a room full of 20 or 30 Mexicans. The two Swedes were burnette and both had a very defined sun tan. I've never been a minority.
We sat down and eyes followed me to the table. The owner of the bar, short and grey-haired who spoke good English, came over. He had a guitar in his hand.
"Those guys," he pointed to a table of Mexicans looking at me, "want you to play."
I've never played a guitar in my life. I wanted to tell him, but didn't know how on account I only speak German and English. My Colombian friend chatted him up and smiled after a few jokes that a lot of other people laughed at but where I only sat and listened and faked a grin because I had no idea what was going on. My friend took the guitar and began stringing Wonderwall, the only song anybody really would play in the middle of a Mexican bar, of course, and I sang the lyrics because everyone in the whole entire world born in my generation knows those lyrics - even the Mexicans - and as I sang everyone in the room listen and smiled, but didn't talk because, when you hear wonderwall, especially the acoustic version, you don't talk and only think and smile and remember that time you found your wonderwall. Even in Mexico you just listen.
Like tonight, on the porch.
Everyone on the porch was now smoking and talking and I leaned back in my chair and undid the wrapper of a piece of chewing gum. Gum has become my cigarette. I didn't talk.
There are a lot of things I think I'd like to say, but don't know how.
Like in Mexico.
I began singing again, as my friend played.
"And there are many things that I'd like to say to you, but I don't know how...."