I've got the red wine blues. the liquor store, which label to choose. when you take everything for granted you've got nothing to lose. no freedom to choose.
up on the emerald coast, you've been such a gracious host
your paintings won't go to waste
I've buried them in the back yard
with the weight of the 2nd floor
the garden will lose a sense of dignity
and the flowers will now grow wildly
weeds won't kill themselves
they need lethal injection
they need chemical fraction
miserable reduction
a sickening health
with conditional wealth
---------
up those stairs into a mystery of dusty photographs and collected paintings. an art collector and dealer out of the converted top story of his childhood home, his elderly parents still living below, never had a license to drive a vehicle, always had a ride or a shuttle, someone else responsible... 'my how tall you've gotten' he would say while patting me on the head and I brush beneath the faux chandelier in the front room and gentle we mask our feelings for each other in the alcoholic haze of wine tasting exuberance, fast cars and nice collections, german motors and leopard print, dvd players with wide collection, mild recollection, my childhood was disallowed from that foreign upstairs region of the house. the wild remodeled version for which I'd never grown accustomed, and the burials cease to fuel my longing to come back up. this is not the first time nor the worst time. he never came down those stairs for the superficial presentation of christmas present giving or receiving. or nothin'.
remember to rolls royce. the extravagence. the wine tasting. the exceptional and shining rings on each finger like beacons of some foreign wealth I couldn't comprehend, it took all of this time, my window opened and my bubble burst in some short confetti explosion, with all of the things we never did with one and other..... I remember distinctly helping, on multiple occasions, with yard work. I trim the enormous hedges covering the front yard of the house. For privacy. With a black santa in the bushes.
drinking wine in diners
I remember spreading beauty bark and oh the smell. That forlorn scent amidst such scenic beauty. This man guiding the maneuvers of such a lost youth. years back. drinking lemonade from a shaky old woman's kitchen. she needs the help of young men like us. my uncle and I. trimming branches and wielding the bucket out through the dead or dying leaves and understanding now that many others would have done this without complaint for a fraction of the cost and without musical amplification that I had... the dear hunter... the color spectrum... the most beautiful bark spreading of my century. and this is an enticement of his exuberance. afterward starbucks. he bought me a coffee, sandwich, and a cd. bon iver. this is something I couldn't understand. buying things like this was out of my head. a starbucks cd? how beautiful it was. listening to it with my mother while discovering yosemite valley and beauty of such sights and such pleasures. when you're used to beautiful things you are conditioned into believing the weather is an honest factor.
I hope this trip is something exceptionally placed in my history. Self learning experience. Not just driving around. So much to explore. I hope I have a spirit, however impossible, to guide me. The spirit of my estranged exuberant uncle, who lived upstairs in my childhood grandparent's home, the home he always lived in, the upstairs he inhabited until now, until an untimely doom with failed kidneys in a nice facade of a hospital in monterey. I thank him for his advice. He treated me so well for so how unknown we were. All through the grapevine.
My sister saw him change from a functional adult to a vegetable. He died before they could pull the plug. He would not want to be alive in such a state. Such a state of prolonged existence. With tubes entering and exiting. all sorts of dialysis and kidneys destroyed from such years, all 62 of them, the eldest uncle and the oldest brother, the oldest son for the elderly parents who outlived one child and are full of wisdom but without alcohol their entire life, never touched a drop and the smoke of a cigarette treated them like an avalanche treats a sleeping village. none of us are safe but they are ridiculous in moral straightness. a rigid and beautiful experience. my grandfather. my papa jim is a man of much motivation for me. he is a wonderful example of a life well lived. I need to hear more stories now that I know that I need them. I need to find a family tree with solid roots. I do not want to see anymore gravestones in its shadows until I get the full story. I need no more gallows under my family tree branches. I will also die. Everyone will. I must accept this. Not without an understand of an awesome past for each of them.
It takes someone to die to realize how little you know.
There was distance between myself and everyone.
Always.
Now to remedy the situation.
