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Order this writing in the collection book Life on the Edge this huge volume is available for only $2395 |
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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
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That Era
Joshua Copeland
I walked out Pittsburgh Vision Services for the last time
that Monday—
I walked into the shipping
office, the timer punched my time card, out the
shipping office, out the
shipping room door, through that bright,
Mickey Mouse hall (Muzak,
vacuumed orange carpet), past offices—blurbs of
conversation: “...Dave has to clean the
toilets in the second floor women’s restroom by
four tomorrow, or he’s...” “...Have you done anything
except complain?...” “...Well, I’ll tell you a lie...Chris is mean
to the kids, and he doesn’t supervise
them too well...” “...Now if you don’t...” Past Barbara at
the front desk, out the double doors (the fetal heat
had made wet splotches
of the dirty snow),
home to my studio apartment to
call Diane Salidonia to say I was quitting. I waited
till she had gone home. Had to leave
three messages on her machine. Yes, my resignation
was that long. The light flickered
in the cave: Screams were heard like a
train whistle in a tunnel.
Those days, from March on...I bobbed
with the swells out past the breakers
as the shore went up and down. My carpet
was a lemony yellow
slush. Every night, high on Benedryll. Champagne,
three days corkless, three days
out the fridge. I crawled naked
from my computer to my bathroom. Usually woke at
four p.m., in bed at
nine a.m. to the grunts of the buses
chock full of nine-to-fivers. Asleep when the twin towers
collapsed. “They are gone! You mean you didn’t hear?
They are not there!” Most days I only saw
night.
Watched Taxi Driver, electrified by
Taxi Driver, all day, all day. That movie
was a manual: Stomping back
into Pittsburgh Vision Services with a 9mm Beretta to blow the tendons
out the back sides of Frank Pippin’s and Linda Felton’s
necks. Shifting to nothingness, to a drab,
colorless lump of flattened gum, sentience to
statue, flesh to clay. And it was all
meant: Society had left its
imprints on me, claw marks from
talons that dug, dug, and
dug.
Color deprivation from staying
in my apartment too long...to go out during
a sunny day was like an acid trip. The life of many men
squeezes itself around your neck like a
python...Population over three hundred million...me: white faced,
rail thin, red eyed.
Always took at least two hours to
jerk off to jpegs on my computer. Most
other lives: tesseracts in display windows. Every single day it was
Curtains (Notice that capital C?). I floated like ether
past the demarcations of the calendar, square to
square, month fading into
month, all clocks and dates
subsidiary.
And it never ended. That rainwater
shooting a tepid gurgle through the gutter recycles
itself up to the thunderheads, and man,
do you pay. The price of trying to
belong: self mutilation, eyes slit like
closed blinds (Pluto in the dark), driving drunk from
strip club to strip club, drooling on
those stiletto high heels. A hierarchy of angels amidst
a herd of lepers. And that stereo from next door: A gliding
UFO, a live rainbow undulating
in the wind, life from another
planet. Heaven promises
you nothing but the absence of
hell.
I will lay the dynamite delicately and light it
gingerly, ready to blow all of you
into confetti, all of you that superimpose
yourselves over me (I do not dread as much
as you think). Every one of you:
dead. Your children? Dead. Your
husbands, wives, grandparents? Dead. Pets?
Dead. Gardens? Drowned.
You expelled me, and you will pay and I
will not except collateral and you will finish
your lives in wheelchairs.
The furnace in the eye
of the psycho, a lit match reflected
in the iris...biblical proportions.
That era has not ended. Still, I love
nothing but myself, I throttle the
passers by on the sidewalk, my window is an angry tear
in the fabric
of space.
