johnnyfive

I was walking the Lulu Belle & Toby through my neighborhood, a labyrinth of bungaloos with screened-in front porches and bright colored children's toys in the lawn. One lady is listening to a sports broadcast on a small radio while potting plants on her driveway. Her neighbor has blues music wafting out from her open glass sliding door onto the backporch where she fumbles with what looks like bonsai on an azaelea. I never understood why white people listened to the blues; why not "O' Sweet Chariot" ? Across the street a man is washing his Pathfinder, a pourous, beige sponge is swirled over a faded american flag bumper sticker that seems to molest the chrome of his bumper with its ugliness. There is the intermitent crash of railroad cars hooking up at the depot the block over. It sounds like what I imagine a bomb would sound like. I don't live in Iraq, I can only imagine what warfare sounds like.
Nobody is responsible for their actions. It's their medication or lack of. The clergy can apologize for their fold molesting children under the guise of spiritual leadership and a misogonist can govern one of the most influential states in the union. Our president can lead us blindly into war, causing havoc in distant lands, making entire nations despise us as a whole, yet we would rather know if Michael Jackson molested a young boy. News about the war is only good if it's good for ratings. The youth use protesting as a platform for dating and rallies as a vehicle for celebration, yet somehow they will never admit this even to themselves. All this goes on as the ladies dabble in their suburban gardens and the men polish their gas mongering behemoths. All this goes on as the old lady in the pink house next to me blows leaves around in her yard with a cigarette pinched between her knobby knuckles. A dog is barking somewhere close by, starting a chain reaction of barks from dogs of various octaves, like a chorus of imprisoned canine slaves singing of their woes. Maybe I should start an urban defoilage company to rid trees of their pesky leaves well before they litter the precious, fertilized lawns of the honkeys. Twenty years ago I would have been polishing some asshole's lawn jockey. A lick from stinky Lootie and I'm back on the path of apathy, forgetting about remembering and remembering to forget. -