| NEPENTHE |  |
JOURNAL |
A friend had a brother who was insane. Diagnosed, treated, medicated, and hospitalised for insanity. He's dead now but in his last few years he took to traveling. He would disappear and be gone for a long period and show back up around here missing all monies, cars, clothes, that he left with. The last time he came back on his own he stank so bad his father burned his clothing. Police in Colorado once found him laying in the snow beside a road making snow angels and he had no money or car or i think maybe even a coat. Colorado sent him home. He killed himself two years ago by stepping in front of a train in Oklahoma (I think)
I always was sort of fascinated by his story. I wrote this stuff below tonight and couldn't decide whether to make it a poem or a short story(lately my writing style has been the same for both, mostly lack of flow and puctuation but thats another story). Before i closed it and saved it, probably never to be worked on again, I thought I'd send it to the only travelling lit guy I know. i have no thoughts that this below is good or complete but along with this explanation it's an interesting, sad, tale that shows promise for a writing of some sort i think.
There were birds over the highway in my first hour headed north, signs in brown announcing a park here and a wildlife refuge here. I was filling up my ashtray and sucking down coffe that made me have to urinate about every 10 minutes it seems and I would roll into some plastic no character highwayside fillup store and tumble out of my car feeling like some character the teenager behind the counter had already heard about, the kind of character that made working beside the highway "interesting". But I am not dangerous, no, not to anyone there, and I get my coffee, do my thing, and I go back to the highways flow I am tied to that rhythm.
Signs in white announce the dreaded suitable for commercial development and signs in green tell me where I am but I don't give a shit because I know where I am I am alone and have no place to go except to move and I cannot even stand voices on the radio for company. I see a hill in the distance with a semi going over it and I count the seconds until I go over it and maybe I can catch that guy.
The sky shows signs of rain and I hope that it doesn't snow because my brain shows signs of implosion that I'm trying to ward off until my heart shows signs of hope. We can't have snow here because I have to stop for snow and go out into it and lay down. I don't want to stop until I get there.......
