a story poem spun from a stool long ago
Posted: December 12th, 2020, 6:48 pm
I was a transplanted philistine greenhorn buck
lookin for all the answers in a new geography
the record store was my constructed sanctuary
and there was plenty of ear candy and eye candy to tempt a boy
from that same swiveling stool where the pretty hippie girl with the Key West tan and the silver necklace
would religiously peel the plastic covering from the vinyl nuggets of gold and i would slip into another universe
where headphones amplified and caressed my baked skull.... and closed eyes were portals to contentment
things back home were contentious and hardlines never played well with me.....
They were doing their best I guess trying to apply their farm wisdom on a field of vegetables to be canned and stored
in the root cellar of the mind, so their move to Baltimore scared the hell out of them, they didn't recognize nor agree
with what their downhome eyes showed them, and they were dealing with a rebel without a known cause
and I was not one to be broken like a stallion, more like a wild mustang that needed to run the streets
so I left home at seventeen, rented a house with some other misfits from the neighborhood who unsurprisingly were
having troubles of their own, and by nineteen I had gone as far south as i could go in the United States, I knew that
because there was a sign in the sand that read Southernmost Point in the U.S......the end of US 1.....the sign added
from Fort Kent, Maine to Key West, Florida.....I landed on this construction site, then sitting on that stool I mentioned
every Friday evening after work with money in my pocket....had an oversized basket on my bike for my tools and lunch
I had stumbled into a place I happily called home and wouldn't see mom or dad again for seven years, that's how long
it took to recalibrate, maybe it's true what they say about seven year itches, or maybe it was a seven mile fissure
a crack in the psyche. but in any case that stool on Duvall St. sure seemed righteous and sure filled a void
and seeds were sown in the sandy loam and with a lot of subtropical sunshine something grew healthy and tall
I think it was Mark Twain that said, when i left home at 18 and came back when i was 25, I couldn't believe how much
mom and dad had learned....
Ha ha....me and Mark.......and never the twain shall meet
lookin for all the answers in a new geography
the record store was my constructed sanctuary
and there was plenty of ear candy and eye candy to tempt a boy
from that same swiveling stool where the pretty hippie girl with the Key West tan and the silver necklace
would religiously peel the plastic covering from the vinyl nuggets of gold and i would slip into another universe
where headphones amplified and caressed my baked skull.... and closed eyes were portals to contentment
things back home were contentious and hardlines never played well with me.....
They were doing their best I guess trying to apply their farm wisdom on a field of vegetables to be canned and stored
in the root cellar of the mind, so their move to Baltimore scared the hell out of them, they didn't recognize nor agree
with what their downhome eyes showed them, and they were dealing with a rebel without a known cause
and I was not one to be broken like a stallion, more like a wild mustang that needed to run the streets
so I left home at seventeen, rented a house with some other misfits from the neighborhood who unsurprisingly were
having troubles of their own, and by nineteen I had gone as far south as i could go in the United States, I knew that
because there was a sign in the sand that read Southernmost Point in the U.S......the end of US 1.....the sign added
from Fort Kent, Maine to Key West, Florida.....I landed on this construction site, then sitting on that stool I mentioned
every Friday evening after work with money in my pocket....had an oversized basket on my bike for my tools and lunch
I had stumbled into a place I happily called home and wouldn't see mom or dad again for seven years, that's how long
it took to recalibrate, maybe it's true what they say about seven year itches, or maybe it was a seven mile fissure
a crack in the psyche. but in any case that stool on Duvall St. sure seemed righteous and sure filled a void
and seeds were sown in the sandy loam and with a lot of subtropical sunshine something grew healthy and tall
I think it was Mark Twain that said, when i left home at 18 and came back when i was 25, I couldn't believe how much
mom and dad had learned....
Ha ha....me and Mark.......and never the twain shall meet
