Blue Sky.

I go days without really giving a shit about much.

I eat my face off and read my books, go to my little job and rake leaves or pull up old carpet. I sit behind my little girl on the floor as she dances around in front of the television and I stare at her and hold her in my eyes. I'll put the dogs in the back of the Honda and take them to the place where we walk. I throw tennis balls we find in the bushes until we lose them again, in other bushes.

At night, I flop down on my bed when the house is still and quiet and before long I can't hold my eyelids up anymore.

Weeks go by for me when I don't let the past in. Any drips of nostalgia that leak out of the ether, I blow them off my skin like knats. People I knew before, I bury them in chunks of rubble, in piles of yesterday, so that only their dusted hands and feet stick out here and there. And those could be anybody's. All the good times I had in the band, I shove them off. Because inevitably, nights out in Spanish bars or afternoons spent laughing out loud in vans ripping down lost highways, sooner or later they lead to faces and names and so many of those are tainted for me. It was a fun life to be sure, but it was a castle of dreams too. A castle often ripped down by things ending badly. Pride plays a part, I guess. And hurt. We're only human, I tell myself, and we have to forgive and forget and blah blah blah. Still, most of the faces: they walk into my head, stroll up behind my eyes and smile one of their old smiles, and before you know it: I got the grenade in one hand and the pin in the other. Adios, amigo. Again, I guess.

My blues come on like a lot of people's probably. Slow. Like cars poking around Christmas lots, far from the store doors, just looking for any damn spot they can find. Eventually they find one and park and that's when I have to just deal with it all. And I'm not complaining and if you think I am, well, you can kiss my ass. I eat my Zolofts and plow through my days and try and be the best dad I can be without ever dangling my blues in front of her. But there are times when I wonder whether she can tell. People smell other people's burdens sometimes. And little kids: I get the feeling they are sniffing stuff out long before they could dream of explaining it to you. It's just a vibe; a couple pink or grey clouds rolling slow across the living room ceiling.

And, I know this much too. Kids love you so much, just like you love them. And if they could slice off a fat wad of your blues and just deal with it themselves, I bet  they would. But, it isn't that simple really.

Time fucks with you like nothing else. Good wise people all over the place surprise us when they show up with new obvious sheens on their skin. Noses get rearranged on purpose. Grown men go out to bars wearing Ed Hardy shirts, believing they have found some little secret on slowing time down, if only for a couple of hours. But its all useless. Inside of you, clocks are ticking and they don't care about your hide or your outfits. You're just an hourglass marching around, wondering if people like how you look. You're just doing your best, I guess, finding your own little ways to deal with your own little blues.

Me, I haven't done any surgeries yet. And I own less clothes now than I ever have in my life. If you were to watch me from behind trees for a week or so, you'd wonder to yourself why this guy never changes out of his tattered work pants. And that's a fair question. I think it's because I've been battling my blues with some sort of Peasant Power for awhile. I figured maybe less was more. I started reading about North Korea a lot, trying to see how people there got through their days. They must know blues, you know? But I don't find all that much. It seems like no matter how bad it gets you either clench your teeth and plow on or you don't. The conditions change drastically, but the mantras don't.

Satisfaction comes back. It always does with me. And I guess that makes me lucky, because for some people I think it doesn't. It comes back for me probably because I chase away everything that could possibly keep it from bolting out of the dark woods at some point. Old faces, old times. The here and now. Everything but the push, the forward momentum, I bitch slap them away from me.

The sun comes out and I find stuff to get high on. Jelly cheeks. Little trout. Something I was able to write or something some stranger wrote to me. My wife's fat belly and the boy cooking in there. I take a shot of that and before I know it I'm getting off on something good, something ancient and strong. Tomorrows. Tons of them, lined up like an endless ranch fence, only disappearing over some slight rise so far off across the windy barren fields that you don't even have to worry about way out there for a long long time.

This isn't advice from me. I don't have any. And I ain't looking for any either. Maybe you don't have much blues. Good lookin' out.

I'm just writing shit down that's way too long to put up on stupid Facebook.

Later.

The House Chicken And The Swedish Rat.

My face is squished into the carpet and the dogs think maybe I've had that stroke they've been waiting for. They are sniffing at my neck and my ass, taking big drags of my odor, seeing if they can smell the Grim Reaper on me. Lucky for me, they don't. I know they would start in eating me before too long. No Call of The Wild shit here. No pacing around the master, whining/worrying. No miraculous calls to 911 placed by a black lab. Hell no. One of them would give the other one the green light with a quick glance.

There! There I smelled it! I just smelled the dead smell! He's gone/Dig In!

They'd be conking heads and making snorts and using their paws and their fangs and their long stinky tongues to get at the best cuts of me; like the rednecks at the Golden Corral on Saturday night, when they refresh the ribs and the pulled pork. Fucking fat bastards. Thankless pickled-brained gluttons, vaccuming my sweet fine muscles into their dog guts.

Ugh.

Anyways, I'm not dead, so they can shove it.

I'm down on the floor, with my left cheek planted so hard into the carpet that I can feel some of the fibers tickling the corner of my eyball. I'm being still too, and quiet, so when the damn dogs come hovering I have to give them stealth kicks and ninja pops to get them to clear out. 

I see Violet's little socks thumping across her side of the floor. She's on the move. Perfect. She has no clue I'm here. I can barely make out her feet when they stop just a few inches away from my eye, on the other side of her bedroom door.

Twist/Shake/Twist/Twist/Shake! Ha! She's trying to turn the door knob! I'm breaded in pride crumbs. My little girl trying to escape her bedroom on her own.

I am enamored. Fascinated with a splash of terror.

(  And I'm ok with it as long as I'm in on the whole thing, either lying in wait behind the door, or having a Diet Coke and some chips as I watch my secret bank of forty three hidden camera montors. Whatever works is fine with me. I'll get as creative as she does. Sneaking out the window at 11pm on a Friday night when we're supposed to be waking up early tomorrow morning for a family trip to the Christmas Tree Farm/YES IN JULY!, to keep an eye on the tree we tagged with a sliver of orange ribbon back in March; to make certain it is growing and will be ready for the sixty pounds of lights and kabibble we aim to hang from its carcass come December. Sneaking out the window, using the little fire ladder I have set up to aid her in an emergency, a ladder which she descends, quietly/swiftly, down-down-down, to the freedom she deserves and the friends she NEEDS to see TONIGHT; to be with other humans who actually understand her and love her, not like her thick-headed dorky asshole Dad who is, O.M.G!: waiting at the bottom of the ladder, with a glass of wine; ankle-deep in Home Depot barkchips and cedar shavings.

"Hi, Honey."  )

So, Violet whacks at the knob a few times and sighs. Then, she lets out a gasp; a sweet beautiful little cry for help from some unseen God of Kids/God of Locked Doors. I smile at that.

Watching things under a door, with only about an inch of vantage, is really something. You have to use so much of your imagination, to picture exactly what is going on in there, but you're also dictated quite a bit of the story just by the shadowy movements of feet, the sounds that slip out of people's lips when they are sure they are alone and forgotten. At one point, my daughter rams her head a couple times  against her side of the door. When you're the parent you get used to having that extra sense that tells you: Yes, that particular thwap on the front window or echoing off of the dryer, yeah, that was your kid's head slamming around out there. Same here. As soon as she pops the door with her noodle I can tell it was a head butt. She does it twice more, then: no sound.

I dig deep into the carpet and watch as her feet disappear around a corner. I strain my ears and soon enough I make out some Russian. She's in there blabbering it up with her stuffed Ikea rat, talking in tongues to the good listener. Her tones amaze me. Lilting conversational tones, tones of inquiry and chastising and gentle prodding. And no sensible words, just secret ishkibibble dressed up in tight little sentences. I see her in my head. I see her standing over beside her new big kid's bed, holding the rat in her plum fist, pointing her teeny finger at his whiskered snout.

She tells him whats up. Tells him they're trapped. Tells him not to worry, she'll think of something.

Then, she's back at the door. The small socks turn the corner and the knob bursts with a fresh bustle of turns and shakes. (It isn't locked, but it doesn't matter much.) Pow,Pow,Pow, she kicks the door just by my eye. It is a spectacular visual, for me at least. Like watching wildlife shows when you're baked. The 1978 thick clumsy footage of high mountain rams smashing skulls at 75 mph as you drag a Ruffles through supermarket onion dip and all of the universe spins up in a swirling tornado crueller of toasted mind-blows. She kicks at the door, at the camera's expensive lense, and I narrate in my head.

"I'mmmmm Marty Stouffer. The rarely seen Sleepy Grumpkin is a sight to behold. With its friend the Swedish Furniture Rat, she can tear apart her own deep cave nest in a matter of minutes, driven by her endless need to parade around on the forest floor, looking for things to pick up and, sometimes, rice cake crumbs or boot mud she can nibble upon. Join me as we peer in on this fascinating creature, Tonight on Wiiiilllllld America."

I slide my fingers into the crack between the door and the carpet and her fumbling around stops.

There is a long solitary moment when I am the soul of giddy anticipation. What will happen? What's she gonna do? I mean, there are really only two things that can happen, I guess. B ut I'm hoping of one of them.

I wait. I wiggle my digits, slide them a little this way and that.

Then it comes. I feel her light fingers brush the tops of mine, as if she's touching to make sure shes seeing; as if she's making sure she isn't dreaming. I lift as much of my hand as I can.

She pokes at me again.

I grab hold of one of her fingers.

She cackles with glee. I shake it a little bit: you're mine now!: a friendly monster coming in under the door. It makes her bananas. She darts backwards acrosss the room and I can barely see it happen.  I give knock on the door and she comes flying back and starts whacking at the knob again.

And, then of course, I go in. Like a dumbass. Like a spoiler, an enabler. Unable to stick to my plan, to just watch and not give myself up; to observe the kid in her natural habitat as she freaks out/plays me, and then eventually, falls asleep like she's supposed to be doing, on her bed or curled up down on the carpet.

I open the door and she flies right right by my kness like a chicken on its way across the yard, never looking up at me, never paying me any mind at all.

Places to go, shit to do, man. Places to go. Shit to do.

The Ramblin' Bamblin' Young Man's Heaven Blues.

This world is so confusing most of the time. You putzed around through your days/sneaking smokes under the metal bleachers/playing with yourself before you fell asleep to the fat cricket's song of another oozing August night. Your days were baseball and chicks. Sunburst guitars and meatloaf. You were gonna get a motorcyle, ride it straight into the dusk of some dream-like horizon. You were just living your life. Then, in a 3AM rice paddy, with the dark kettle drum booms of your young heart echoing off into the sky, past treetops filled with beat-up jungle birds and off into the ether of twinkling stars, you took one more earthly step and were gone forever. Back in your room, far far away, your old catcher's mitt lay under your empty bed: a small house spider shitting out eggs into the broke-in pocket where the fastballs used to pop.

Now, you sit on the side of a river of wine by mountains made of cloud, waiting for other dudes your age to come wandering downstream. Their faces are scared/awkward. You talk to them calmly. You hand 'em smokes that can't hurt and a Zippo. What was so confusing back there, you tell them, will all make sense to you real soon, buddy.

Finally, after a while, they smile at you, all jittery.

Come on, you say. I'll show ya' around. You're gonna like it here, fella, you say.

And they follow you down easy trails, to take a gander at the kingdom.

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I remember vividly the babbling brook between me and the first deer I ever shot. It was a just a trickle, with smooth rocks the size of cannonballs. My ears were still ringing with the thunderous silence that comes after an old scopeless Remington erupts next to your skull. I walked through the water. Or on top of it. In my cheap Fayva workboots I ran to my deer; the icy pure water washing over the splatter stains on the fronts of the leather; slashing away at the month-old remnants of a vicious puke I'd earned from swallowing snuff spit so I could keep talking to a girl on the phone: a girl who was way out of my sixteen year old league. My husky body forged the stream, winter water soaking my wool socks, and I arrived at the deer's side pink and panting. The woods were still. There was no movement in the world.

He was a spike buck. Undernourished and not all that big. A Pennsylvania mountain deer. A moss eater.

His eyeball was open. There was a glaze on it. A vapid empty stare like one of the guys in Oasis. Within seconds, I knew that I hated him. I hated his stupid ass for standing there a hundred yards from the goddamn parking lot when I was on my way out of the hollow in the final moments before dark. I hated him for letting me shoot at him. And for letting me hit him. I wanted to wrap my arms under his belly guts and heave him upright and drag him around until he started kicking again. Until he ran off back into the winter evening woods where he belonged. Instead, he just layed there motionless on the grey carpet of sad idiot leaves. I still hate him for leaving me there like that. And I guess I always will.

And no I'm not sorry because that's not the point at all, is it.

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I used to think that it was imposssible to die. Everything took so fucking long that there was just no way I was ever going to see the end of all these Italian hoagies and these eighth ounce bags of Christmas Tree Bud. I would sit in my 11th grade Algebra or Chemistry and stare at a clock that simply did not know how to work. Time moved so slowly. I was a frozen lamb in a frozen pasture and at night I could get baked and watch Arsenio Hall after my mom had said goodnight and went to bed. I could swish microwave-melted mint chocolate chip around in my mouth as if it were refreshing wind trapped in a cave. On the couch made of burlap, I could untie my Nikes and let 'em fall to the ground knowing damn right well that I would be back down there tomorrow, in the morning of the day, to put them on again. Nice and tight.

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We went into a small-ass room yesterday with a guy in a Hawaiian shirt who had a kindly way. He seemed advanced in his gentleness, as if he didn't have to think about being gentle or overkill it with too much nice. He was just an easy-going guy and after a minute or two watching him rub jelly on my wife's belly I decided that I liked him a lot and was glad he was around.

He told us one good thing after another. The spine looks good. The amniotic fluid looks real good. See that? That's urine being produced, so that's very good. There's a hand. With fingers. That looks good.

Everything looked good. I liked this guy. Life Man, I call him. Looking at our unborn kid on the TV screen, pumping us full of excitement and promise. Giving us life. Life Man.

At the end, with a sweet build-up that I could tell he loved doing, he finally revealed to us that we would be having a little boy.

What else can I say? We're having a son. It's so good. We're gonna have a son.

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I picked a dried autumn booger out of my daughter's nostril today while I was making her watch the baseball on TV with me. She let me do it. It didn't phase her, really. She was more into trying to escape my clutch, to get away from the boredom. I wiped it on my pants. No biggie. When it's your kid you wanna do stuff like that; you wanna show the ghosts and the angels and whatever else is floating around the room invisible, taking notes about if you're worth it or not, you wanna show them that you love your babies with insane love. With powerful outer space love. If someone else were to wipe a boogie on my pants I would take a hacksaw and start cutting at the seams of their lips until I peeled off the top two-thirds of their head, you know? But when it's your kid, it's different. You get in there and you pick their fucking noses and you genuinely enjoy it just as much, if not more, than you would enjoy a nice steak and a baked potato, some red wine.

And then later, like today, you start thinking it isn't enough, just to clean up their crusty noses and their dried snots and stuff. You start getting irrational with your love. Super hero shit. Like maybe if I start doing sit-ups right now, and keep doing them for five months straight/non-stop until my baby boy is born, well, maybe my abs and my skin and my muscles will get so tight that I will become bullet-proof. For serious. And then, if I just walk in front of the lad every moment for the rest of his life, if a gun goes off and a bullet flies at him, it'll just hit me and ping off my sit-ups body and fly into a tree or something.

That's how much love it is possible to dabble in. Bullet Proof Nose Picker Love. Unfuckingreal.

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A Tennessee kid would have turned nineteen today. I never met him but I feel like I did. I've stared at him in pictures, his handsome face framed by a shock of thick dark hair, his thin frame usually wrapped up around his acoustic. He was the son of someone me and my wife met recently, someone who we like a lot. I cannot begin to understand her loss. No one can unless you've been there. Here's hoping you haven't.

Still, when I hear the tales of young men dying I think of that river somewhere way out there beyond the known sky. After the great big storm cloud of life melts away, after the whizzing bullets and the hydroplaning muscle cars and the dirty needles and the fistfights and the pills and the shitty cancers and leukemias and the bedroom nooses, all of it, after all of that slips away on the edge of a crisp afternoon breeze, what is left is this:

A young guy walking downstream, uncertainty in his gleaming eyes, headed right into the gaze of a kid who came before him. A good kid who's been waiting to show a newbie around.

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For Henry. We'll play guitars someday.