If I was a hawk or a falcon I would just be out flying one Irish Spring morning, imbibing the cool chill in the air and looking around at mutts in their yards and people hanging laundry or working on their cars and then SHAZZAM!!!: I'd drop out of the bluebird sky: stone-dead, embarrassingly enough. I'd land in someone's pool, probably. An above-grounder. Or just thud down on some grade school bus stop. Kids would start crying, throwing up from nerves. A cop would have to come and poke me with a stick from the gutter to make certain I wasn't just a sleeping raptor. Ugh.
The whole thing would be a friggin mess. People don't wanna deal with dead birds of prey. It's too unusual, not to mention that its pretty damn unsettling too. Those birds are supposed to be wild and free; symbols of savage liberty. Of back country wisdom. Of survival. And they're downright big when you see them up close. They're like miniature people, really. So, you know, to have to come over and pick me up with an extra big beach towel or something, it's just so unseemly. Little dead birdlets on the front walk are sad, sure, but they make sense somehow. They're easy as pie. But the golden eagle dropping eighteen pounds of death down onto the neighborhood. It's just not acceptable. It lacks dignity. And honestly: it's fucking weird.
Still. That'd be how I went. Sudden. Soaring with majesty one sec/choking on a regurgitated seed in the middle of the only cloud in the sky the next. It's how it is with me.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over the past few years I had a few sexy moments. I'm not sexy mind you. But I had a couple times here and there when the moon was lined up with Jupiter and Venus was behind the sun. Or whatever. Decked out in my stage clothes and sweaty and sipping a bottle of beer, I had some nights where I could tell I was a SpellCasting NightWizard
with powers I didn't even know how to handle. Bottled Semi-Truck powers. Insatiable heat. Shark lust. The goods.
I'd roll out from backstage and turn on my radar. Oh, my radar. Poor restless thing, powered down for so many hours each day as I sat in the drivers seat of the van and steered the band and all the equipment and all of our filthy saltish slutty clothes down Highway 40 and up Highway 81 and under Highway This and over Highway That. An off radar is so sad and dumb but that's how it had to be. You can't be scoping for action in truck stops and WaffleHouses and at rest areas on turnpikes. Unless of course, you give yourself over to the Serial Killer Winds. They're there, always blowing hot dry gusts across Oklahoma parking lots and behind Ohio State Sponsored Urinals. You taste their madness on your lips. You feel their hunger in the powerful beckoning hot blowing through your face. They invite you to let go, to trust them. They beg you to follow them down the highway forever, only ever pulling over to piss and shit and grab some sandwiches. And kill.
So, no thanks. I'd power down my radar in the early morning Motel 6 room. Leave it off until we'd rocked the show.
Then, yeah, there were nights...many nights/I'm not gonna lie to you...when nothing really happened. I'd emerge from backstage and out of the crowd or the stragglers or whoever was out there drinking and laughing, there would come hustling up to me some dude/s who wanted to talk music/albums/guitar cords. And I could never really blow them off. They were someone to talk to other than people I spent my life with in a van. So we'd chat and sip drinks and before you know it I had to reach down inside myself and turn off the radar switch. Give up for the night.
But, my oh my, on the nights the radar went off beeping and wailing and glowing with blinking lights and all. Dear Jesus are there some sexy sweet ladies alive in the night in this world. Candy smelling perfume and never heard of your band before and you guys rocked and I've never been to Philly and twinkle twinkle little star in your eyes my god THIS IS HAPPENING.
I was young. We were young.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fast forward. Why is my stupid fucking radar just hanging around my slumping neck like some heavy dead bird of prey, its feet tied together to form some crazy-ass necklace of absolute unsexyness?
Am I dreaming?
Is this thing on?