A Sharply Struck E7

A Sharply Struck E⁷

By: Selkirk Doon

Copyright 2012 Selkirk Doon

Smashwords Edition

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For Jim and Carole, Annalise and Lauren.

Dedicated to the spirit of Mr. Jim Hogan, who once told me that I sure have a way with words.

Special thanks to David Neston, artist and compadre extraordinaire.

Chapter 1

My name does not matter and neither does yours. Nobody's name has since Hype won out, so don't feel bad. Now all that matters is who you Are Not and if there's money in pretending you Are.

I am cynical, didactic, inured to the stupidity of others, and I sometimes use big words. No apologies will be forthcoming. This metropolis I live in is a caustic stinkhole, a wasteland of fried moralities and vile obligations. Anything significant is marked for decay. All the agendas overflow with immediacy. And nobody gives a shit what goes on. Most peel their eyes back, stare straight into the neon glare and are left myopic casualties. As for me, I stay constantly angry, giving me a sense of control where others might have none. And I don't play games. I play a guitar, better than anyone in this city since Piedmont Jackson got in over his head and drug dealers cut off his hands.

I fear I am stuck in a Dali, reality bent around an electrified flagpole or condensed into a sneering caricature of your most embarrassing moment. People I meet might smile, but I sense there's no substance behind the mask. There is only emptiness, a void caused by taking for granted that tomorrow will be better. I sniff no freshly cut grass. I see no happily-foisted mayhem lifting spirits to soar among eagles. Where are the dancing girls, the troubadours in tree tops, the sounds of laughter for no reason, the hands of God sculpting wonder out of dread circumstance? I may live in a city, but I have seen the mountain top. An artificial pinnacle, a monument to The Easy Way Out, and it is slippery with dung. There on the horizon, it ever announces its presence with a blinking red light. I pay my respects with dry heaves.

Every day I walk, mile after mile. With my guitar slung comfortably on my back, I resemble a vagabond musician happily walking wayward. My long hair flows loose. I've decided ponytails are now de rigueur on the Apache and little girls only, though I will stuff my hair into a tight stocking cap on stage sometimes to keep it out of my face when I thrash and flail.

With each measured stride I take stock of the catastrophes of my youth. They mean nothing. I walk in judgment of the sacred ideals of Jesus, which paved the way to misuse and misunderstanding. They still prove worthy. Along the way, I link arms with the mastodons of industry, the revelers on crank, the trickle-down meisters, the charged expressionists, the Uzified henchmen, the monkey-back sniffers, the doomed do-gooders, the charmed losers. On the tips of my fingers, poetry, and on the tip of my tongue, serenades. They come together at a vanishing point which is the light of day. Never to be seen or heard by anyone. And I am romantic about it all.

Often, I walk downtown, late, late at night. The dread of millions tries to rest upon my shoulders as I pass office fortresses, which contribute mightily to the perilous condition of the wretched. Denizens of the dark scuttle past me, or stand obtusely in my path. I experience no fear, no insecurity, even in the notorious sections. What would be the reason? Were I meant to be robbed, I would be robbed. Were I meant to be bludgeoned, I would be bludgeoned. I waste no time on preventing the future. As it is, most I encounter are not mean-spirited. They are only passing time awaiting a variety of scores. Their eyes in all directions at once, and their asses slung low, in order to roll away from a slashing knife, a leveled boot, a knobby fist, as quickly as possible. Though most do not actively seek violence, the machinery of their beings has been tooled by the streets so as to promote violence.

Other occasions, I find myself traversing block after block of that style of architecture termed ruinous. Residents wonder and fret why nothing has been done to rejuvenate those crumbling desolations. They meet constantly with city officials to harangue and clamor. Above all, they speak passionately for safe neighborhoods for their children. Their arguments are sound, retort-proof cries for help that go in the collective ear to wither and die. Nothing will ever be done for them; and their children are made to grow up under skewed rules that require they grow up fast without a childhood.

I have a best friend I call Spint, for no reason other than the name suits him better than his given name of Phlebitis. He is a glorious Black man and a glorious liar, quicker than a senator at fabricating an ulterior, and it was he, not the social institutions, who educated me about our present world order. Women think him handsome and clever. My stepfather believes him to be misguided and simple. I just believe he makes me lucky. He says he is unlucky and will die before he reaches thirty, though I try to convince him when it is time to die, you die. The age at which it occurs is nearly always unlucky.

Together we play in a band. He, the drummer, and I, the guitarist who sings. I admit freely that our band is conceived of Fate and thus exceptional. From throughout the city, with anarchy on their minds and the need for constant reassurance in their hearts, come the disillusioned, to listen rapt as I fill the hall with ranting lyrics, which resound with empathy when the cymbals crash. Spint is generous with the money we receive for playing and generous with imparting his beliefs. His genius is he's the first to admit he knows nothing, all the while steadfastly living in the moment.

I remember one occasion, as Spint and I sat over a table of empties, when the answer to a question previously considered was finally revealed to us. It was just after we'd sucked back a platter of raw onions and oysters, and our stomachs were gurgling in protest. The nine-to-five crowd was loudly bemoaning that the supply of that weak-tit potable Jagermeister had been drained, and wall to wall people yearned significance.

Nobody spoke much in our direction, and we less in theirs. They looked upon us as two slackasses, who'd probably pooled together a paltry drinking fund. Worse, we were proud of it, too. Or at least we acted like it, hooting and laughing and flirtatiously carrying on with the waitresses in a way that must have really galled the rest of the crowd, because, I suspect, they'd been taught that pride had special meaning. We had a fix on them, too, centering on their lame taste in booze.

So, why are we here? asked Spint, exactly the question previously considered.

This time, I was ready for it. We are here to view for the last time what we must not become, I pontificated. Just like that, talking out of my ass, and I wasn't even fully drunk yet. But this answer was exactly what Spint's hankering soul had long required. He slammed his fists on the table in a reflexive fit of inspiration, sending bottles and plates toppling and spinning, and he smiled a smile that will forever remind me of stars kissing. Then he signed over his paycheck to the bartender and ordered everyone in the place a shot of Wild Turkey.

Right then, I was Henry Miller in Paris: in league with my destiny. I saw that we were cordoned off from the rest of humanity, extricating our thoughts from a fetid pile marked HAZARDOUS and living well. We may have been a spectacle, Spint and I, as we, arm in arm, stumbled drunkenly out of that establishment, but, from that moment on, I knew my path lay outside the realm of ordinary prospects. I had become a vilified bird on a sacred mission, released from captivity to peck the eyes out of those who see only what they are supposed to see.

For the past few weeks I have been awakened by the repetitive whams of a pile driver outside my window. Seems a million-dollar footbridge is to be erected over the avenue out there, providing safe passage to those who haven't sense enough to look both ways before crossing the street. Of course, four people were fatally struck by cars during the forty years since this street became the city's busiest. Four people out of the hundreds of thousands, millions, perhaps, who've survived the journey unscathed. One is left to think that a death occurred daily. And each morning I am forcibly awakened at eight a.m. by a ramrod burying pilings upon the lip of Hell.

When I complain, my nearly ex-girlfriend, Dexter, says I'm off railing again.