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Thunder Sandwich #23 |
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Brendan Regan |
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White Collar Pushed and pushed by doldrums and safety to outbursts of childish fire. He up and spends eight Monday hours in bars to balance the ten at work. Up and drives alone to Kansas City to be a bum for a few days, and eat at Arthur Bryant's. Up and quits his job and types all day towards bearded oblivion. He's left no choice, just lucky there are no mouths to starve but his own. She would ride it out to some reasonable, mature outcome. He beats his fist on the bar and slurs melodramatic and makes poor decisions. I won't fault him. There's no cock or muscle in his work - no sunlight, so he counterpunches like a man who's been in too few fights and is likely to break his hand. Still, he puts the fingers round the center of labor, and swings. Can't Go Back i. Can I go back to my cubicle after I've found this hidden suburban park with only one tree older than me? I will always sit at this picnic table scribbling blue sky freedom, sadness of the day, love of the proud foothills - fierce mountains. ii. I used to know, before I had to grow up and make a buck. I read alone in scrub woods. I sat in soybean fields and wrote of purity I knew I'd lose someday. iii. I want to rebel and lay my face in the grass and freak, breathe the blue dome, scream universal blind truths at semis that pass, soak the sun into my heart, feel the romance of escape, revise the paradigms that hang over us like smog, and somehow win over the day-to-day code of loveless life that's stamped into the side of my radiator, watermarked onto my paycheck, and woven into nucleic strands of my children's souls. |