Spring Break Is Over

Living in the past will kill you. So will life. I was driving today, listening to the dial tone female voice of my GPS directing me toward roads that would supposedly take me home. Why do I always listen to that malevolent bitch? Is it the hypnotic sound of her crawling, icy drone that compels my hands and feet to move? Or is it the direct, insistent diction with which she commands me? I did not even want to come home. Not this time. I spent a weekend with the sea, some good friends, some new friends, and a supply of alcohol so exorbitant the mere sight would cause Keith Richards to throw up on his guitar. Skin against sky. Liquid against lips. Face against floor. Good times had by all. So why in hell would I want to go back to a job I do not like in a town where I do not want to live? That is, other than to accrue funds for the next weekend excursion? There is no reason. I come back to go through the motions of the life put on me by a society sickened with greed. And I escape that life by going somewhere else to actually live, be it a mountaintop or a dive bar. Not to sit in front of a computer and come home and watch television and rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat like some battery powered drone. Everyone knows life ain't grand. And it is not a damn box of chocolates either. The question is: Why, in this electronic life, have we humans constructed such a sophisticated society in which we ourselves are meant to act the part of the machine? We are told to stay in school, go to college, become educated and productive so that we can be active members of society and then produce more meat for the grinder. Who is benefiting from this? Wherein these metallic amusements lies our humanity? Spring Break is over. Tomorrow I go back to work to make money for the next time I can escape for a day or two. For now I will just go through the motions. Follow the voice telling me what to do Watch the road disappear. We have all got to keep moving, do we not?

Monsters Mistaken for Trees

I am the dreamer in the midwinter forest:
the vultures at dawn
fly in curves
and swing low into trees
whose death surrounds us
and swallows up our
whole damned life.