Pipe UP

Imagine how much more interesting the logging industry would be if trees could pull up their roots and move about as they pleased.
People could make a sport of tracking down and killing oaks and redbuds and hollies just as they do bears and foxes and deer.
"Forget that fifty pound bass that you hooked, you shoulda seen the size of the maple that I felled last month!"
Paper would take on a much more sinister identity, like leather or fur.
Coalitions would form to stop the brutal slaughter of these majestic creatures. People would organize, rally, riot. Clear cutting would be viewed as equal to the massacre of the American Buffalo during early frontier days.
But as things are, trees stand still and silent. Climbing away from Earth towards Heaven with dauntless perseverance. Waiting, perhaps even willing (like the apple tree of fable), to be cleared in the name of progress. They go silently, and so there is no great glory in their deaths. They go silently, and so there is no mass decry. They go silently.
Don't ever go in silence.

You know Her

Her teeth were yellowed
Her hair was like straw
Her fingers were bitten and torn
Her jumper was dirty
Her features were blunt and
She was also far too short.
She worked in the kitchen
She made marvelous tarts
She looked out the window and sighed
She longed for the spotlight
She dreamt of the stage
One day in that kitchen, she died.

this is relevant*

"Dark gray clouds hung low in the sky. It was good walking weather, and a relief to be free from the still steamy sidewalks of the city."
The coffee was bitter. The subway was late. This book was obviously trash. Not a good way to start a morning. Sharon Combes. Jack imagined her as low and lonely, probably with cats. But then again, that's how he imagined anyone he felt particularly sorry for. She'd obviously never been out of the city. He discarded the book, his coffee, and his sorrow beneath the bench. Perhaps someone would come along who needed them more than he.
7:08. Seven oh eight. Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine!
Had he fed the cat? Of course he had. Careless he was not. There are few people you can really count on. None actually, once you consider what they expect in return. Take take take. That's all they do. Even the cat has expectations. People are lousy.
"Fuck you," said the wall. "Beck loves Anna (but you're alone), Jesus loves you (but you're a sinner), Call 555-867-5482 for a GOOD time (but you don't have the time)". Jack didn't feel like listening. That's another problem with people. They never really listen. They nod and smile and make response- synthetic, all of it. Social sounds. More expectations. (Conform, will you?!)
And so everyone gets caught up in who can speak the loudest and longest and most precisely and raise the most capital and make the most profit and have the most connections and the nicest flat and brag, whine, noses to the grindstone work work work to make it big and finally be happy and tell everyone how happy they are but no one is really listening to a word that is said and everyone is drinking bitter coffee and smiling and-

7:09. Seven oh nine. The number 26. Jack gathered up his book and coffee and got on board.


*This inspired by an earlier work by an acquaintance titled "there was more to jack, but nothing worth discussing too much.."

PS-

They aren't butterflies
They're mini pterodactyls.
And they're not in my stomach
They are in my throat.
Breeding, and eating
my words.
Before I can give them to you.

Jack D. Schmiege*

Jack was low-down and tired, all he wanted was dinner and another pack of cigarettes. The cigarettes were cheap, and dinner was a handful of shrink-wrapped, miniature pound cakes. You know, the kind that are so loaded with preservatives that the wrapper proudly proclaims that they have a shelf life of five years, and that they'll withstand nuclear warfare and the Rapture, too! Jack didn't care about their shelf life, though. He was neither internationally aware nor religiously inclined. To him, it seemed merely appropriate that they shared the fate of his grandmother, the baker of his childhood: both she and the pound cakes were preserved against rot and decay, sealed within their respective wrappings for eventual consumption.
Pound cake and cigarettes for dinner, coffee and cigarettes for breakfast, cigarette or two on his coffee break (forget the coffee), and the cafeteria's dinner special, taken in the smoking section of course. Jack had his first smoke when he was 13, but didn't pick up the habit of two packs a day until the summer that he turned 18. They shared cigarettes and kisses while they talked about what it must be like to die and to be God and other things much larger than they were. But he went off to college and she went off to find her answers, so they never got to keep all those plans that they made. She did not hesitate in her goodbye, but he never felt quite whole again without a cigarette between his lips, and even then not entirely.
Todd, on the other hand, never had trouble finding himself. He joined up with the army straight out of high school, and they were glad to have him. He was everyone's all-American boy, and he knew it. "I hope you earn enough to buy yourself a new life when you finally realize what a shit hole you're in," he told Jack on the day he shipped out. Jack had realized it almost immediately, but never thought of getting out. Todd had good sense, he often thought, to get killed before his tour was up. Todd had his chest ripped open by a missile while he shoveled a latrine.
Jack often felt as if his chest were being ripped open. He assumed that his cigarettes were to blame, and hoped that it was fatal. That's lucky for him, because he got shot, twice in the chest, by some kid that got $47 out of the register.

Schmiege, Jack D., 26, of New York City, NY, died on March 3, 2008 at Lenox Hill
Hospital. He is survived by mother, Petunia, of Vienna, Austria, and father, Owen
Schmiege, of El Cepo, Mexico.


*Inspired by an earlier work by an acquaintance, titled "Attention Whore."