Preparing for the Best Season Ever (sorta re-post)

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

I wrote this twisted jingle awhile back (Nov '04 specifically) and posted in Aspect Journal's forums while all hopped up on pain meds, prolly a bit of alcohol, and a driving hammering dull pain in my knee that wouldn't go away from a recent ACL surgery. This was a weird piece written as a constant thought stream with virtually no editing..bubbling up from a bad place, but looking back on it, well....in a similarly strange way, kind of prophetic I guess.

Anyway, sticking it here for a bit as Aspect's forums might be shutting off (the actual site is sticking around of course)......man, I'm glad your brain can't really remember the sensation of pain, yikes...those musta been some good meds

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Preparing for the Best Season Ever


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He took a moment to savor the smoke from the just extinguished set of twenty-nine birthday candles pressed carefully into the head of a chocolate cupcake, so close together that there might as well have been a single wad of wax. The hammer he held gleamed on its metal end, the over-polished head that he’d rubbed hundreds of times over with a disinfecting towel. He wanted to insure that this, the instrument that would elevate his skiing into the upper echelon, would be the cleanest thing he’d ever known. He wanted it cleaner than the white linen sheets he’d been laid upon fresh from the womb, laden with afterbirth, weighing no more than a pile of fifty dead goldfish, his heart effortless and in need of artificial maintenance.

With his free hand he picked up the tiny blue smurf skier action figure that sat between his thighs. A 3-inch tall blue plastic surf complete with poles, skis affixed in a perfect stem-christie, and a stocking hat blown back from the wind. He twirled the skiing smurf between in his fingers performing flips and spins with cartoon-like grace. As he toyed with the statuette, he didn't feel lit up through and through by it, as he once had. He'd cherished the thing ever since it was given to him, by the cute curly-headed girl in his first grade homeroom. He remembered how he'd use the skiing smurf as a visualization aid in learning new tricks. Backflips. Various spins. His progression as a skier undoubtedly aided by the mental muscle memory of imitating the skiing smurf's acrobatics. He set the smurf back on the white porcelain edge of the bathtub where he sat.

His mouth hung, wide open, as achingly far as it could, the jaw forced to bend with its chin pressed against his throat and his cheeks feeling like they might tear at any moment. And so he swung the hammer down on the smurf skier and watched it shatter into fragments. He took a brief moment to memorize the smurf on its moment of obliteration, to solidify in his head exactly how it had come apart, what larger wholes had dispersed into what fragments. The satisfaction he felt was brief and tasteless. As brief as the success he had experienced as a skier moving up through the ranks of his local ski club until he just wasn't fast enough, or strong enough to compete. It was more the lack of progression however that really gnawed at his insides. Others in his skiing posse had clearly gotten the edge over him in recent years. They were straightlining the longest & steepest of chutes. Stomping the most difficult airs. And this was even after a few of them had undergone complete ACL reconstruction. He skied as much as them. Worked out as much as them. But the only factor he figured that separated their advancing progression from his was that they had brand new, shiny clean ACL's. Their new stronger ACL's, he deduced, was the only thing separating them from him. So that left him only one choice.

With strands of unctuous saliva pouring from both sides of his sore lips, he lifted the hammer again, and paused briefly before swinging, this is just how it feels before dropping off the edge of a cliff he thought. As he brought the hammer down again this time it was on himself, aiming for a tiny soft spot on the lateral side between his tibia and patella, the spot that he’d shaved and encircled with a black felt tip pen hours earlier.

As the hammer connected, sinking into his oatmeal flesh, his lips formed the first real smile he’d managed in years, a smile of self-imposed retardation, a thankful blank. The hammer fell from his hand and skittered to rest on the floor as his head lolled back to kiss the wall, his eyes likewise lolling back like magnets attracted newly heavenward. His head rolled to the side and hit the side of the shower handle unleashing a torrent of cold spray from the showerhead. The cold water, like the first frigid storm of the season washing away the dust of summer, cleansed the gaping wound in his knee. And in that moment, just as he foresaw it, he was going to get his new stronger knee and have the best season ever.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Sticking another one here from Aspect's forums.....written a little earlier than the whacked out piece above. Still dealing with blown knee dowldrums

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Meltwater

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his deafness was overwhelming,
so she became a bird
and sang to him the song
the first snowflake makes
parachuting from a dark drunk sky.

she sang about a friend who sat
on the handlebars of his bike
as he raced faster
than a reaction
through the dying afternoons
of his town.

she sang the taste of coffee
triumphant over the scales of shivers
that weighed the morning's griefs.
she sang melancholy meals
and laughing sips of wine,
the warm frailty
of his grandma's house,
and the decline of marshmellows
over the life of a fire.

she sang the lakes
and the woods
and books
and kisses
and his daughters' eyes
and dreams
and strangers
and she sang until
she sang away objective
and then she touched
the damp meltwater on his face.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Another one from Aspect's forums.........



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things

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Otis Reading is scratching out the turntable
Cigarettes and Coffee tickling
The hemoglobin of the things

That make us friends,
The things that make us lovers,
And the things that rip our hearts apart.
When the seasons change,
And when the sun goes down
And the sunglasses rest on the cracked dashboard for the last time
You feel you are nothing more than how you spent the past six months.

And now, until then
It's just like sitting on the floor
In the crowded hallways of your mind
Listening to white noise as passing feet speak to you - -
They have no names, long faces, or ridiculing eyes

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Another one...untitled....

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In reminiscing, Winter's words are cut
into scraps, point to point attached
and now littered, now brushed into a wastecan
beside the desk. Intricate pages unfolded,

taped to steamed windows. These snowflakes,
the best use for ambivalent dreams, Socrates
might have said. To just such a voice
have we listened, fled, rejoined; most of us

now far along into Summer. Reaching back
into the wastecan there are lines to hatch
and stipple, forms botanic edges in
between artistry and irony; memories brushed
into life with a stroke, with hue:

Altogether image, yet ears have their way
of hearing remarkable visions.
How we have fooled silence;
in every work of art hides its poem.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Here's another I'm saving from the Aspect forums's......written awhile back while moving across the country...first glimmers of Tahoe and all of that...

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Roadtrippin'

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That map we unfold,
fold again, tuck away
into the crevice
is on a ledge, a secret key.
Our fingers search
highway markers, across
deserts, scratch against
mountain ranges wandering,
wondering. Rolled up
alongside freshly-minted
quarters and lip balm.

You blink at the Tahoe Basin
where run-off floods flow
shallower than our desire
to dash beside the silty banks;
and throw a nod to high white
mirrored memories reflected
in its deep blue pools.
I’ve already reached in
along the map’s dry edges,
past to where the sequoias,
sunshine, and snows shimmer.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Wow forgot about this one..........I didn't originally start this thread to hold on this stuff, but oh well fuck it, it's as a good a place as any.

Forgot about this one...wrote it back in '03 after flying back home and seeing one of my grandfathers for the last time.

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Kirkwood, 12/28

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"Lessons in Memory"

I.

It’s usually a change in the weather that does it, and now as I drive to Kirkwood, I can’t help but notice that the snow banks along the roadside are now higher than my car. The all-day all-night drive-in-theatre that broadcasts just south of my cerebellum has switched formats. Now it’s Greatest Hits from the ‘80’s: a looped 16mm film of driving through white walled switchbacks in the Poconos of Pennsylvania.

II.

Home for the holidays and visiting with my grandfather. Haven’t seen him in nearly 3 years and as the glow from the coal stove gently heats the room I can’t help but wonder when I’ll be back…if I’ll be back. His old house creaks and moans against the wind.

He asks about California and then the stories begin. His time on Treasure Island with the Navy. Sneaking into the Rose Bowl down in Pasadena. The old times with the old gang in the older parts of San Francisco. These stories are smudged, fingered, and worn at the edges from constant caress, but I still listen intently and hang onto every word and enunciation. It’s been awhile since I’ve heard them.

III.

Getting out of the car, cold wind slaps me across the face and makes no apology. Definitely colder and snowier than when I left. My boots creak and moan against the cold snow and the theatre projectionist changes film. Pennsylvania Powder, or maybe more appropriately titled Skiing the Same Run Over and Over in Zero Degree Temps Under Snow Guns Blowing at Full Tilt in Your Face, splashes across the screen at the rear of my skull.

IV.

“Do you do much skiing out in California?”

“Oh just a bit.”

“Probably a little different than back here huh? Remember that big blizzard in ’93? The snow banks along the roads were higher than the cars!”


V.

Last run of the day. Me and the crew sneak OB to catch some deep freshies above the parking lot. Skirting and hanging onto the side of a gully, I continually get low on the uphill turn and dip my hip into the powder for face shot after freezing face shot. This is why I’m here.

I’m finishing up and editing my latest film. Another one in the can.

VI.

I back my car out of the field behind his house careful not to scrape against the snow banks. He wandered out onto the back porch to see me off as he always did before. I shift out of reverse and into drive. Pause.

Hit record.

I glance over my shoulder one last time at the weathered house and the silhouetted, weathered man leaning against its frame. He raises a hand in farewell and I do the same as I’ve always done before. Although this time my hand is much heavier. It holds the weight of every other wave I’ve sent him in the past. I don’t think I’ll be going through this motion ever again.

Hit stop.

I will see him again.

VII.

I navigate my car through the snow banks on the drive back home and it’s the matinee at the all-day all-night drive-in theatre. They’re showing OB Face Shots together with Stories of a Seaman: Tales from a Navy Midshipman.

Only the projectionist seems to have taken the day off (it was a powder day after all) for they’re spliced together.

And they play in concert. A fond symphony.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Another...

this was originally posted on P-mag forums prolly back in '02. Written on a long flight after a weary tiring business trip...kirkwood opening day of the season was the next day...

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Soon, soon

five months and
two seasons of
ninety degree
days and
thousand yard
stares has me
choking for
two parallel tracks down
two thousand vert on
the first day
of the season
with no end in sight

this past week,
five days and
four nights of
two a.m. evenings and
six a.m. mornings
leaves me grasping for
thirteen degrees and
thirty-two inches on
forty degree pitches with
no end in sight

coming home
thirty-two thousand feet above
fourteen thousand foot
mountains with
five hours of
restless sleep than
sixty minutes home
leaves me yearning for
one ninety-four centimeters of a
fifty mile-per-hour license to
rip those deep
deep trenches on
those steep
steep pitches with
no end in sight.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

And the last one............Phew! sorta of a trip down memory lane there.

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Whethering the weight of waiting for weather

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I have spent the whole of my life
Trying to squeeze hugs from a snowfall
Yet all I've managed to muster is this
Artificial embrace

Like footsteps in the dead of night
And bound within summer's grasp
I always walk beneath
Cobwebs of cool winter shades

[GheePup]

Tyrone, I too had that little smurf skier as a kid (I might still have it somewhere?). Brought back some memories of what he used to do. I must admit I never smashed him with a hammer but I did smash some small vehicles and even blew some of my model cars up as a kid.

You man are the ultimate smurf skier and now that blue jacket that you sport and those strange powder blue skis you rip on makes so much more sense.



He is a smurf...He is a smurf!

Edit: had to add more smurfness
Edit again: and then had to add thank you Ty for everything you bring to this forum and keep up the good work.